October 18, 2017

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Wednesday october 18, 2017 vol. CXLI no. 89

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } STUDENT LIFE

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Westminster buyer rumors Tigerbook raises concerns cause strife, confusion over privacy

By Linh Nguyen contributor

senior writer

The Undergraduate Student Government Executive Committee alerted the student body in an email on Oct. 15 of their concerns about the confidentiality of a popular student directory application, Tigerbook.

“We have very recently learned that the student(s) tasked to manage and update [Tigerbook] have access to what is being searched and who is making each of these searches,” Undergraduate President Myesha Jemison ’18 wrote on behalf of the committee. “This means that student managers could view individual search histories from Tigerbook that have been recorded according to each student’s netID.” In light of the email from the USG Executive Committee, University students have expressed concern over their privacy with regards to Tigerbook. However, the managers of the TigerApp system think that the email didn’t illuminate the full picture.

“It’s very easy to frame the email in a negative light, saying that there could be a breach of

privacy, and that negative outlook is very present right now,” USG TigerApps Chair Rushy Panchal ’19 said. “We want to make it clear that there is not a breach of confidentiality. Rather... we know there is a set of data being collected.”

“What the press release is actually saying is that USG was not aware that search queries were being stored,” computer science lecturer Jérémie Lumbroso, the faculty advisor for Tigerbook, said in an interview. “Now that they are aware, they want to have a discussion on whether or not it’s a good idea.”

Tigerbook allows students to search for the names, residential college, dorm locations, roommates, and academic concentrations of other students. It is only accessible through the Princeton Central Authentication Service (CAS), meaning that students must supply appropriate netIDs and passwords in order to access the information.

The application was created

by Hansen Qian ’16, Rohan Sharma ’14 and Ivo Crnkovic-Rubsamen ’15 as a capstone project for the class COS 333: Advanced Programming Techniques.

See TIGERBOOK page 3

U . A F FA I R S

Thompson named new associate dean in ODUS

By Benjamin Ball contributor

The now-former Director of Student Life at Forbes, Mellisa Thompson, has been named the new associate dean in the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students.

Thompson has worked as the DSL for Forbes College for the past five years. She started in her new office as of Monday, but she will continue many of her responsibilities at Forbes College until a new DSL for Forbes is appointed. As the new associate dean, Thompson will now be coordinating the management of student crises and emergencies, as well as overseeing the residential college advisor program and working closely with the DSLs of all six residential colleges.

“She’s been very involved with a lot of campus life issues, most recently the dining committee, discussing dining options and plans on campus. She’s become very active as she’s settled in over the years,” said Forbes College secretary Maureen Riggi, who has known Thompson for as long as she’s worked at the University. “She’s naturally caring and intuitive, and she’s going to bring a lot of that to the position.” “[Thompson] has always been extremely nice and accommodating,” added Ian Lawrie ’20, a resident of Forbes. “She’s been a great resource”.

Originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., Dean Thompson acquired a B.A. in sociology from Cornell University and an M.Ed from Rutgers. She later served as a director of scholar support for the Leadership Enterprise for a Diverse America program. Afterwards, she worked at MIT’s

Office of Residential Life, where she counseled students, organized orientation events, and worked with the resident advisor program.

“I work to foster a community where students feel supported so that they can thrive in their academic and co-curricular life,” Thompson wrote in an email statement Tuesday, adding, “I am thrilled and humbled to start this new professional chapter and look forward to continuing to support all undergraduate students throughout their Princeton journey!”

“I think she’s going to be amazing; she’s been through the ringer and the gambit as far as being a DSL, and she’s going to apply those skills really well to the office of the associate dean,” Riggi added. “We’re sad we’re losing a friend to the other half of campus, but it’s going to be an amazing opportunity, and it’s going to be nice to be able to now share her with the wider campus. I think that the other students are in for quite a treat.”

COURTESY OF PRINCETON.EDU

Mellisa Thompson was Forbes College’s DSL for five years prior to this promotion.

COURTESY OF CORINNE BERNTSEN

Students at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, N.J. have expressed frustration about Rider University’s sale of their school.

afraid of the unknown, and what the future status of their employment will include,” Berntsen explained. “The general wish of the community is that we would like to receive information as soon as it has been released to the public.

The information should be shared formally, with detail, and clearly enough that the information cannot be speculated from.”

Located near Princeton High School, Westminster Choir College has roots in the town spanning back to the 1930s. The College merged with Rider University 25 years ago to expand its program offerings. With a population of under 500 total undergraduate and graduate students, as well as a 6:1 student-to-faculty ratio, Westminster’s otherwise tight-knit community now faces an unknown fate.

WCC’s meeting with President Gregory Dell’Omo revealed that Rider will not part ways with Westminster in the next year, preparing for the case that the deal with the unknown prospective buyer falls through. If that does transpire, Rider will then begin the selling process of WCC anew with some other prospective buyer.

Dr. Joel Phillips, a professor of composition and music theory, has taught at Rider for over 30 years and is one of many faculty members who has expressed doubt over Dell’Omo’s judgement.

“The Westminster community was asked to do the impossible, to trust Dell’Omo, a person who has treated Westminster merely as an ‘asset’ he can sell,” he said. Phillips has been a member of every faculty See WESTMINSTER page 2

ON CAMPUS

Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, talks humanitarianism

By Kristin Qian associate news editor

“Fundamentally, our empathy or our compassion should not be based on the color of somebody’s skin, or the color of their passport,” Nicholas Kristof said on Tuesday to a packed room of eager town residents and students.

A New York Times columnist since 2001, Kristof joined the Times in 1984 to write about economics and presidential politics. He was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting on the Tiananmen Square protests and the genocide in Darfur, respectively.

Kristof has reported on six continents and traveled to more than 150 countries, including every country on the African continent, every Chinese province, and all of the main Japanese islands. Kristof, who grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Oregon, has also lived through mobs, wars, malaria, and a plane crash. Since joining the Times, he has covered economics and presidential politics, then international relations topics as a foreign correspondent. AS of 2001 he has served as an op-ed columnist for the paper.

A proponent of web journalism, Kristof is also notable for being the first blogger for the Times. He is also active on multiple social media outlets, including Twitter (with over two million followers, more than any print journalist worldwide) and YouTube.

Much of Kristof’s talk centered not on his journalism, however, but on the value of compassion and investment into the lives of others.

COURTESY OF KRISTIN QIAN

New York Times op-ed columnist and two-time Pulitzer winner Nicholas Kristof spoke on campus about compassion and service.

“Every now and then, in unpredictable ways, you take a risk on somebody, who maybe seems like they don’t deserve it, and yet it just multiplies and bears fruit and resonates through that person onto the lives of others in ways that one couldn’t have imagined,” Kristof said.

Helping abroad is often cost-effective, Kristof noted, but there are also important things to be done in our own communities. He added that there is sometimes a reluctance to engage in global aid efforts because it feels hopeless.

“One of the impediments to us is the idea that these problems are so vast that anything we do is just going to be a drop in the bucket,” Kristof said. He said that although it’s frustrating that we cannot solve problems in their entirety, drops in the bucket are important for those individuals whom we can help with education, healthcare, and other transformative inter-

In Opinion

Today on Campus

Senior columnist Leora Eisenberg urges us to rethink Princeton’s social life, and guest contributor Leila Clark assails the lack of progress on last year’s eating club referendum. PAGE 4

8 p.m.: A service of poetry, music, and meditation featuring saxophonist Audrey Welber, pianist Logan Roth, and members of the Chapel Choir, at 8 p.m. in the chapel.

ventions.

In terms of the role that the U.S. should play in humanitarian issues, Kristof noted that “the rest of the world has largely dropped off the U.S. radar.” He expressed his fear that because important issues are not being covered by journalists, these problems may not be addressed. Kristof noted in particular that he worries about attention on Syria, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

He encouraged audience members to use their own spotlights to keep these issues illuminated.

There has been a lot of innovation and creativity both at home and abroad, he said, describing a Father’s Day gift he received a few years ago from his children: a HeroRAT from the organization Apopo. The three-foot long rat is dispatched abroad and is trained to detect land mines and tuberculosis by smell.

See KRISTOF page 2

WEATHER

By Audrey Spensley

With the announcement last spring that Rider University is selling Westminster Choir College, students across its campus have been in turmoil. Now months into the process of the college changing hands, students interviewed said the student body has expressed frustration at the administration’s silence about the sale.

Princeton, N.J.’s renowned conservatory has been in a state of unrest after its students and faculty heard a rumor that an Asian educational corporation with no higher education experience is the college’s prospective buyer. Due to a non-disclosure contract, the name of the buyer cannot be released until the deal is made public.

Corinne Berntsen, secretary for Westminster’s class of 2019, revealed that due to the school administration’s lack of transparency, a secret faculty meeting took place, at which false buyer information was disseminated. She cited a combined press release from the faculty and the Coalition to Save Westminster as a major cause of concern for students and faculty alike.

Because of the lack of communication between Westminster administration and its students and faculty, rumors about the school’s sale have also begun to circulate across campus, some claiming that Westminster would shut its doors permanently at the conclusion of the school year and others alleging that Rider would choose a buyer solely based on the highest offer.

“With reason, the faculty is

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WCC future uncertain WESTMINSTER Continued from page 1

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negotiating team since the merger joining Westminster and Rider.

When the ‘Prince’ reached out to Rider administration, Assistant Vice President for University Marketing and Communications Kristine Brown offered a brief statement regarding the purchase.

“We are working diligently to finalize our mutual goals of continuing Westminster Choir College on the Princeton campus,” said Brown. “While we all share the desire to move this forward quickly, much work still remains.

We continue to ask our community for their patience as this important process moves forward.”

However, a number of students on campus find this answer unsatisfactory.

“The Rider University Board of Trustees made an official statement in March that promised to put the interests of our institution first,” said Shelden Mendes, a ju-

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday october 18, 2017

nior at WCC. “After a long waiting period, we discovered that Gregory Dell’Omo never intended to maintain an altruistic search [for a buyer], but rather reverted to his ways of closed door discussions.”

In spite of the difficulties of this process, Westminster students have demonstrated their eagerness to speak up for their education and their willingness to play a role in future conversations about the outcome of this negotiation.

“Westminster Choir College has a very strong voice, not only throughout the Princeton community but throughout the world, so when we heard that our voices may be silenced, we automatically took action,” said Rachel Woody, a sophomore at WCC. She went on to affirm that the students’ limited influence over the impending purchase will not stifle their voices. “As students, there is only so much we can do, but we have done what we can to let our voices be heard throughout this process,” she noted.

Kristof: Small actions can make a difference KRISTOF Continued from page 1

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However, he expressed frustration that even as we gain knowledge about what works and what can make a difference, we don’t tend to see investments corresponding to these things.

“The real challenge we face isn’t so much knowledge, it’s more political will,” he said. “In particular, it’s what might be called an empathy gap.” This empathy gap becomes particularly stark when it is compounded by divides of race, immigration status, or religion, he said, explaining that we have a human inclination to “otherize” people who are different from ourselves.

He said that if we confront these issues by engaging in difficult conversations, perhaps we can overcome our brains and the bias that is embedded in us, someday bridging these empathy gaps and building opportunity.

In America, the top 20 percent most affluent Americans donate less to charity as a percentage of income than do the poorest 20 percent of Americans, Kristof said, explaining that this may be due to insulation from need. He added that affluent people who live in more economically diverse communities are more generous than those who live in more economically homogeneous areas.

“Sometimes I think that liberals like myself talk too much about inequality, which tends to be a liberal word,” he said. “Maybe we should frame it more as opportunity.”

Speaking to issues of global and

domestic poverty, Kristof gave the poignant example of the impact of investing in girls’ education, which he saw firsthand when he was in China in the 1990s. For him, it was a window into the way that educating girls could create a virtuous cycle of development that lifted up the whole community, benefiting men just as much as women.

“We talk about education, but in dealing with conflict and terrorism, we’ve overwhelmingly relied on the military toolbox, which has its place, but we have not relied much at all on the education toolbox and the women’s empowerment toolbox,” he said.

The power of education is something that extremists understand completely, he said. “They understand that the greatest threat to extremism is not necessarily a drone overhead, but it’s girls with schoolbooks,” Kristof noted. Terror attacks are probably more likely in tribal areas, where females are illiterate, than in Bangladesh, where girls are being educated, he added later.

“Educating girls isn’t just about creating economic opportunity or equality or social justice, but it’s also a security issue,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kristof pointed out that fewer than 10 percent of the world’s population lives in poverty today. Hundreds of lives have also been saved since 1990, due to basic interventions such as vaccinations, anti-diarrheal treatments, and promotion of breastfeeding, all of which save lives cheaply.

“We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off,” he said, explaining that there tends to be neg-

ative bias in what we cover, leading us to miss the backdrop of progress that should be an inspiration to push harder.

Peter Singer, professor of bioethics in the University’s Center for Human Values, moderated the Q&A that followed Kristof’s lecture.

Kristof began the Q&A by explaining that there is no perfect answer to what or where one should try to make a difference, because it ultimately reflects one’s own background and skillset. He stressed the importance of getting out of your comfort zone and encouraged young people to travel and interact with the larger world, whether through gap years or study abroad programs, to give people a sense of how the U.S. is perceived and how different people live.

Eric Gregory, professor of religion and chair of the Humanities Council at the University, posed a question about the balance and po-

tential tension between charity and justice. In response, Kristof noted that it is striking that conservatives donate more to charity and volunteer more than liberals, but are reluctant to fund social support, while liberals are more likely to advocate for government programs than conservatives, but fail to appreciate what charity can do.

Students attending the talk were deeply impressed by Kristof’s work and impact on the world.

“The stories that he covers, very few people do these days.” Rohan Sinha ’19 said. “The importance of each of these stories is truly unquestionable. I mean, you name it: from North Korea to South Sudan, nobody else is covering that, nobody’s covering the Rohingyan Muslims in Myanmar,” he continued.

“He’s the one who’s actually going there,” Sinha added. “He’s down in the frontlines, trying to shake the world back into its conscience.”

Sarah Gordon ’20 attended the talk because of the connection she felt with Kristof as a fellow Oregonian and the inspiration she gained after reading his book “Half The Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide” in high school, which spurred her to engage in women’s rights and to be involved in organizations that Kristof has supported.

“He’s my celebrity crush,” she said.

Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, MPA ’88, have co-authored several best-selling books, such as “Half the Sky” and “A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity.”

The event, titled “Reporting in a World of Crisis,” was co-sponsored by the University Center for Human Values, the Humanities Council’s Ferris Seminars in Journalism, and Princeton University Public Lectures. The talk took place at 6 p.m. in McCosh 50.

Wednesday october 18, 2017

The Daily Princetonian

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Tigerbook confidentiality called into question TIGERBOOK Continued from page 1

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Before Tigerbook, student information — such as students’ majors or the residential colleges that they belong to — was scattered across a few platforms for students to access.

Only through the University Directory, the Residential College Facebooks, and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students Organization Page could students learn more about their peers. According to Sharma and Qian, the goal of Tigerbook was to consolidate this scattered information.

“We wanted to provide a more user-friendly, feature-filled, and flexible search experience than what the University already had,” Sharma said.

“From the beginning, Tigerbook was meant to be a project built by students, for students, in order to address a gap in the market that [the Office of Information Technology and USG were] unwilling or unable to fill,” Qian said in an email.

After the Tigerbook creators graduated, Lumbroso selected Adam Libresco ’19 to manage the project. Lumbroso would stay on as faculty advisor.

“Tigerbook deals with students’ records, so we felt that it was probably a good idea that I stay involved,” Lumbroso said.

As manager of the application, Libresco worked to establish a functioning Application Programming Interface (API) for Tigerbook.

“The reason why API is a good idea is that every student on campus who wanted to integrate their app in the student system needed to download the information from the Residential College Facebook,” Lumbroso explained.

Under this process, according to Lumbroso, students could download data and keep it to themselves, so there was no tracking mechanism for the data.

“Tigerbook API provides a convenient, robust place for [student creators] to be getting this information,” Lumbroso said.

Along with the initiation of API, Libresco and the computer science department began collecting analytics on individual events.

“The reason we’re [collecting analytics] is that we want general aggregate user statistics for Tigerbook,” Libresco said. “We want to see how many people are using it per day, we want to see how many unique people are using it each day.”

In order to see unique usage, the program recorded the netIDs of students who searched for information.

“We made no attempt to hide that we were doing this. We consulted all relevant University data policies before doing this,” Libresco said.

According to Libresco, this data could be used by Tigerbook to make improvements to the application or to provide evidence and statistics for the University if Tigerbook were to seek funding.

“There’s so much space there and you see tech companies doing it all the time, [looking] at how their apps are being used and then [finding] ways to improve them as a result,” he added.

“We used a program that manages and handles analytics,” said Libresco. “Basically, we send to that program in real time, as it happens, something that says ‘netID A searched netID B.’” “There are ways you can attempt to anonymize data,” said Libresco. “We looked into them and they didn’t seem reasonable for a number of technical reasons.”

Another possible use for the analytics was a list of how many times students had been searched, similar to Google Trends.

“All we collect is each individual event, but the data we compiled is a ranked list of stu-

dents who have been searched and the number of times they’ve been searched,” Libresco said.

“Though, we erased all data about who searched them.

There’s no names at all on who searched them.”

In order to gather both this list and general statistics, Tigerbook, like all tech companies that gather these statistics, uses an analytics program.

“We configure that analytics program to give us out the information we want,” Libresco said. “And the information we wanted was graphs of usage statistics and a ranked list of how many times people had been searched.”

Libresco, Qian, Lumbroso, and Panchal stressed that this type of data collection is standard usage among tech-industry companies. The University also provides limited standards on whether or not this is allowed for student-run apps.

Sharma, Qian, and CrnkoviaRubsamen were originally concerned about privacy with the project, even though the student information for the app is collected from sources that were already available to University students or to the public. The group originally met with President Christopher Eisgruber ‘83, who approved their project.

“In the beginning, there were no [University] policies around privacy and confidentiality,” Qian said in an email.

Panchal noted that this lack of privacy guidelines can cause challenges for student app developers, particularly when their projects become popular.

“I don’t think a lot of people go into [COS 333] thinking their apps will be used by so many people,” Panchal said.

Libresco also noted the gaps in the limited data policies that the University has in place.

“It should never be known to anybody who is searching whom, because we think of that as a huge breach of privacy,” said Libresco. “It still doesn’t actually violate any University data policies, but we think of it as a huge breach of privacy.”

OIT has an Information Security Policy which was last updated on Aug. 15, 2017. The information students can find on Tigerbook, such as dorm locations, falls in the Unrestricted Within Princeton (UWP) category.

“University Information is classified as Unrestricted Within Princeton (UWP) if it falls outside the Restricted and Confidential classifications, but is not intended to be freely shared outside the University,” the policy states. “One example is the Faculty Facebook.”

“Facebook and Google have more data collection than we can imagine and their teams have to decide the ethics behind that,” Panchal said. “It’s hard for students.”

“The person managing Tigerbook has access to everything but that’s because they’re running Tigerbook, they’re supposed to have access to everything,” said Lumbroso. “Having server logs is a perfectly normal, typical aspect of a tech service.”

“My position is that the student in question did nothing wrong but instead spent a year and a half of his time doing nonglamorous work for campus infrastructure, and none of this has been mentioned anywhere,” Lumbroso said.

Meanwhile, USG is now taking several measures to ensure the protection of student privacy. In light of the Tigerbook concerns, USG is now investigating the data security access and confidentiality of other TigerApps. USG will also more clearly articulate guidelines and protocols that are available to both developers and student users, placing confidentiality as a primary goal of all current and future TigerApps. Finally, USG will recommend to the University that these guidelines and confidentiality contracts be extended to applications created in COS 333 classes that are CASprotected.

“We want this to be a learn-

ing experience for us and an opportunity to better serve and advocate for students,” Jemison said. “We also want to ensure that confidentiality with regard to student data is a priority in the future and we want to hold ourselves and TigerApps managers accountable to this.”

“A big step of moving forward

is improving the resources for students on campus so they can learn more about [privacy and data ethics] considerations,” Panchal said. He further explained that USG will continue a conversation with the COS 333 professor in the next week in order to ensure that professors can provide better information on

ethics and privacy so that these considerations can be kept in mind when students are making projects.

“You see two types of reactions from people very familiar with tech and not familiar with tech,” Lumbroso said. “This is not a Tigerbook issue; it’s a privacy issue.”

Wednesday october 18, 2017

Opinion

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{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

You can make friends while sober Leora Eisenberg

senior columnist

I

used to cry for hours because I thought I didn’t know how to make friends.

“That’s silly,” my friends would scoff. “You’ve made plenty of friends before.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. “But that was before people really started to drink.”

I dislike alcohol — or, more accurately, I dislike the effect that it has on me or on others. I don’t enjoy being around people who have been drinking. And for these reasons, social life has been tricky. For over a year, I’ve nursed a nagging feeling that I can’t make friends because I miss out on all the social activities. Pick-ups for clubs?

I try to leave before the alcohol comes out. A night on the Street? Not exactly known for being dry. Pregames are an obvious no. Much of social life on campus revolves around drinking — and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. People en-

joy drinking, and they have every right to do so.

And to be fair, much of campus life is substancefree. Choir and theater rehearsals are dry, as are club meetings and classes. But those also aren’t situations that are designed to be social encounters. Grossly put, people come to parties to meet people; people come to choir practice to learn music. Parties have alcohol; choir practice doesn’t.

To give the University credit, we have the Alcohol Initiative Committee, which sponsors social events and clubs that do not feature alcohol.

We have the Undergraduate Student Government movies, which allow a dry evening alternative to the Street. It’s undoubtedly fun to go these events, but let’s be real — the stigma associated with attending them instead of going to a pregame is palpable.

When certain people find out that I choose free popcorn and soda over alcohol, they’re categorically shocked to find that I spend my Sat-

urday nights sober. It can be really hard to make friends if you don’t drink and don’t like being around people who do.

And, frankly, people will just think you’re a prude.

That said, you can make friends without drinking.

It might be a cliché, but it’s worth finding your “core group” — people with whom you can spend time without feeling the pressure to drink.

The same people to whom I complained that I have no friends are, in fact, my best friends, so it’s not at all like I’m alone on campus. That’s not to say that it was necessarily easy to find them; it took several months before we were well-acquainted, and about a year before I could call them my best friends.

But it was worth it, because now I never have to worry about spending a Thursday night alone again.

Naturally, it helps to find alcohol-free activities on campus, of which there are a fair amount. But also don’t be afraid to take the initiative to organize dry events of

your own: Host a get-together in your room, go bowling with friends, or maybe host a movie night. It’s very possible to have a good social life without alcohol; it just takes more work. These events are also great opportunities to meet people who, hopefully, will become part of your “core group.”

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with not drinking and not wanting to be put in situations where it’s ubiquitous.

It just means you have different tastes than those who do drink — and with that, different activities, friends, and hobbies. There’s no crime in eschewing alcohol and the activities associated with it; it just means you’ll have a different college experience.

It is tricky to start a social life that avoids alcohol, but once you’ve begun, you’ll realize just how fulfilling it is.

Leora Eisenberg is a sophomore from Eagan, Minn. She can be reached at leorae@princeton. edu.

So you passed a referendum. Now what?

Leila Clark

guest contributor

S

hall the undergraduates direct the USG Senate to establish a standing committee that works with the Interclub Council to annually collect and release demographic information, such as race, gender, and academic major, about the members of each Eating Club, and additionally, for each selective (‘bicker’) Club, its applicants (‘bickerees’)?

We voted on the eating club demographics referendum almost a year ago. In turnout and support, this referendum was one of the most popular measures to stand in a Undergraduate Student Government election, passing with 68.9 percent support — more support than the last two USG Presidents have won in their elections.

Eleven months later, what do we have? We don’t have demographics. We don’t have a plan to get demographics. We don’t even have a committee tasked with collecting demographics. Two rounds of sign-in and bicker have passed, and nothing has happened.

The blame for this lies squarely with the current USG Senate.

When I first proposed the eating club demographics referendum last December, I sat down with 2016-2017 USG president Aleksandra Czulak ’17 to make a plan for if it passed. At the time, Aleks asked me if I would be willing to co-chair the standing committee erected by the referendum along with a member of the Senate, in order to collect demographics.

This dual leadership, Aleks proposed, would combine a clear vision of the referendum with knowledge of the ins-and-outs of the USG system.

Aleks recognized the importance of this referendum. Sadly, she couldn’t act on the issue before the end of her term. Ultimately, the issue was tabled when academics took priority during fall exams period.

In January, the baton was

passed to a new administration. I met with 20172018 USG president Myesha Jemison ’18 early on about her plans to see the referendum through. Together, we came up with a plan to start collecting voluntary demographics at the start of the spring sign-in and bicker period.

Myesha agreed that the plan seemed reasonable.

But the next day, Myesha told me that she needed to consult the rest of the USG Senate before acting. I said fine; maybe some caution was merited. I let the matter drop from my attention.

I assumed USG would take the results of this referendum seriously and act on them quickly.

In February I got an email from U-Councilor Olivia Grah ’19. It turned out that Myesha and USG had decided that the way to deal with the referendum was to create a committee to decide whether to form a committee to collect demographics.

Olivia, to everybody’s surprise — including her own — had been spontaneously appointed the new chair of this committee-committee.

I reminded Olivia that it had already been two months since the referendum, so swift action would be ideal. She said that the report on the committee’s findings would be finished quickly, and a committee hopefully selected by the end of spring break.

In April, the committeecommittee decided to form an actual committee to (hopefully) act on the referendum. Their report was quite good. But then nothing happened!

Forming a USG committee is a two-step and two-week process. Our semesters are only 12 weeks long, and by April we were about halfway through the spring semester. Applications for the new committee should have gone out by mid-April at the latest; a chair and committee members could have been confirmed by the end of April. But, when I asked Olivia about the progress during reading period, she reported that USG wasn’t meeting anymore, let alone

working on the committee.

Because of this, the referendum committee lost three months of summer planning time and couldn’t act during fall bicker and sign-in.

Also, despite Aleks’ suggestion, the committeecommittee had decided that the actual committee on eating club demographics would have one chair instead of two. Olivia said only that the committeecommittee had decided that a single leader was better.

They had also decided that of nine members-at-large, three would be selected from the student body and six would be picked from current members of USG. With this new structure, would there be a place for me, and for the others who had worked on the referendum campaign, on this committee? I asked. I was told there would be.

Finally, towards the end of May, I noticed that a ‘Prince’ report on a USG Senate meeting said that the committee would not collect demographic information.

I emailed Myesha and Olivia for clarification. Yes, they said, this (not yet formed) committee wouldn’t need to collect demographics. Why had they made this decision, especially without consulting me? Apparently, they talked to the chair of the Graduate Interclub Council board, who told them that the University wouldn’t help with the referendum. From this, USG officials decided on this major change. (They did not confirm with the University.)

Instead of being publicized clearly in a USG email, this decision only barely came to public attention.

If I hadn’t read the ‘Prince’ report, I wouldn’t have learned about it. So even if the committee had been formed by the end of spring, it wouldn’t have pursued the goals of the referendum.

By fall semester of this year, I’d learned that without prodding, USG would procrastinate. I reminded Olivia that it had been ten months since the referendum passed. Could we get the committee formed as

quickly as possible? I asked.

I suggested that maybe it would be better to select a chair first, so that the chair could publicize the committee applications.

Three weeks later, USG instead sent out committee and chair applications at the same time. They did such a poor job of publicizing the application that they didn’t get enough applications and had to extend the deadline a further week.

Yesterday the new chair was announced: a former member of the USG Class Government. The committee is stacked with seven USG insiders, leaving only three spots open to students at large. We’re back to the status quo, with no real change on the horizon.

At this point, I have lost all faith in this committee, in USG, and in its ability to act on this referendum.

USG has made many foreseeable mistakes. They decided to cut the people who’ve worked on and care most about the referendum entirely out of this process.

As a result, they made a series of poor decisions that hurt the cause of this referendum. Accidentally or not, USG set this referendum up to fail.

Many students are frustrated with the dynamics of Prospect Street. A lack of demographics hurts students on this campus. Transparency and inclusivity are a problem in the eating clubs; we all know this, and that’s why the referendum won with 68.9 percent of the vote. USG’s refusal to act on it shows a lack of respect for the voices of the students it claims to represent.

Maybe this just is how USG is, you say. Yet, in the winter of 2015, USG President Ella Cheng sat down and realized that USG had been miscommunicating with the student body. So she revived the defunct USG Communications Committee and quickly filled it with a chair and new committee members. Ella realized that USG had to reach outside of its body of insiders, and appointed a maverick, nonUSG chair for the committee. That committee is still

vol. cxli

Sarah Sakha ’18

editor-in-chief

Matthew McKinlay ’18 business manager

BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 Kathleen Crown William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Kathleen Kiely ’77 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Randall Rothenberg ’78 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73

141ST MANAGING BOARD managing editors Samuel Garfinkle ’19 Grace Rehaut ’18 Christina Vosbikian ’18 head news editor Marcia Brown ’19 associate news editors Kristin Qian ’18 head opinion editor Nicholas Wu ’18 associate opinion editors Samuel Parsons ’19 Emily Erdos ’19 head sports editor David Xin ’19 associate sports editors Christopher Murphy ’20 Claire Coughlin ’19 head street editor Jianing Zhao ’20 associate street editors Lyric Perot ’20 Danielle Hoffman ’20 web editor Sarah Bowen ’20 head copy editors Isabel Hsu ’19 Omkar Shende ’18 associate copy editors Caroline Lippman ’19 Megan Laubach ’18 design editor Rachel Brill ’19 cartoons editor Tashi Treadway ’19

NIGHT STAFF copy Catherine Benedict ’20 Ally Dalman ’20 Elizabeth Bailey ’21

f lourishing today.

The current USG administration pales against Ella’s USG leadership. What she did with the Communications Committee should have — and could have — been replicated for the referendum committee. But it wasn’t, and the soul of the referendum is lost. I know I’ll be expressing my dissatisfaction come November, and I hope you’ll use your votes to join me.

Leila Clark is a senior in Computer Science from Tai Po, NT, Hong Kong. She can be reached at lvclark@princeton. edu.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: The Daily Princetonian is published daily except Saturday and Sunday from September through May and three times a week during January and May by The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc., 48 University Place, Princeton, N.J. 08540. Mailing address: P.O. Box 469, Princeton, N.J. 08542. Subscription rates: Mailed in the United States $175.00 per year, $90.00 per semester. Office hours: Sunday through Friday, 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Telephones: Business: 609-375-8553; News and Editorial: 609-258-3632. For tips, email news@dailyprincetonian.com. Reproduction of any material in this newspaper without expressed permission of The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc., is strictly prohibited. Copyright 2014, The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Daily Princetonian, P.O. Box 469, Princeton, N.J. 08542.

Wednesday october 18, 2017

The Daily Princetonian

arts education annie zou ’20

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page 5

Wednesday october 18, 2017

Sports

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL

Women’s volleyball struggles in play against Cornell, Columbia

By David Xin associate sports editor

This past weekend, the women’s volleyball team travelled to Cornell and Columbia to complete the first half of its Ivy League competition.

Despite entering the weekend with a perfect record, the Tigers stumbled against both the Bears and the Lions, knocking the Princeton team off the top spot in the Ivy League standings. They are now tied with Harvard for second.

The Tigers opened the weekend with their match against Cornell. Despite edging out the Bears in a tight first set, the Tigers never quite regained their footing, hitting only .109 for the night. Cornell would rebound in the second and third sets and carry out their win with a strong performance in the fourth, defeating Princeton 3-1. The upset put the two-time reigning Ivy League champions into a three-way tie for first place.

Princeton finished the week in New York, where the team took on the Lions. Despite strong performances from

many players, it was Columbia that made crucial plays down the stretch. Trading blows for blows, the Lions took hold of the fifth set and beat the Tigers 15-8 for the win. The loss knocked the Princeton squad out of the top spot for the first time since 2015.

While the pair of losses certainly put a minor dent in the Tiger’s championships hopes, the Princeton team has seen worse before. Indeed, two years ago the Orange and Black opened their season in a 0-3 hole, which they ultimately climbed out of in order to tie Harvard for the Ivy League title.

Undoubtedly, the Princeton team will be looking to regain their lost momentum in their next match, when the Tigers will travel to the Palestra in order to face Penn. The Tigers swept the Quakers in their season opener, but this time they will not have the support of their home crowd.

With the stakes raised, fans of Princeton volleyball will be watching intently as the Tigers look to reclaim the top spot in the Ivy League.

COURTESY OF GOPRINCETONTIGERS.COM

Women’s volleyball suffered losses to both Columbia and Cornell this past week, hurting their record.

WOMEN’S ICE HOCKEY

Tigers gear up for ice hockey season with a 3-0 win over Team China

By Christopher Murphy associate sports editor

Playing a team who makes its home across the globe, the women’s ice hockey team managed to get in a valuable exhibition game just in time for the season to begin.

On Monday, Princeton hosted Team China for an exhibition game at Hobey Baker Rink. The Tigers made the most of the evening and walked away with a feel-good 3-0 shutout of Team China.

Princeton coach Cara Morey was able to schedule the matchup of teams across the world; having played under coach Digit Murphy of Team China while at Brown, the two formed a close relationship on and off the ice and were happy to reconnect for an exhibition game. The game came just one day after Princeton played Cornell in a scrimmage; senior captain Kiersten Falck noted that the team was “thrown off a bit by the Sunday/Monday schedule — we usually play Friday/ Saturday — and had no idea what to expect from Team China. We knew that we just had to play hard and think fast and just have fun at the end of the day.”

Not even into the beginning of the season, the Tigers look like they will have a strong freshman class this year; all three goals were scored by freshman — two

by Annie MacDonald and one

by Shannon Griffin. Falck said after the game, “The three goals by our freshman were incredible! We were impressed and excited to see

them step up for us.”

During the game, two Tigers shared net-minding duties. In the first period of the game, senior Alysia DaSilva stopped 11 shots, eventually earning the win in net. After the first period she passed goaltending duties over to freshman Rachel McQuigge, who stopped 20 shots over the final two periods. Neither goalie gave up a goal in

ing last season’s goalie of the year, Neatby. Last season, Neatby set the school single season record for save percentage (.950) and goals against average (1.52); both of these were also good enough for second best in the nation.

And of course, no one will forget Neatby’s incredible performance in last year’s triple overtime game against Quinnipiac in the ECAC

COURTESY OF KIERSTEN FALCK

Princeton hosted Team China in their final exhibition game before the season begins.

their appearances, despite facing a combined 31 shots while giving standout sophomore goalie Stephanie Neatby the night off.

Princeton comes into this season looking to make some noise in both the ECAC Hockey League and on the national stage. Last season, the Tigers made the ECAC semifinal for the first time since 2006 and put up a good fight against

Tweet of the Day “Three freshmen score as @PWIH blanks Team China 3-0 in exhibition game #gotigers” princeton tigers (@ putigers)

Clarkson, the eventual national champion. After finishing fourth a year ago with a league record of 14-6-2, the Tigers are predicted to finish sixth this season in a loaded ECAC which features seven of its 12 teams in or near the top 10 in the nation, according to a USCHO.com poll. Princeton is currently the first team out of the top 10, receiving 16 votes. This is similar to last

year’s situation, in which the team started outside the top 10 and remained in it for the entirety of the season after its first week of competition.

“Every team in the league is incredible,” commented Falck. “It is a competitive league and we are grateful to be challenged by the best.”

The Tigers are returning some key faces for the 2017-2018 campaign, includ-

quarterfinals; in that game, Neatby stopped 60 shots in one game, shattering a school record. Neatby will be one of the cornerstones for the team this season, and for seasons to come as she looks to repeat a record-setting campaign for the Tigers.

Also returning for the Tigers are two linemates and two ECAC rookies of the year: sophomore Carly Bullock and

Stat of the Day

No. 14

Princeton Tiger Field Hockey is fresh off a 2-0 weekend that kept them ranked at No. 14 in the Penn Montco/ NFHCA Coaches’ Poll this week.

junior Karlie Lund. Lund was named to the preseason all-ECAC team and looks to win her third straight allECAC forward honor this year. Lund was a scoring machine last season for the Tigers, earning 44 points — 11th in the nation in points per game — as well as earning an 18-game point streak from November to January last season. Lund looks to be Princeton’s leading scorer for the third year in a row.

The Tigers have a few more days of practice before the regular season officially gets underway. The Tigers will open the season with a fourgame homestand, facing non-conference foe Providence for back-to-back games this weekend before hosting Harvard and Dartmouth next weekend in their first ECAC games of the year. “These games are important,” said Falck, “because we want everyone to know what kind of team we are going to be.”

Falck, like the rest of the Tigers, is excited to get the season underway. “We feel anxious — we want to get rolling! We are a team that can have a real impact. I think people do not expect us to perform as well as last year given our loss of seven seniors. But, this game shows that we have not fallen off.

We have not disappeared.

We are ready for anyone that wants to show up to compete against a hungry Tiger team,” said Falck.

Be sure to get out there and support your Tigers at Hobey Baker Rink before embarking on your fall break!

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