October 22, 2015

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Thursday october 22, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 94

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STUDENT LIFE

USG to host coat Bush ’18 launches giveaway this week Uwire, mobile app

By Caroline Lippman contributor

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In Opinion Guest contributor Joe Redmond makes a case for better arming the Department of Public Safety, and columnist Max Grear identifies issues with the ways in which people practice philanthropy.

PAGE 5

STUDENT LIFE

The Undergraduate Student Government’s University Student Life Committee will host its first ever coat giveaway Thursday evening, according to USLC chair Kathy Chow ’17.

The USLC partnered with the Princeton Hidden Minority Council to organize the event.

Chow said that all students are invited to attend the giveaway, but that the event is targeted at those unequipped for a New Jersey winter.

“The idea is not for it to

be a flea market type-thing, but to be more for students who genuinely need a coat,” Jessica Reed ’18, a USLC committee member, said.

Reed explained the original idea for the coat giveaway stemmed from many students’ lack of preparation for winter, a need for coats on campus that USLC noticed. In addition to serving students who cannot afford coats, she said the giveaway is targeted at others from warmer regions.

“We all have those friends who came from California and don’t know what an actual winter is like,” Reed said.

The coat giveaway has been in the works since last spring, Chow said.

Reed said the committee placed donation boxes in the offices of the Directors of Student Life of each residential college last spring and collected several large bags of coats for redistribution.

Hidden Minority Council co-chair Dallas Nan ’16 said that while students have been told that residential colleges typically have emergency funds to serve students’ needs and that they can contact their residential college’s staff if they need a coat, the process can be See COATS page 3

Q&A

In Street Contributors Andie Ayala and Angela Wang and staff writer Joy Dartey profile three Lewis Center professors and staff writer Danielle Taylor tells us about Breakout. PAGE S1-4

contributor

Oct. 22, 1980

Dartmouth College and Disney Research scientists have developed a new method of displaying fullcolor images, EurekAlert! reported Tuesday.

The technique involves only two black patterns, which are printed on transparencies attached to two sides of a prism.

The first pattern fractures the light into a certain structure. When that structure passes through the prism, repeated rainbows arise before being filtered into the second pattern, resulting in a detailed full-color image.

“In the future, this technique could allow for projectors and displays with better color fidelity or even displays, which could dynamically trade off light efficiency, color fidelity and resolution,” senior author Wojciech Jarosz, a former senior research scientist at Disney Research Zurich and current computer science professor at Dartmouth, told EurekAlert!.

Jarosz’s research has contributed to the production of feature films such as Disney’s “Tangled” and “Big Hero 6.”

Another first author, Rafael Hostettler, works at Disney Research Zurich.

Richard Bush ’18 released the mobile application Uwire on Saturday to give University students information about which eating clubs are open on any given night.

The app features a map of Prospect Avenue, with cross icons placed on the eating clubs that are closed and beer icons on the eating clubs that are open. By clicking on these eating clubs, one can also access information about the time a given club will open, the theme of the night, the type of music that will be playing at that club and how to get in — whether by PUID, list or pass.

Bush explained that he came up with the idea for making the app last year when, like many freshmen, he would go to the Street late at night, not quite

By Shuang Teng

The Archives

Dartmouth develops new image display methods in collaboration with Disney

contributor

knowing which eating clubs were open, not being let in by the more exclusive clubs and not really feeling the vibe of clubs at which he did end up.

In these instances, he said he would think, “You know, it would be really easy if I could look at my phone right now and say hey, this [club] is open at this time and this is what’s going on there.”

Bush said the need for this kind of app became apparent to him through the social media feed Yik Yak, where many different students would ask about which eating clubs were open and details regarding the scene at each one.

Bush said that before making the app, he did not actually talk to representatives from the eating clubs and only contacted the presidents once he had created the baseline for the code. He added See APP page 3

Panel discusses role of empathy, altruism

11 a.m.: Organist Douglas Bruce will perform a free organ concert. University Chapel.

News & Notes

By Andie Ayala

ACADEMICS

Today on Campus

According to a poll conducted by The Daily Princetonian, 81 percent of undergraduate students are satisfied with their professors’ concern for students.

for events on Street

ELAINE ROMANO :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Nancy Duff Coleman, the founder of the National Women’s Law Center, spoke on campus on Wednesday.

Q&A: Nancy Duff Campbell, founder of National Women’s Law Center

By Tea Wimer contributor

Nancy Duff Campbell, copresident and founder of the National Women’s Law Center, spoke about women’s economic issues in a lecture on Wednesday. Before the lecture, she sat down with The Daily Princetonian to talk about economic issues, LGBTQ+ rights and reclaiming the term “feminist.”

Daily Princetonian: What exactly will you be talking about today?

Nancy Duff Campbell: I’m mostly going to be talking

about economic issues and how they affect women, particularly low-income women and how that affects their families, and why we need what I’m calling a women’s economic agenda.

Women’s economic issues are getting some saliency in the country. Hopefully, in the political campaign to come, in a way, there’s going to be real progress.

DP: What kind of economic issues will you be talking about?

NDC: I’ll be talking about the fact that women still don’t have equal pay, that

LECTURE

Campus workshop explores climate change, history

By Tea Wimer contributor

Fifteen graduate students, researchers and junior faculty from across the country participated in a workshop on campus to examine societal resilience to environmental stress and change by extracting pieces of tree cores.

The workshop took place last month as part of a threeyear project led by history professor John Haldon and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies’ Climate Change and History Research Initiative.

“The idea behind this whole initiative is to look at environmental studies, sci-

ences and history, and try to think about ways that the former environment inf luenced [human societies] over the last 2,000 years,” Lee Mordechai GS, a Ph.D. student in the history program and Haldon’s assistant, said.

The project seeks to draw together experts from various social science and natural science fields. Haldon explained that the project involves three strands: research, public information in the form of a series of lectures, with two lectures every semester, and teaching.

There will be one workshop every year and the second workshop will involve palynology, Haldon added.

See TREES page 2

there is still disparity between men and women, including in the low-wage workforce, where you wouldn’t think there was a pay disparity. Then talking about the kinds of solutions involving reduced pay disparities and increasing the minimum wage: women are two-thirds of the minimum wage workforce … Why women need supports like child care and child care assistance … I’m going to lay out problems in a larger range of problems for women, like reproductive rights and in areas like education.

See Q&A page 4

If you just stay in empathy without the bigger dimension of compassion and warm-heartedness, you may experience burnout, Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard said at a lecture on Wednesday.

Ricard was joined at the event by bioethics professor Peter Singer and effective altruist Julia Wise.

Ricard defined burnout as feeling intense helplessness and sorrow over the suffering of others.

He currently does humanitarian work in Nepal and has authored the books “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill” and “Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World.”

“If you bring the altruistic dimension, it becomes the antidote to burnout,” Ricard explained.

He said that he participated in a study in which he went into an fMRI scanner, and the researcher asked him to meditate while concentrating on just empathy.

After one hour, he experienced complete burnout. When asked by the researcher if he would like

to move onto the compassion meditation, he said, “Please, let me do it, because I cannot stand it anymore.”

The compassion meditation felt so different, like there was a stream of love going through, he said.

Ricard and Singer also discussed altruism’s relationship to happiness.

“I think happiness is basically a cluster of fundamental human qualities and I would put altruism as one of the key ones,” Ricard said.

In response, Singer posed the question of why most people strive for happiness through consumption instead of altruism.

“We have a tendency to put all our hopes and fears in outer conditions,” Ricard explained. ”We’ve underestimated our ability to improve outer conditions and so then we underestimate the effect of the inner conditions.”

Humans think there is a formula, that to be happy involves having everything, he said.

Some people want to be altruists solely to increase their own happiness, Singer noted, askSee LECTURE page 4

FAIR

GABRIELLA CHU :: ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR

Students visit the resources fair to learn more about organizations on campus on Wednesday night.

The Daily Princetonian

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Workshop highlights collaboration between historians, social and natural scientists

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TREES

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Thursday october 22, 2015

gain more insight into past environments.

The workshop last month involved dendroclimatology, which is the science of determining past climates from trees, especially tree rings.

“I wouldn’t claim that we’re doing something that nobody’s thought of before, and I wouldn’t claim that we’re doing something that nobody’s started to do before,” Haldon said. ”But we’re doing it differently and better because we’ve got more up-to-date information and we’re more ‘joined up’ in terms of project structure.”

Haldon explained that new technology is revolutionizing the way his team conducts this research, and by bringing so many engaged and commit-

ted people together to work on one project, historians may finally be able to answer the big open questions about past societies.

“There’s this whole new movement with collaboration between the humanities and sciences, and I think that this might be the moment where the way people write history might change,” said Mateusz Falkowski, a current graduate student in the history department at New York University who participated in the workshop.

He added that the experience changed him as a scholar by showing him it is often indispensable for historians to seek assistance from scientists.

Haldon said the project was inspired by an archaeological expedition in Turkey in 2006.

“We had collected a lot of environmental data to do with the way in which land was used in the early medieval

world and the impact on climate on the way in which the land was used, but we didn’t have the resources … to do much with that information,” he said.

He explained that the information and data his team had collected back then, put in the context of other scholars’ works in the Eastern Mediterranean, seemed enough to start a new project.

Participants in the workshop were mainly postdoctoral or graduate students, along with junior faculty members in the field of humanities.

The workshop was a learning experience for these social scientists as expert climate scientists showed them how to extract samples from trees and then study these samples, Mordechai noted.

“It’s important to say that we weren’t turned into experts. The climate scientists were experts,” Mordechai explained. “We learned how to

do this, but it’s more for us to realize how scientists on our research teams will do that in the future, rather than us going out and coring trees and analyzing the structure of the rings.”

Haldon said the initiative will educate social scientists on the necessity of properly handling information.

“Obviously, particularly with social scientists, you can imagine that they can misunderstand or misapply scientific data in their scientific results,” he noted. ”We need to explain how not to misappropriate the scientific data and what you can and can’t do with it, what its limitations are.”

Haldon explained that the project was very well-structured.

“Everything complemented each other and it all worked together,” Haldon said. “Everyone was there because they wanted to be there and it was such an exciting experience.”

The Daily Princetonian

Thursday october 22, 2015

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Eating clubs unanimously support Coats integral for safety, warmth, efforts by Bush ’17 to create Uwire comfort on campus, Han ’16 says APP

Continued from page 1

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that the creation of the app was completely of his own accord, though he only had a little bit of a coding background from high school and had just taken COS 126: General Computer Science.

He said that he made the app because he really wanted to apply the knowledge he had gained from his class, combined with the research he had done individually, to create an app that would be useful to the University student population.

Jean-Carlos Arenas ’16, president of Charter Club and of the Interclub Council, said that the eating clubs unanimously appreciated Bush’s efforts. Arenas noted that the council had agreed that event transparency was one of the goals that they wanted to focus on for this school year, because the council exists to allow eating clubs to be as accessible to students as possible. He said the release of Uwire would be immensely beneficial in serving this objective.

Arenas is a former chief copy editor for The Daily Princetonian.

“In my freshman year there was a Tiger App called the Prospect Avenue Map and it was entirely web-

based,” Arenas said. “Part of the reason why it ended up dying out was that eventually, the clubs weren’t updating their information as frequently as they should have been.”

Arenas added that the previous app might not have been as great a success because it was entirely webbased and not easily accessible on smartphones.

Bush said he expects that this app, unlike previous attempts such as Prospect Avenue Map, will last because he has created a simple system for updating the information for the eating clubs each week. He noted that he has shared a Google Doc with all the presidents of the eating clubs in which they can put in their clubs’ information for that weekend and that it takes him two minutes to transfer that information into the app.

Cannon president Ian McGeary ’16 said he was impressed by how easy it is for eating club officers to give Bush the information.

Ricardo De Los Reyes ’17 said additional features could aid students’ experiences on the Street. He noted that last spring, in his COS 333: Advanced Programming Techniques class, someone made an app very similar to Uwire. This app had an added feature which allowed

users to make a friend list of people they would like to see on the Street and would notify users if these people were in close proximity.

However, several student said part of Uwire’s appeal is the convenience it gives to students.

Arenas described the app as easy to use and navigate, and Aly Kersley ’19 said that she supported the app.

“I think it’s a really good idea, and it’s going to be really helpful to people,” Kersley said.

Kersley described how in her personal experience, she had gone to the Street several nights without any idea of what she would be doing there. In these cases, the app could help students plan where to go and what to do, she said.

Arenas said that he understands that it can be difficult sometimes for underclassmen to know what’s happening on campus and that he believes this app will help accelerate these students’ integration into the social environment at the University.

According to Bush, 600 people have downloaded Uwire since it went live on Saturday.

“I hope that the student body enjoys it, that they download the app and use it,” Bush said.

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COATS

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confusing.

“People were getting told the wrong information, and no one knew what the [emergency] fund was, and money was kind of appearing out of midair to do this, and so we were like, there’s got to be a better way,” he said.

Chow explained that through initiatives like the coat giveaway, USLC hopes to fulfill its mission of improving student life in general by serving the student body. The success of Thursday’s event will likely influence whether the project will continue in the future, Reed said.

Nan said the event is intended to be inclusive.

“We don’t want to make

any presumptions about an individual’s ability to purchase a coat or not,” he said.

Nan explained that the coat drive fits in with Princeton Hidden Minority Council’s goal to provide resources and programming for firstgeneration or low-income students.

“When we talk about resources, it can a lot of times be material,” he said. “And when it comes to stuff like coats, it’s integral for your safety, your warmth, your comfort on this campus.”

Reed said that she is concerned the stigmas associated with such an event might prevent students from coming.

“There’s also the fear that people will think it’s not cool to come get a coat,” she said.

However, Nan added that he believes this event would play an important role in re-

ducing the stigma attached to coming from a low-income household.

“I know from personal experience, being a first generation low-income student means that sometimes you don’t reach out for those resources; you feel as though you need to do this on your own because you feel everyone else is, so when resources come out, sometimes you don’t take advantage of them,” he said. “This idea that we’re saying some students on this campus can’t afford a coat is a great way to reduce the stigma, to inform students about what experiences people are going through.”

“If you need a coat, come get a coat,” he said.

The event will take place in Campus Club starting at 8:30 p.m. on Thursday.

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Thursday october 22, 2015

Duff Campbell says she wants to take back the word feminist Q&A

Continued from page 1

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My talk is a part of a larger report that the National Women’s Law Center did on these issues for women.

DP: What has been your biggest achievement?

NDC: It’s very hard to answer that question. In many respects, I think that the fact that we have created a center that can address so many of these issues and can make a difference. We started in 1972 … We’ve been involved in a whole range of cases since Title IX was passed …

We set out to cover, first of all, sexual harassment, secondly, employment issues, in the light of Title IX. We worked very hard for what was really, since World War II, the first national childcare program. We’ve been working since then to increase the funding for that program and to increase the quality of care it provides, and there’s still a lot of challenges with childcare, obviously, but the fact that we have a program and that we’ve been building on it is still a significant step forward, especially in light of these economic issues I’m going to be talking about today.

DP: There’s been a trend nationally of people refusing and side-stepping the term “feminist,” due to negative connotations. Can you talk a bit about how you feel about that?

NDC: Well, I’m a feminist, and there’s no “but” behind that. In fact, I’m kind of perplexed by why this has happened. I think in the early days, in the second wave of feminism — late 1960s and early 1970s — you know, bra burning and other things kind of turned people off, in terms of women asserting their rights, but you know, it’s strange that it seems to be continuing in

some quarters. I’m hoping that we’re going to take back the word. In fact, I was at the Women’s Center yesterday and they gave me a shirt with the word “Feminist” on the front, so I’m going to be wearing that everywhere.

DP: What advice would you give to young women who are pursuing law or thinking about pursuing law?

NDC: I think it’s a great career; it’s been a great career for me. I think that, obviously, you should be thinking about why you’re doing it. There are a lot of ways in which you can work that aren’t necessarily traditional in practicing law, and that’s one of the benefits of a law degree, I think, because, there are many public policy jobs, there are many advocacy jobs … Making change can happen in a lot of ways … No matter what you’re doing in your life, think about what you can do to benefit people beyond your sphere.

Figure out what the best way is to do that.

DP: You’ve done a lot of work in your career, but the work is never done. We have to keep moving forward. What is your next step? What is the next big issue you’d like to tackle?

NDC: That’s a hard one, also. One of the things we try to do is to be opportunistic about the issues we try to take on, so that when something is becoming an issue or an issue we think that there is a possibility of making change, thinking about how that issue affects women, for example, and what we, in our particular niche, can do to further the issue. So, the things we’ve been doing for the past year, for example, is building on the progress that is being made for gay, lesbian and transgender rights. Laws are being made by using the laws we use to outlaw sexual discrimination — in that, discriminating based on

sexual identity or orientation is using the same kinds of sexual stereotypes that courts have forbidden under the laws that protect against sex discrimination. We’ve been working in a coalition in Washington particularly building on the same sex marriage case to look at the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and adding to it, specific protections against this kind of discrimination, but also to preserve and expand upon the laws that are there against sex discrimination.

So that’s been challenging and an exciting way to work with new allies. Another thing we’ve been involved with is opening up a whole new range of jobs in the military for women, particularly jobs in combat. There is an administrative determination a few years ago that stated that all jobs are going to be available to women starting Jan. 1 … So we’ve got a few more months until this goes into effect, and we’re working to make sure that happens and that it’s implemented effectively …

If women can f ly a plane and can participate in ground combat, then it’s hard to argue that there’s anything that they can’t do … Then, of course, we’re working on pay equity, childcare issues, raising the minimum wage, there’s a whole host of issues on our plate. We’re also looking more closely at criminal justice issues and how they affect women because that’s also been so much in the news. There are just as many women as men in prison, also for low-level drug offenses and some even lower offenses, and we’re looking at what can be done about that for women in that situation, too. It’s a pretty full list.

DP: Who was your role model when you grew up? Who pushed you to pursue law?

NDC: It’s interesting because in a sense, my parents were my role models. They’re

ELAINE ROMANO :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

After speaking with The Daily Princetonian, Nancy Duff Campbell gave a lecture in Dodds Auditorium.

not lawyers, they have nothing to do with the law … We grew up in a relatively conservative area of Indiana, but my parents were progressive and they were very instrumental in teaching us about civil rights and equality, and treatment of everyone equally was and is. I was involved in the civil rights movement starting in high school, which they encouraged … They encouraged my brother, my sister and me to follow our dreams and to be what we wanted to be … As I grow older, I have more and more role models, of course.

DP: You defied the stereotype that women who have

a career can’t have a family and can’t be successful in the domestic sphere. For women out there who are trying to reclaim this identity of being a mother and a career woman, what would you say to them, especially when they face criticism from both sides of the argument?

NDC: First of all, my credo is that “everyone should live up to their potential,” and that means that if you want to have a family, you should, and if you don’t, you shouldn’t. But it’s hard. It’s definitely hard, especially for low-income women who don’t have both the economic and other supports

that they need to take care of their families and to support them, so I think that we need more attention to the public policies that will support women and men. I think the younger generation is much better about this than my generation.

There’s been a lot of change in how people are viewing their future prospects and how to share in these responsibilities … Society has a responsibility to make use of its “person power” in a whole range of ways, so we really need to change our public policy so that it will be easier for men and women to both have families and success.

People underestimate importance of altruism for happiness, panelist says LECTURE Continued from page 1

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ing Ricard whether or not these people can still be considered altruists.

“It’s true there are actions that are beneficial to others but still motivated by selfishness,” said Ricard. ”If you are smart enough, no matter what, you will find a selfish motivation beneath the seemingly altruistic behaviors.”

Singer noted the chapters in Ricard’s book discussing meditation suggest that the practice trains people to become more altruistic and compassionate.

“I think that training for altruism comes from not wanting other beings to suffer. One of the goals of this training is to get rid

of selfishness,” Ricard said.

Singer added that while we are biologically programmed to care more about those we are genetically related to, it is more difficult to be altruistic toward strangers.

Altruism towards strangers does not come naturally, added Ricard.

Wise, who donates 50 percent of her income to charity, said that prioritizing family and friendship seems more important to one’s happiness than income.

“We chose to live near my husband’s family so that my daughter can spend time with them,” she said. ”So we sort of have tried to structure our time that emphasizes those relationships [rather] than working extra hours to buy more things.”

In different ways, you’re both living simpler lives than typical

people that come from your background, Singer noted.

Voluntary simplicity is also happy simplicity, added Ricard.

In response to a question about the panelists’ thoughts on capitalism, Singer said he thinks capitalism will be here for a long time and that people must try to do as much good as they can within that framework.

“Every tool, whether it’s money, intelligence or power, can do either good or harm. It depends what you do with your means,” said Ricard.

The lecture, titled “A Conversation About Altruism,” was held at 4:30 p.m. in McCosh Hall 50 and was co-sponsored by the University Center for Human Values, the Office of Religious Life and Princeton Effective Altruism.

On protecting the bubble

Extending the P/D/F deadline

Joe Redmond

A

Joe Redmond is a chemical and biological engineering major Littleton, Colo. He can be reached at josephar@ princeton.edu.

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guest contributor

s I read “On arming the bubble,” published in The Daily Princetonian on Oct. 19 by senior columnist Sarah Sakha, my heart rate quickened. Although well intentioned, her reservations about arming Department of Public Safety officers in case of an active shooter on campus are deeply misguided. In light of several recent tragedies, it seems like everyone has an opinion about school shootings based on their biases towards guns, mental health, police militarization, etc.

Having armed officers protecting students from these types of threats is necessary and relevant. Sadly, my opinions come from personal experience.

I will never forget the feeling in my gut. Just as I finished my college application in the cafeteria, the lightning blast of shotgun shells pounded through the hallways of my plain suburban high school. With fire alarms squealing in the background, I scrambled into lockdown. I held two strangers’ hands in mine for what felt like days.

That was nearly two years ago. Since then, I’ve sought therapy, and I’m getting better.

What I know now is that the shooting only lasted 80 seconds. In that time, the shooter took two lives, a female classmate’s and his own, before he was overcome by our armed school resource officer. I may owe my life to armed officers, both the armed guard stationed at my school, and the dozens who flooded the building afterwards to ensure our safety.

I cannot be more thankful that my school district took school shootings seriously. Post-Columbine, they armed school guards, providing them with regular training on active shooter scenarios.

Unfortunately, these are common enough that law enforcement officials know what works and what doesn’t.

I am not writing to engender sympathy. Instead, I want the University population to know armed officers are not gratuitous. Sakha argues that “the decision to keep campus gun-free has never compromised our safety.” Yes, fortunately, Princeton has never experienced a campus shooting.

But my high school had never experienced a shooting either, until it happened. I sincerely hope that a shooting never happens on this beautiful campus, and I sincerely believe it never will.

However, it could happen, and we need to be prepared.

I hate guns as much as, if not more than, your average liberal Ivy Leaguer. They have caused destruction not only in my life, but also throughout America. However, I think it’s time to enter a more nuanced discussion than simply “all guns are evil and let’s pretend they don’t exist.”

Sakha asks that, if “less than two years have elapsed” since former University president Shirley Tilghman denied DPS’s request for access to firearms, then “why do we suddenly need to bring guns to our campus?”

The short answer is that, despite overall rates of homicide and crime decreasing, rates of mass shootings are going in the opposite direction, most drastically in the past decade, according to a 2014 FBI study. Nearly a quarter of all mass shootings in the United States between 2000 and 2013 took place in schools, with 7.5 percent of mass shootings on college campuses.

This is no small threat; we can’t be willfully unprepared. DPS’s former policy was “not to engage [a] shooter but to set up an outer perimeter and wait for the local police,” according to a 2013 article in the ‘Prince.’ DPS officer Paul Proctor was quoted in the article saying “Our perimeter will just keep moving back away from wherever someone armed is going.” Basically, their imperative was to keep a close watch, and wait for someone less acquainted with campus, like the Princeton Police Department, to arrive later and save students’ lives.

Sakha overexaggerates fears of a slippery slope, where “students and faculty could contend that they too should be able to carry a weapon.” Students may argue that, but they realistically won’t get very far. Allowing a trained law enforcement officers to have access to guns should they need it, and allowing any untrained student or professor to open carry to brunch at Forbes College are two very different scenarios. Let’s not conflate the two.

Sakha, at the end of her piece, calls for the University to instead “allocate more resources towards implementing greater security measures to minimize the probability of gun violence.”

Prevention is obviously the best way to deal with school shootings, and I wholeheartedly agree.

I would love to hear what preventative security measures she would like to put in place. Maybe she means that we should allocate more funding for the Center for Psychological Services and other mental health initiatives on campus to reach out to troubled students. Maybe, by security, she means encouraging students to engage those who seem disconnected and lonely. These are the FBI’s most recommended methods. Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno observes that “it is critical that we do all we can to identify young people who need our help, and then get them the help they need,” in the 2000 post-Columbine report.

And while we wait for such a program, we must allow DPS to stand vigilant and prepared. Yes, guns are often detrimental, but they exist, and we have to acknowledge their threat instead of willfully being vulnerable to the chaos they facilitate.

Opinion

Thursday october 22, 2015

Erica Choi

T

senior columnist

he Pass/D/Fail option is available for students between the beginning of the seventh and the end of the ninth week of classes. Commonly referred to as P/D/F, this option is designed to encourage students to explore disciplines that they have little prior knowledge of without fear of negatively impacting their GPA. Currently, students may P/D/F up to four courses throughout their time at the University.

The P/D/F option is an effective and helpful tool for students in most, but not all, classes. Personally, it has encouraged me, a comparative literature major, to take a math course this semester. I enjoyed calculus in high school and I wanted to continue, but I was also scared of Princeton math classes. If I did not have the knowledge that I would have the P/D/F option available to me if I didn’t do well, I would have never enrolled to begin with.

I will decide whether or not I’m going to P/D/F my math class after I get my midterm grade back, which will give me a rough idea of what my final grade will look like. However, the way many courses are structured makes such an approach inefficient. Final exams for classes such as ECO 100: Introduction to Microeconomics or CHV 310: Practical Ethics can be a significant portion of a class’ overall grade, sometimes 40 percent or higher. That it is possible for someone who performed at a mediocre level on the midterm to receive a good semester grade or vice versa leaves room for a lot of uncertainty. It would be more

beneficial if students did not have to P/D/F prematurely and could choose wait until after finals.

Besides enabling students to make a more informed decision, the extended deadline would also keep them motivated to do well for longer. According to the Class of 2019 Academic Guide, “Every year a significant number of students fail courses they take on a pass/D/fail basis, either because they underestimated the amount of sustained work required to complete the courses successfully, or because they rarely attended lectures and precepts.”

The University has a way of being incredibly time-consuming and hectic.

It is only natural that students would neglect P/D/F courses if they have no incentive to try harder. On the flip side, students will continue to work diligently if they think that they still have the possibility of turning it into a good grade.

The extended deadline is similar, but preferable to, making P/D/F choices retractable at any time, which has been proposed in Daily Princetonian columns before. It means less administrative work. Also, it motivates students in a different way. Those who have already chosen to P/D/F are not actively looking to retract. Therefore, they would not be motivated to the same level.

Further, I only support extending the P/D/F deadline rather than extending the option to P/D/F more courses. Yotam Sagiv argued two years ago that the P/D/F option should be available in introductory language courses for those who have already completed their language requirements or those who do not need to take them here. I definitely agree with his assertion that students are hesitant

vol. cxxxix

to start a new language here, since these courses are known to be difficult and time consuming. I had this fear before I started with LAT 101: Beginner’s Latin this fall. So far, the class has been almost on equal footing as the Humanities Sequence in terms of its demands. I’ve also found it hard to compete against people who have taken Latin in the past. Even so, there is something distinct about languages that would make the P/D/F option less useful.

Given the amount of time, introductory language classes can only provide only so much. Frankly, if a student took an introductory-level class to explore and used a P/D/F on it, they probably learned little. In many cases, they may not be ready to move forward to the next level, in which case they will forget the little they learned quickly. This is why a student needs to complete up to the 107/108 level in a given language for it to count toward the language requirement. Language classes are unlike math classes; I have only a limited understanding of Calculus from taking AP Calculus BC in high school and multivariable calculus now, but it is good to have an intuitive understanding of concepts such as limits and differentiation. Knowing “hola” and a few other words is less useful.

The P/D/F option is not for every class.

It is, however, a valuable tool for most. It is consistent with the University’s goal of providing a liberal arts education, and it has allowed me to venture outside my comfort zone. A slight change in its deadline can serve the students even better.

Erica Choi is a sophomore from Bronxville, N.Y. She can be reached at gc6@princeton.edu.

conspiracy

Anna Mazarakis ’16 editor-in-chief

Matteo Kruijssen ’16 business manager

139th managing board news editors Paul Phillips ’16 Ruby Shao ’17 opinion editor Benjamin Dinovelli ’16 sports editor Miles Hinson’17 street editor Lin King ’16 photography editors Natalia Chen ’18 Sewheat Haile ’17 video editors Leora Haber ’16 chief copy editors Caroline Congdon ’17 Joyce Lee ’17 design editors Austin Lee’16 Julia Johnstone’16 prox editor Rebekah Shoemake ’17 intersections editor Jarron McAllister ’16 associate news editor Do-Hyeong Myeong ’17 associate opinion editors Jason Choe ’17 Shruthi Deivasigmani’16 associate sports editors Sydney Mandelbaum ’17 Tom Pham ’17 associate street editors Harrison Blackman ’17 Jennifer Shyue ’17

ryan budnick ’16 ..................................................

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NIGHT STAFF 10.18.15 senior copy editors Grace Rehaut ’18 Maya Wesby ’18 staff copy editors Jessica Ji ’18 contributing copy editors Sarah Kim ’18 Nina Rodriguez ’19 design Myrial Holbrook ’19 Ien Li ’19

Max Grear

The problem with philanthropy

columnist

R

ecently students have initiated an important reexamination of the legacy of President Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, as a white supremacist and questioned his place in the names of several of the University’s organizations, including Wilson College. The discussion of public figures and their flaws led me to think specifically about the other famous namesakes for residential colleges — Meg Whitman ’77 and John D. Rockefeller III ’29. Who are these individuals honored by the University, and what does this mean for our views on how to contribute to society?

One doesn’t have to look hard for Whitman’s flaws. In 2002, during her tenure as CEO of eBay, she resigned from her other role on the Goldman Sachs board after a report revealed that Goldman had allocated pre-IPO shares (good for $1.8 million in profits) as a result of the investment bank’s business involvement with eBay. Many were concerned about Whitman’s actions again in 2011, when then-Hewlett-Packard board chairman Ray Lane helped her circumvent the conventional nomination process to join the board of that company, and she was named CEO a few months later. In 2014, the company was caught bribing government officials in Poland, Russia and Mexico in order to win and retain hugely profitable public contracts.

In comparison, Rockefeller looks

pretty innocent; all he did was shuffle around his family’s money, although it’s basically common knowledge that this fortune was built through the wildly unethical monopolistic practices of Standard Oil. It should come as no surprise to anyone who followed the separate campaigns last year to divest from fossil fuels and from the Israeli occupation of the West Bank that the University’s wealth comes from some pretty scummy places.

The reason I single out these two names is to draw attention to the fundamental contradiction of Princeton’s culture of philanthropy: the individual may claim credit for that which she considers a contribution to society, but may disassociate herself from the societal injustice to which she owes her wealth. We are conditioned to aspire to change the world through wealth and individualism rather than sacrifice and community, promoting a value system dangerously informed by market logic that has profound implications for the way that we live in the present and envision the future.

I’m not interested in exploring the flawed humanity of Whitman or discussing the idea of removing her name from something inextricably linked to her wealth. What is important is that she is another corporate elite who acts without regard for the law or, more importantly, ethics. Just as Wilson may be deemed personally responsible for precepts but not for white supremacy, Whitman can be honored for a shiny new

residential college but personally unaccountable for corruption and cronyism.

Whitman can attach her name to a building (rather than the architects and workers who designed and built it), but has never once taken personal responsibility for the unambiguous violations of basic ethics that are simply the way of business in the corporate and high finance world. Meanwhile, we as students are asked to thank donors who attend social functions and write checks rather than the workers who put their bodies into maintaining the University (sometimes sacrificing their health).

Perhaps more troubling than Whitman or Rockefeller are the cases of individuals like Matt Wage ’12. Wage took Peter Singer’s ethics class and decided to work on Wall Street after graduation in order to make large amounts of money that he could then donate to life-saving causes. In his book, Singer argues that Wage exemplifies the model of effective altruism, a concept that enshrines individual charity as the most effective force for good while ignoring entirely the power of collective action against structural injustice.

Wage joined a toxic system of finance dominated by rent seekers that helps maintain an environmentally unsustainable global economy. This economy is already taking lives and bringing suffering for some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. While Wage can take credit for the lives that he has supposedly saved with his Wall Street earnings, he can also conveniently ignore his

complicity in a system of finance inextricable from climate injustice as well as other forms of oppression like private prisons, sweatshops, the domestic and global exchange of weapons and practices like insider trading, cronyism and corruption.

For me, the tricky part of being a Princeton student involves acknowledging the immensely problematic tenets behind the individualistic culture of philanthropy while simultaneously realizing how much I have benefitted and continue to benefit from this system.

There are two responses to this dilemma.

First, we would do well to express a certain amount of gratitude for the opportunities that donors have helped create for us, but without holding their financial contributions above the more admirable work of staff, faculty and workers. Secondly, we need to question the wealthy, altruistic and individualistic role models promoted by people like Singer and realize that the Princeton graduates most worthy of our respect — whether they be teachers, public defenders or others — have made sacrifices (both in terms of material and public recognition) in order to become a part of the community-driven work against injustice that our world really needs. Perhaps when we go out into the world we too can reject altruistic ego and embrace collective action.

Max Grear is a sophomore from Wakefield, R.I. He can be reached at mgrear@princeton.edu.

Sports

Thursday october 22, 2015

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

To the Nines

by Stephen Craig :: Staff Photographer The women’s soccer team is seeing its greatest run of success in three years, as it’s picked up nine straight victories and is 4-0 in league play. This weekend contains the most critical match of its season so far as it takes on league rival Harvard, the team that shares the top spot in Ivy League standings with the Tigers. With just three games left in the regular season, every result is critical as the Tigers seek to gain their first NCAA Tournament bid since 2012.

Tweet of the day

“They say laughter burns calories which is why I use the globe gym to watch Curb and cackle to myself ” eric levenson ‘13 (@ejleven), former prox editor, the daily princetonian

Follow us ‘Prince’ Sports is on Twitter! Follow us at www.twitter.com/princesports for live news and reports!

page 6

The Daily Princetonian

Thursday October 22, 2015

page s1 PAGES DESIGNED BY LIN KING :: STREET EDITOR

TEACHING CRAFT This week, Street spoke to three Lewis Center of the Arts professors in different disciplines. Professors Nell Painter, A.M. Homes and Martha Friedman discuss their experiences as artists and teachers at Princeton.

A.M. HOMES ANDIE AYALA Contributor

T

he creative writing courses taught by A.M. Homes, under the umbrella of the Lewis Center for the Arts, are essentially a formal space for sharing and refining the art of storytelling.

Every week, students are required to send in manuscripts of their own works of fiction and bring in other

stories they would like to share with the class. Ultimately, Homes hopes that the class will “help people reconnect to their imagination” and learn that it’s “okay to take intellectual and creative risks.”

Homes finds that Princeton students tend to be really good at following rules — after all, that’s how they were admitted here. However, as a result, these students are often risk-averse and fearful of the prospect of failure — which is a necessary component of creative writing.

Homes said she loves teaching this course because she gets students who have a variety of different interests, many of whom have been trained to think and to write based on empirical claims. She said that her philosophy as a professor is to help students understand that their future is not based on what they know, but on what they can imagine.

In Homes’ words, her advanced fiction class isn’t about “becoming the next great novelist, although that’s great too.” Rather, she says, “it’s about becoming a person.”

While some students who take the course end up coming back to Homes hoping to write a creative writing thesis, students often don’t take this class intending to pursue a writing career. In discussing one of the most memorable examples of this, Homes described a young woman who was a talented writer but was aiming for a profession in medicine rather than writing.

“When I end up in an emergency room I want her there, because she had that unique combination of intellectual skill but also human compassion,” Homes said. “So I said to

CONTINUED ON S2 COURTESY OF THE GUARDIAN

MARTHA FRIEDMAN ANGELA WANG Contributor

M

a rtha Friedman, lecturer in visual arts in the Lewis Center for the Arts, grew up in a family of scientists.

“Literally, the way I thought about things seemed different from my nuclear family,” Friedman said, describing her upbringing.

As paradoxical as it sounds, Friedman decided to become an artist in response to her family’s interests.

Her father, a molecular geneticist, brought her to the lab and asked her to sort out fruit f lies. Her mother, a doctor, provided her access to images of anatomical slices. Because her mother and father taught her about what was going on inside bodies and about organic processes, her fundamental idea of the physical world was abstracted, and she developed a keen sense of a body’s movement from the inside and out. Her ability to abstract materials from their daily physical appearance proves beneficial to her as a sculptor.

Friedman always wanted to be an artist. When she was 10, she went to an arts camp in Chicago intending

to focus on her oboe-playing. Instead of enjoying playing in the orchestra, she “loved making the double-reeds for the oboe.” One day, she saw a group of art kids in the camp hanging out outside. She smelled the paint coming out of the studios and realized that was where she needed to be. The next year, she went to the camp to take the sculpture class.

“I make weird stuff, and people actually kind of took it seriously,” Friedman said. “And then you find people that think like you, too, and that felt really good.”

She continued attending that camp until she was 18 and taught there for two summers.

Now, she is a lecturer at

the University, co-teaching a class called “Body and Object, Making Art that is Both Sculpture and Dance”

CONTINUED ON S2

COURTESY OF PROJECTARTIST

NELL PAINTER

COURTESY OF WIKIPEDIA

JOY DARTEY Staff Writer

A

fter history professor emerita Nell Painter saw a New York Times cover depicting the Russian bombing of Grozny, the North Caucasus-located capital of Chechnya, she wondered why white Americans were called Caucasians. After spending a semester in Germany finding out, Painter wrote “The History of White People” in 2010, discussing how formerly nonwhite people were classified as white through their assimilation into American society.

Painter is often referred to as a historian first and a painter second.

Noting the sharp divide between art and history, she explained her interest in the two subject areas.

“It’s scholarship versus art,” Painter said. “[In history], my aim is for the reader to understand what I’m thinking. I was making the meaning, not the reader. But in art, the viewer makes the meaning. The aim is not so much clarity, but interest.”

Despite the differences between the two subject areas, Painter combined art and history in her two art history books. She continues to make art and believes that an artist does not need to wait for inspiration to strike in order to create, as long as there is interest and inclination.

“I feel that as a professional, I need to make art whether I feel like it or not,” she explained.

Painter first started teaching at the University in 1988 as a professor of history. She eventually took a 10-year break from teaching but was invited back to the University by Eddie Glaude GS ’97, head of the African American Studies department, to teach a course this fall.

The interdisciplinary course is called AAS 347: Art School at Af-

rican American Studies: Process, Discourse, Infrastructure, in which Painter combines art making with art criticism and an examination of contemporary art, particularly the works of black artists. The course is fundamentally based on art concepts, but the art that students create is intertwined with African American history.

“We are doing it from the point of view of black artists,” Painter explained. “What are the issues of interest to black artists?”

Painter defines black artists as artists of African descent working in the United States. She believes that, in general, black artists tend to have a stronger interest in making social commentary through their art than non-black artists.

“People of color generally have the same interest in commenting on society, as a critique. And in the art world that is a problem, because generally the art world just wants – you can call it art for art’s sake.

So art that is problematic or that has a point of view is very often just brushed aside as illustration,” Painter said, explaining that “illustration” is considered lowbrow compared to “fine art,” which is highbrow.

Painter currently has two students in her seminar and makes art with them on their studio days. Dallas Nan ’16 and Lorenzo Laing ’16 are both invested in creating political art. At the beginning of the semester, Painter asked Nan and Laing to bring in images that were of interest to them. The images then acted as the “program” for their artwork.

Nan’s image concerns the gentrification of a slum in the Philippines and Laing’s is of a demonstration from Ferguson.

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The Daily Princetonian

Thursday October 22, 2015

page s2

A.M. HOMES

NELL PAINTER

CONTINUED FROM S1 her, when you go to medical school, I want to write the recommendation letter for you.”

As such, Homes said that she takes great care to tailor the material of the course to fit the interests of the students, asking them to bring in books that they would like to share with the rest of the class. In addition, she schedules office hours to talk about their writing, as well as to discuss how they are navigating life at Princeton. She described how each semester the class is very different, as she tries to find ways in which she can be most useful to the students.

Homes explained that one unique feature of the Program in Creative Writing at the University is that, as opposed to other universities where professors are often transitioning in and out, at Princeton she’s really been able to spend time with the other faculty members. She noted that the department has some of the most renowned names in present-day literature and that this environment has helped her to develop and challenge herself as a writer.

Additionally, Homes explained that the shape that creative writing courses take varies depending on the professor and that professor’s writing style. Current professors in the department include Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffrey Eugenides and, as of this semester, Jhumpa Lahiri, author of “Interpreter of Maladies” and recent honoree of the National Humanities Medal.

It’s somewhat normal to be consistently busy in the Orange Bubble, and A.M. Homes understands the nature of the business more than anyone. She explained how she recently interviewed author Salman Rushdie in front of a live audience, wrote a piece on musician Laurie Anderson the next day, worked on part of her upcoming novel, edited part of her new collection of short stories and taught both her introductory and advanced fiction classes, all in one week.

For Homes, part of the excitement of being at a university like Princeton is that it’s an “intellectual sort of festival.”

CONTINUED FROM S1

COURTESY OF AMAZON

Cover of Homes’ second most recent novel, “This Book Will Save Your Life” (2006). Her most recent is “May We Be Forgiven” (2012).

There have been several exhibitions of Friedman’s work.

Her 2010 sculpture “Ladies CONTINUED FROM S1 Room” of two tongues made of silicon rubber is a piece from one of her most famous with Susan Marshall, direc- man said. exhibitions. Friedman’s inspitor of the dance program in For the class, the student’s ration sprang from a dinner the Lewis Center. Dance and first assignment was to comshe had in a Chinese restausculpture, normally associat- bine an object with a “motion” rant, when she ordered duck ed with motions and stillness, word. One student was asked tongues. While she was eatrespectively, are integrated in to combine “sand” with “spining, she couldn’t stop thinktheir class. ning,” and she came up with ing that “her tongue [was] “Contemporary dance can an innovative piece. Accordchewing on another tongue.” be very static — it can be a ing to Friedman, the student This idea of a tongue inperson sitting down and star- had four boxes, one without teracting with another tongue ing at the audience on stage; sand, and three others with motivated her work. To some, and contemporary art can be increasing amounts of sand. the massive tongues can come extremely performative and She stepped into the first box across as a bit sexual, a comabout time passing,” Fried- and turned with a headstand. parison Friedman shrugs off.

“I do like to be provocative,” Friedman said.

Next week, Friedman is installing her new exhibition, “Pore,” which will open Nov. 7 and run through January at the Locust Projects art gallery in Miami, Fla. Rubber is going to be a main material for the exhibition, and Silas Riener ’06, a dancer and choreographer, will dance at different points inside some of the sculptures.

“The contemporary dance world and the contemporary visual arts world have these distinct crossovers,” Friedman said. She is using COURTESY OF HYPERALLERGIC.COM her own actions to “Ladies Room 2010” by Martha Friedman, a statue that portrays two tongues reaching for an olive. Friedman embrace their conexplained that she was inspired to create the piece while eating duck tongue at a Chinese restaurant. nection.

MARTHA FRIEDMAN

While doing it, she made crying noises because it was painful to do so. Then, stepping into the second box, she spun on her head again, except the crying noise decreased because the sand provided resistance. After she repeated the process for the third box, some laughter occurred. Then for the fourth box filled with sand, laughing replaced crying completely. The student created a piece that was highly creative and yet technical, Friedman said.

“You don’t have to be good at things to take a class. That’s ridiculous. Just be interested,” Friedman said.

“They are both programmatic bodies of work,” Painter said.

“So in that way, they are very much African American artists.”

Painter explained that the course is its own reward for her students because they are able to work like artists. The subtitle of the course is “Process, Discourse, and Infrastructure”; making art is the process, reading art history, art criticism and engaging with the texts is the discourse, while visiting museums and galleries is the infrastructure.

“Professor Painter’s expertise in not only art and art history, but also history, allows for vivid discussions during class and invaluable contextualization that allows one photograph or painting to become an inspired and impactful narrative,” Nan said, noting the benefits of the course’s interdisciplinary approach.

Nan and Laing’s works are currently on display at 185 Nassau St. and will be COURTESY OF SIGNSJOURNAL.COM exhibited in Newark “Dedication” (2009), charcoal by Nell Painter. when the course ends.

Painter noted that, starting that they have shown. out, she had no idea what kind “I am really enjoying being of art her students would cre- back at Princeton,” she said. ate, but that she is very excited “Mostly, I enjoy the high level about the level of investment of intellectual engagement.”

COURTESY OF AMAZON

“Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol” (1997), a biography by Painter under her “Art Historian” name, Nell Irvin Painter.

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The Daily Princetonian

Thursday October 22, 2015

page s3

UNFAMILIAR STREET Wanshou Lu, Beijing, China

Breakout: More than short-term community service

CATHERINE WANG

DANIELLE TAYLOR

Contributor

W

anshou Lu is a street filled with the elderly. Located in Beijing, a city that is the embodiment of rapid modernization, the street retains aspects of a relaxed lifestyle, with grandparents walking leisurely along the storefronts as they barter for fruits and vegetables in the morning.

The street is prime real estate, less than 10 minutes by metro from Tiananmen Square, but what its elderly inhabitants most like to boast about is its name, since Wanshou Lu roughly translates to “longevity in life.”

Wanshou Lu’s disproportionately large retired population is mostly a direct result of China’s Communist regime.

Many of the elderly, including my grandparents, were sold these apartments at a largely reduced price thanks to residual benefits of the Communist regime’s economic plans in the mid-to-late 20th century.

Over the course of four summer trips visiting my grandparents in Beijing, I have spent over four months of my life wandering this street. Each time I return, it always seems that I have changed far more than the street has, which is certainly not true for the rest of the city, which never seems to stop evolving.

As Beijing continues to add skyscrapers to its urban grid, the iconic system of labyrinthine narrow streets, known as hutongs, are rapidly disappearing. On the right side of Wanshou Lu, however, there are entrances to hutongs that have not yet been torn down.

When I look down from my grandparents’ apartment building, I can see people still living in the old houses,

hanging their wet laundry on wooden clothespins as the Central Radio and TV Tower looms in the distance.

On the left side of the street, there are scattered new developments like hotels and apartment buildings, but none of Wanshou Lu’s inhabitants seem very interested in exploring new places. They are so used to their pace of life that the hustle and bustle of the surrounding city dies down on this street, bowing down to a stable, long-established routine. The mornings are reserved for grocery shopping and exercise. At around 4 p.m., a group of grandmas sits down on a set of threadbare couches at the corner of their apartment complex to chat for two hours, cooling themselves off with round bamboo fans.

Every night there is an evening stroll.

The only thing that interrupts this consistent pace is the rush of those who are passing through the street headed to work or school. A symphony of car horns interrupts the peaceful rustling of the leaves, and struggling 20-somethings rush down the sidewalks, eyes on their phones as they try to catch the subway. The break in rhythm reminds me that there is still a city out there beyond this street.

Although Wanshou Lu is primarily a residential street, the surrounding area is heavily commercialized. Less than five minutes’ walking distance from my grandparents’ apartment are three shopping malls: one is ridiculously expensive, selling only imported goods and always empty. (Rumor has it that the mall was originally built for high-ranking officials with dirty money and expensive taste. However,

Staff Writer

the mall opened only a few years before President Xi Jinping took office and cracked down on the illegal activities of corrupt officials.) The other two malls are relatively affordable and filled with young people buying clothes, tech and accessories.

Most importantly to me, at Wanshou Lu there is food at every possible hour of the day.

Starting at 6 a.m., the street breakfast vendors open up shop wherever is convenient on the streets, usually next to the grocery store or on a side alley, and the smell of steaming hot cups of soybean milk, pork buns and scallion pancakes wafts through the air. The food is served at a breakneck pace, with vendors shoving food into one customer’s impatient hands while taking the order of the next customer.

At lunch, a restaurant called Lao Zhang Jia is f looded with nearby workers taking their standard two-hour lunch break. You can find every dish imaginable there: fresh fish stew, spicy noodles, dumplings, duck and absolutely nothing is sub-standard (I say this with confidence, having tried at least half of the menu.)

At night, fruit stands pop up, and the perfectly ripe summer peaches are the first to sell out.

Living on this street for a month this past summer was a peek into the life after retirement, shopping and eating to my heart’s content. Slowing down the pace of my life to this street’s rhythm was relaxing, but like the nearby workers and struggling twentysomethings, I was just passing through. The bustling world was always waiting for me to come back to it.

A

lthough commu- dozen students on each trip. All Center website, this semester, a nity service is trips are student-proposed, stu- trip titled “Where do we go from often associated with dent-led and student-approved here?: Community Organizing direct volunteer- by the board. Any student can in the Wake of Crisis” is going based service, Breakout Princ- propose a trip to lead. Trips are to Ferguson, Mo., while another eton is a Pace Center for Civic chosen to offer a wide variety of trip called “Contested ResourcEngagement program offering topics; location and prior leader- es: Nonferrous Mining in Minan alternative break that allows ship experience can also play a nesota’s Iron Range” is traveling students to engage in issues role in which trips are selected. to northeast Minnesota. through service learning, a hy“We also think a lot about “The reason that they’re gobrid of community service and the way in which the trips are ing to these specific places is learning from policy stakehold- framed in their proposals,” Sex- because their topic needs to be ers. Breakout owes its name to ton said. He added that Breakout explored in that place,” Rauch the fact that the trips occur dur- trips are approved if the lead- said. ing fall and spring break. The ers demonstrate humility and a The trip to Ferguson would service learning aspect comes realistic idea of what their trip not work in another area closer in when students learn about will be like. to Princeton, so the location is domestic social issues. Rather Sexton and Rauch co-led a necessary to the topic of the trip, than completing a service proj- Breakout trip their freshman Sexton added. ect during the week, students spring, focusing on the intersec“In the past, there were fewmeet policymakers, community tions between socioeconomic er Breakout trips in total, so a organizations and those directly status and HIV in New York City. larger portion of the trips were affected by the focus issue of the The pair met with a multitude going far away,” Sexton said. “I specific trip. of public health organizations also think that part of the reason “Breakout has a service com- as well as organizations that why there’s a lot of trips that stay ponent,” Breakout Student Ex- specifically served those living in the northeastern part of the ecutive Board co-chair Nick Sex- with HIV. Sexton explained that country is also a philosophical ton ’17 said, “but that’s not the they met with diverse organi- decision.” crux of what a Breakout trip is.” zations so that they were not Sexton went on to explain According to Sexton, al- only meeting with policymak- how part of Breakout’s philosothough students on a Breakout ers, but also staying attached to phy is to learn about issues in trip will participate in at least the community directly affected which Princeton students may one activity involving direct by the policies, which gave them be able to effect positive change. service, the program focuses a more balanced view about the “Being students in this area, more on meeting with a variety way the issue was playing out. we probably have a larger obof stakeholders to give students The Breakout trips are mostly ligation to do something in a comprehensive view of a given concentrated in the Northeast Trenton, than say, another urissue. region of the United States — ban area with similar issues in “It’s a service learning trip,” for instance, New York, Phila- another part of the country.” said Ada Rauch ’17, the other co- delphia and the local Trenton Sexton said. “We are uniquely chair of the Breakout Student area — but there are trips that positioned as Princeton stuExecutive Board. “It’s not to go travel to the far reaches of the dents to tackle the roots of somewhere, carry out a project, country. According to the Pace those issues.” and then be done. It’s to go somewhere and learn about it and then come back to campus, bringing your experience back in a way that you can share it, but also use it.”

Sexton added that part of Breakout’s model is the belief that greater change can be brought about if students gain a deeper understanding of an issue by looking at systemic structural problems.

According to Rauch, there is an average of five Breakout trips per COURTESY OF BREAKOUT VEGAS semester, with around a Photo from the Breakout trip that studied education in Las Vegas last spring.

ASK THE SEXPERT This week, we discuss circumcised vs. uncircumcised.

Dear Sexpert, Recently, a lot of my friends have been talking about which is better, a circumcised or uncircumcised penis. I want this settled.

What are the real differences and do they matter?

CATHERINE WANG :: CONTRIBUTOR

View from an apartment on Wanshou Lou. The contrast between the traditional apartments on the bottom and the modern structures above is illustrative of the street’s singularity from the rest of Beijing.

— Uncut and Unclear Dear Uncut, Let’s clear up what may be unclear: The difference between a circumcised penis and an uncircumcised penis is that an uncircumcised penis still has its foreskin, while a circumcised penis has had its foreskin, a flap of skin surrounding the tip of the penis, surgically removed. Other than that, any differences are very minor and do not affect sexual functioning.

All babies born with penises are born with a foreskin. A circumcision is a procedure performed by a doctor or a religious official in which the foreskin is removed from the penis. While the surgical procedure of removing the foreskin is usually performed on infants, there are some adults who choose to undergo this operation for religious, cosmetic or medical reasons. The circumcised penis is more common in the United States, but in some other countries, uncircumcised penises are the norm.

Neither the circumcised penis nor the uncircumcised penis is “better” than the other.

Either way, the penis functions the same when erect, the difference being that the circumcised penis has the tip of the penis, or the glans, permanently exposed while the glans of the uncircumcised penis is only uncovered when the penis is erect. Circumcised or uncircumcised, the sexual pleasure of the owner or the partner is not affected.

That being said, for some uncircumcised penises, the foreskin may have to be pulled back to put on an external condom.

Additionally, when the penis not erect, the foreskin may have to be pulled back while urinating. Pulling the foreskin back is definitely recommended when washing an uncircumcised penis because of the possible presence of smegma, the natural lubricant which allows the foreskin to move. If too much smegma builds up, it could prevent the foreskin from moving up and down the glans and cause a distinctive odor. However, it is also important to remember to rinse away all soap from underneath the foreskin and dry the area well, because any soap or water left over could cause irritation.

There is some evidence that circumcision slightly lowers risk of some sexually transmitted infections. Because the glans of the uncircumcised

penis spends most of its time being covered by the foreskin, it has slightly thinner skin than the skin of a circumcised glans. This could cause some heightened sensitivity to abrasions, which leads to a higher risk of sexually transmitted infections being able to enter the body.

Additionally, viruses, such as HPV (linked to cervical and penile cancer) and HIV, are transferred by contact of mucous membranes with infected sexual fluids. Removing the foreskin decreases the chance of transmission by shrinking the surface area of mucosal skin. That said, behavioral factors, like wearing a condom and getting tested for STIs before having sex, are more effective at reducing risk of STIs than circumcision.

If you’d like to further discuss circumcised and uncircumcised penises with a clinician, you can always schedule an appointment with Sexual Health and Wellness at University Health Services.

— The Sexpert Interested in Sexual Health? The Sexpert is always looking for members of the community to join the team of sexual health educators who, along with fact-checking from University health professionals, help write these columns.

Email sexpert@dailyprincetonian.com for more information and questions about sexual health.

Don’t be shy!

The Daily Princetonian

Thursday October 22, 2015

page s4

‘THE SEAGULL’ AT PRINCETON, TOP TEN 10 YEARS APART Spices for STREET’S

DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF Interviewed by

JUSTIN GOLDBERG

O

n Friday evening, when Anna Aronson ’16 and Cameron Platt ’16 utter their first lines as Nina Zarechnaya and Irina Arkadina in Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, they will be following in the footsteps of two other Princeton women who performed the play for their senior thesis project — 10 years ago. In that production, Nikki Muller ’05 (of “The Ivy League Hustle (I Went to Princeton, Bitch!)” fame) played Nina, and Emma Worth ’05 played Arkadina.

“The Seagull,” widely considered the first of Chekhov’s four greatest plays, follows Nina, Arkadina, Arkadina’s lover Boris Trigorin and Arkadina’s son Konstantin Tréplev as they become entangled in and disentangled from each other’s lives. Arkadina, an aging actress, arrives on the play’s country estate setting for a vacation with Trigorin, who is a famous writer. Tréplev, a playwright, is putting on a play starring Nina, and conf licts arise as mother and son, writer and playwright, and seasoned diva and young novice clash.

Justin Goldberg ’02, Web & Multimedia Strategist for the Lewis Center for the Arts, reached out to Muller and Worth and asked them to ref lect on their experience with the play in 2005. Muller, who first encountered “The Seagull” in her freshman-year scene study class, recalled that she was initially unimpressed with the play and its billing as a comedy.

“I could hardly sleep, I was so upset,” she said in an email. “I even

wrote about it in broken German for my daily GER 102 writing homework. (‘Komödie? Quatsch!’)”

That changed as soon as the class read the play out loud. Muller not only found the play funny and timeless but also became “wholly absorbed” with Nina, whom she played in that scene study class — so much so that “Nina” is part of Muller’s email address now. When it came time to propose a senior thesis project, Muller was determined to bring the play to a larger campus audience.

She convinced Worth to sign onto the project, and though in playing their respective parts as the ingénue Nina and the more mature Arkadina they broke with the types of parts they usually played, both were excited by that challenge.

In an email interview with Goldberg, Aronson and Platt noted that, they, too, had cast themselves against type in choosing to play Nina and Arkadina, respectively.

“I’m often cast in character roles,” Aronson said. “Nina is a unique challenge for me because she’s a foil to the characters I typically play. She’s earnest, optimistic and unabashedly ambitious.”

For Platt, who often plays the ingénue, the role of the aging Arkadina was also a departure from the roles she’s accustomed to: “I’m used to playing the vulnerable, the innocent and the unsure, all of which exist in Arkadina — but only under a carefully groomed and guarded exterior,” she said.

Ultimately, channeling their characters was a matter of finding commonalities with them — as it often is.

“I do relate to [Arkadina] and to those uglier aspects of human nature,” Platt said.

“They’re in all of us, and it hurts to let them surface … In embodying Arkadina, I’ve sought to work out the connections between those darker impulses and the beautiful elements of her character.” “[The play is] frighteningly relevant to our lives today,” Aronson added.

“The play transcends its era because it’s so much more about the human condition than it is about circumstance.”

What Muller identified with, in 2005, was Nina’s approach to acting. Muller drew on her experiences finding solace in art after her father passed away to better understand Nina, “a young woman, fighting for her sanity by clinging to her nascent identity as an artist.”

“Of course now I can relate to Nina’s struggle as a ‘working actress’ far more than I’d care to admit,” Muller added. “[Nina’s] words resonate with me now more than ever — ‘what matters for a writer or an actor is learning how to endure, how to bear your cross and have faith.’ ” After graduating, Muller studied at Harvard’s American Repertory Theater and is now a Los Angeles-based actor and COURTESY OF LEWIS CENTER OF THE ARTS comedian.

Worth, too, noted that the Top: Anna Aronson ’16 as Nina Zarechnaya; part she played 10 years ago bottom: Cameron Platt ’16 as Irina Arkadina. continues to resonate in her life. “As I await the birth of in rehearsal and translating it into my own (first) child — any day now! performance,” Platt said. “We hope — I am reconsidering that Arkadina that our production won’t draw a feels more devoted and bound to her fine line between the dark and the son than her superficial exaspera- light forces of this play. They’re ention and impatience betray,” she said tangled.” in an email.

“The Seagull,” directed by lecturer Aronson and Platt look forward to in theater Mark Nelson ’77, will show performing the play in front of an at the Matthews Acting Studio at 185 audience for the first time on Friday. Nassau Street on Oct. 23 and 28-30 at “We’re taking the joy that we feel 8 p.m., and Oct. 24 at 3 p.m.

1 3 5 7 9

your Latte

Pumpkin

2 4 6 8 10

Squash

Generic Gourd

Scary

Sporty

Baby Ginger

Posh

2012 Olympics Reunion

Sugar; and everything nice

CAMPUS PICKS MUSIC Princeton University Orchestra October 2015 Concerts RICHARDSON AUDITORIUM Friday and Saturday, 7:30 p.m.

It’s that time of year for your autumnal dose of orchestral ear candy. Join Princeton University Orchestra this weekend for their annual October Concerts, this time featuring a percussion quartet and orchestra piece by David Lang, a clarinet concerto by Copland featuring 2015 Concerto Competition winner Paul Chang ’16 as well as Schumann’s Symphony No. 2 in C Major. Lang’s piece, “man made,” will feature resident artists So Percussion, a Brooklyn-based four-piece percussion group described by the New York Times as “brilliant.” This concert is ticketed and open to the public.

COMEDY Fuzzy Dice presents “Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company” MCCOSH 50 Friday, 10 p.m.

Do you like “Saturday Night Live”? What about “Parks and Rec”? (These are rhetorical questions; if your answer is not “yes,” we recommend that you remedy this immediately.) If so, join Fuzzy Dice this Friday as they host Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company, from the improv and sketch comedy group founded by Amy Poehler. Quoting Fuzzy Dice quoting The Onion, “Catch the next generation of comedy superstars before they all sell out to [lousy] sitcoms and VH1 list shows.” Don’t miss out on the chance to see the future makers of funnies.the likes of Haydn, Beethoven and Ravel. If you come early enough, you can enjoy a pre-concert talk hosted by professor Scott Burnham at 7 p.m.

COURTESY OF FRANK WOJCIECHOWSKI

COURTESY OF LEWIS CENTER OF THE ARTS

Nikki Muller ’05 and Emma Worth ’05 as Nina and Irina in the 2005 production of ‘The Seagull,’ directed by Nancy Gabor and performed at the Berlind Theatre.

This year’s production of ‘The Seagull,’ directed by faculty member Mark Nelson ’77. will be performed at the Matthews Acting Studio this and next weekend.

HEADLINERS AND HEADSHAKERS articles you didn’t read this week DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF

13 incidences of hand, foot and mouth dis ease diagnosed on campus; Meningitis B sup posedly overcome, the medieval plague begins an ew Neither News nor Notes: Princeton ranked best college town of 2015, according to company no one has ever heard of

Most students comfortable with new rifle policy; calls for Red Ryder carbine-action BB gun this Christmas

NJ TRANSIT BEGINS #RUD EZONE CAMPAIGN; ALL RUDE PASSENGERS RE QUIRED TO SELFSEGREGATE FROM GENE RAL POPULATION

AvalonBay construction halted due to on-site contamination; Hand, foot and mouth disease unearthed ry; Local radio station WPRB celebrates 75th anniversa 0 quietly playing hipster music for old people since 194

EVENT Princeton Caribbean Connection presents “Flavors of the Caribbean” FIELDS CENTER Friday, 6:30 p.m.

Curry chicken. Patties. Jerk chicken. Hold up, think about this again — curry chicken.

You know that this is better than whatever else you were planning to (read: forced to by the University) eat on Friday night.

Join Princeton Caribbean Connection in the Fields Center for their annual food tasting of some hot, hot island cuisine.

If their fabulous event last spring, “Taste of Carnival,” was any indication, this is where you’ll want to be on Friday evening.

Vegetarian options will also be available.

BOOKS Joyce Carol Oates, “The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age” LABYRINTH BOOKS Tuesday, 6 p.m.

Real talk: we all come to Princeton to see “the famous people.” Even now, you can still hear appalled freshmen crying, “Wait, you mean Toni Morrison doesn’t teach here anymore?” Well, here’s your chance to meet creative writing professor Joyce Carol Oates, winner of the National Book Award, the National Humanities Medal and five-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Oates will be discussing her latest book, “The Lost Landscape: A Writer’s Coming of Age,” a memoir on her upbringing in rural New York and the life leading up to her illustrious career.