October 7, 2015

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Wednesday october 7, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 83

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In Opinion Columnist Imani Thornton describes her take on heroes with later discovered faults. Columnist Barbara Zhan summarizes her thoughts about Princeton as a senior.

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Today on Campus 12:00 p.m.: The Office of Religious Life hosts “Hour of Power”, a mid-week worship service of praise, prayer & proclamation. Green Hall 1-C-6.

ELAINE ROMANO :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Comedian Marc Maron discusses his podcast, WTF, at a public lecture in McCosh 50 on Tuesday.

The Archives

Oct. 7, 1996

Several eating clubs and sororities raised around $900 for breast cancer research by participating in “Race for the Cure”.

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News & Notes Former U. professor awarded Nobel Prize

Arthur B. McDonald, a former physics professor at the University, was one of the two recipients of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics, the University announced on Tuesday.

He was awarded the prize for an experiment he began developing during his professorship at the University from 1982 to 1989.

McDonald led the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory that revealed that neutrinos oscillate, or change types known as “flavors,” as they travel through space. He was awarded the prize for this experiment on Tuesday.

While at the University, McDonald shifted his research focus from studying nuclear reactions using the University’s cyclotron, a low-energy particle accelerator, to neutrinos and developing the SNO project.

McDonald is also a cowinner of the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Medal for Physics and an Officer of the Order of Canada.

More to come…

STUDENT LIFE

Class of 2019 candidates announced

By Daily Princetonian Staff Sixteen freshmen are running for the five Class of 2019 officer positions.

The candidates for class council include Carly Bonnet, Karen Delgado, Josh Faires, Suren Jamiyanaa, Adam Libresco, Susan Liu, Jack Marcus, Reed Melchionda, Chelsea Ng, Ling Ritter, Daniel Schwarzhoff, Ishan Sinha, Eric Sklanka, Katherine Trout, Christopher Umanzor and Nicholas Wu. Liu and Umanzor are also contributors for The Daily Princetonian.

According to the USG Elections Handbook, the freshman class council is comprised of five class officers who work together to accomplish the tasks of class government.

The term “class officer” only exists in the fall of freshman year. In the spring of freshman year and every spring thereafter, each class elects a class president, vice president, treasurer, social chair and secretary.

The class president is the head of the government for See CLASS COUNCIL page 2

The University will be implementing changes in response to the Report of the Special Task Force on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that was released in May 2015, Vice Provost for Institutional Diversity and Equality Michele Minter said.

Tthe changes include updates to the Policy on Discrimination and Harassment, changes to the ‘Reflections on Diversity’ orientation session and enhancements to Fields Center programs, Minter said said.

The task force’s report highlighted recommendations that have been or will be implemented soon, Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun wrote in an email to the student body on Sept. 25.

Calhoun deferred comment to Minter.

According to the Task Force’s report, national events involving issues of diversity and inclusion, such as #BlackLivesMatter protests, led to growing student concern about these issues in the fall of 2014. In response, the Council of the Princeton University Community Executive Committee appointed a task

force with the intention of finding ways to improve campus climate through recommendations that would impact students.

Minter said that although it is still early in the academic year, much will be accomplished in the coming months. She noted that continued student input is important, alongside student outreach efforts.

“There will be periodic updates to the campus community and a report at the upcoming CPUC meeting,” she said.

The Provost’s Office allocated over $400,000 to support three Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students Centers in order to support expanded programming and increase staffing at the Fields and Women’s Centers.

Student organizations are also encouraged to apply for funds.

According to the task force’s report, the Policy on Discrimination and Harassment has been moved into Rights, Rules and Responsibility with a frequently asked questions section to make the policy more accessible to students. Residential college advisers, center directors and sports club officers will be trained on how to respond to See DIVERSITY page 2

LECTURE

KERITH WANG :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Human Rights Watch’s Joseph Amon spoke about his work in non-communicable diseases on Tuesday.

Joseph Amon lectures on human Q&A: Human Rights rights activism, coalition-building Watch’s Joseph Amon Q&A

By Alfred Burton

By Alfred Burton contributor

Joseph Amon, director of the Health and Human Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, gave a lecture Tuesday about his work in non-communicable diseases and how human rights arguments can support greater efforts in global health.

He sat down with The Daily Princetonian after the lecture to discuss human rights, public health services and the TransPacific Partnership.

The Daily Princetonian: What links non-communicable diseases with human rights?

Joseph Amon: Good question. In low- and middleincome countries, non-communicable diseases are really increasing sharply. The issue of human rights is, what are

governments obligated to do in terms of addressing that? There’s a range of different things. If you look at tobacco, a major cause of cancer and cardiovascular disease, there’s an international treaty on the elimination of tobacco that has obligations on governments to restrict sales, to restrict advertising and promotion for tobacco, to move tobacco to other crops, and so the human rights obligations around it are right to health, right to information, right to protection of children, and there’s a link, I think, that is not unique to non-communicable diseases, but extends around noncommunicable diseases and other diseases. A lot of the first attention around health and human rights was around HIV because there was a lot of See Q&A page 3

contributor

The work of a human rights activist consists of raising awareness, forming a coalition and setting a narrative for debate, director of Health and Human Rights at Human Rights Watch Joseph Amon said at a lecture Tuesday.

Amon explained that his work consists of convincing governments they should be or should stop doing something.

This work, he said, must begin by informing the public that abuses are taking place. He added that governments and international donors are often already aware of human rights violations, but local communities may not be.

“If there’s no general awareness of it in the community, there isn’t going to be a lot of pressure on them to do anything about it,” Amon said.

This process of making

people aware of human rights violations can take on a number of guises, Amon said.

He explained that the main method to date has been the writing of extensive reports, but acknowledged that these are mostly read by college students, leaving the organization unsure as to what is the best way to distribute findings and recommendations to stakeholders.

Amon noted that despite this, Human Rights Watch has not shied away from modern media. He noted that it ran a campaign in 2012 lobbying the President of Nigeria to sign a bill allowing the cleanup of lead poisoning in the country, and as the president prevaricated over releasing the money for the cleanup, Human Rights Watch launched a “sign the bill” campaign on social media. The effort flopped, Amon said, until it reached the newspapers, where the reporting of

a viral campaign forced the president’s hand.

A broad range of expertise is necessary to run a human rights campaign, Amon said.

He noted that he completed his undergraduate degree in economics and doctorate in epidemiology and now works at an organization staffed primarily by lawyers.

Similarly, Amon explained, advocacy requires the formation of broad coalitions to effect change. Human Rights Watch has campaigned against the spread of tuberculosis in prisons, and using a team of healthcare and criminal justice experts, as well as lawyers, has been able to propose holistic solutions, changes to bail laws that will reduce the number of people incarcerated and decrease the spread of tuberculosis in overpopulated jails.

Building a coalition within the UN is an important See LECTURE page 2

The Daily Princetonian

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Wednesday october 7, 2015

Amon says human rights advocates Dunne: promoting diversity is high must frame debate, hone message priority for ODUS after task force report LECTURE Continued from page 1

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way to place pressure on transgressing regimes, Amon explained, although he added that this can be a long and arduous task. He explained that after work by Human Rights Watch, the 2014 World Health Assembly passed a resolution calling for the “strengthening of palliative care,” which allocated resources and provided better guidelines. To get this, however, Human Rights Watch required a “cascade of voices” within the UN, with a paper chain that spanned years and included officials from the Special Rapporteur on Torture, and Health to the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

To launch a successful campaign, advocates must frame

the debate and hone their message, Amon explained. For example, he said, Human Rights Watch showed in the past that Burkina Faso was only importing enough morphine annually to support 10 patients, while other countries only had enough to help 0.1 percent of patients who needed pain relief. Amon explained that Human Rights Watch framed the issue by comparing the denial of medication to torture, except that for cancer patients in tremendous pain “there is no confession; the pain continues.”

The impact of Amon’s work can be delayed or nebulous, and sometimes his work has the effect of simply maintaining the status quo and preventing further abuses, he said. He noted that international scrutiny is purported to have prevented a second mass execution of suspected drug dealers

in Thailand.

The changes that occur on the ground are often a lot less lofty than the ideals behind them, Amon said. He noted, for example, that the desire to improve access to pain medication in Ukraine translated into simply increasing the amount of morphine that could be prescribed by a doctor.

Amon said that Human Rights Watch always seeks to work as part of a coalition, and that he did not want to give the organization full credit for all of its accomplishments.

“There’s a certain amount of looking for opportunistic moments to push issues,” he said.

“Most of the issues are ripe to move regardless of your work.”

The lecture, entitled “Global Health Advocacy Using Human Rights Arguments,” took place in 035 Robertson Hall at 4:30 p.m. and was sponsored

by Princeton Development Lab.

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CORRECTION Due to a reporting error, the October 6 article, “Campbell ’04: first-time candidate for Boston City Council,” incorrectly stated the title of Andrea Campbell’s thesis. It was “The Representation of Conflict, Competition and Consensus Between Blacks and Jews in Black New York Newspapers Between 1950 and 1979.” The ‘Prince’ regrets the error.

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these instances.

Change to academics is ongoing, with the Task Force on General Education considering how diversity and culture issues can be incorporated into the curriculum. Efforts are also being made to increase access to demographic data and increase public programming.

Programming will include a year-long public lecture and discussion series, “Inequity Science,” presented by the Department of Psychology, the Center for African American Studies and the Behavioral Policy Center, according to Calhoun’s email.

Deputy Dean of Undergraduate Studies Thomas Dunne said that promoting diversity and inclusion is a high priority for the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students. He noted that ODUS regularly reviews programs and services in order to ensure that they are engaging to students.

ODUS revamped the “Reflections on Diversity” orientation session for freshmen and featured Sam Offer, a national expert in diversity and inclusion training, Dunne said.

RCAs also participated in a workshop facilitated by Offer focused on promoting dialogue following the program, and a

workshop hosted by diversity expert Derek Greenfield that aimed to help RCAs promote the inclusion of all students, Dunne added.

“For many students, diversity and inclusion work is most directly experienced through the noteworthy efforts of their peers,” Dunne said. “All cultural and identity-based undergraduate student groups are advised

by ODUS and we are most grateful for the breadth and depth of programs students sponsor on campus.”

Dunne also noted that three ODUS Centers – the LGBT Center, the Women’s Center and Fields Center – are critical in directing the diversity and inclusion work in ODUS. Tennille Haynes, director of the Fields Center, said that the Task Force’s recommendations to the Fields Center included increasing staffing, program enhancement and a reevaluation of the Center’s mission statement. A diversity peer education program is also being developed based on the Sexual Harassment/Assault Advising, Resources and Education model.

Student initiatives are encouraged, with funding available for cultural and identity based events, Haynes added.

A programming study will also reevaluate the spatial needs of the Center in order to make it more accommodating to students, Hayes said, adding that

the Center considered student feedback from focus groups when making changes such as extending building hours, adding outdoor furniture to the lawn and offering the Center as a space for student events centered on themes of diversity.

Haynes noted that the Center is in search of two program coordinators to enhance programs and strengthen the center as a home base for students of color, and hopes to have the positions filled before the end of the fall semester.

The Center is also working to redevelop the Princeton University Peer Mentoring Program, as well as transition Fellows into Diversity Peer Educators who will be able to work around issues of diversity, inclusion and social justice, she said.

She added that a curriculum based on identity development is expected to be completed by the fall of 2016.

“My hopes and plans are to [have the Fields Center be] a space where students of color can have meaningful and engaging dialogues, host their events and programs, study and just hang out,” she said.

LGBT Center director and founder Debbie Bazarsky deferred comment to Minter. Bazarsky recently took a role in the Office of Human Resources.

Amada Sandoval, director of the Women’s Center, declined to comment.

16 candidates for 2019 class council will campaign until next Monday CLASS COUNCIL Continued from page 1

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that class and is also a full member of the Honor Committee, while the treasurer handles all financial matters pertaining to the class, while the secretary helps with communication between the officers and the social chair coordinates class study breaks and other social events. The

vice president will take over the position of president in the event of a vacancy.

The five members of the freshman class council share equal responsibility for class government.

Violations of campaign regulations result in penalty points. After 30 points, a candidate can no longer campaign online, after 40 points a candidate can no longer have their own personal website

and after 50 points a candidate is disqualified.

Violations of campaign regulations include campaigning before noon on the Monday of campaign week, making a false statement that disparages the reputation of another candidate or sending an unsolicited campaign email.

Campaigning officially began Monday at noon, and voting will begin on Oct. 12 at noon.

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Amon discusses public health services and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Q&A

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discrimination, a lot of punitive approaches. That’s not always the case with non-communicable diseases but the underlying issues in terms of access to medicine, access to information and access to care without discrimination, that’s still there.

DP: You’re a member of the faculty of a lot of universities.

How do you inspire students to get involved in human rights advocacy?

JA: It’s more about telling them different ways in which I think they can think about their careers. There’s a lot of organizations that are public health or development organizations that have strong statements around human rights – CARE, for example – and so you can work at a human rights organization, you can work at a general health or development organization, you can work in government, and you can integrate and be aware of human rights as part of the work that you do.

DP: In the United States, public health services from Obamacare to Planned Parenthood are under constant attack from certain political groups. What does Human Rights Watch do to combat this?

JA: You know, we haven’t worked explicitly on issues like Obamacare, but we have worked on access to care for

marginalized or decriminalized groups. There’s an absolute lack of access to effective drug dependency treatment – methadone, for example – in the US, and there are states that still restrict needle and syringe exchange, which has proven to reduce HIV transmission. Where those states are taking those decisions, you can make a case that that’s a violation of the right to health. If you look at Indiana, southern Indiana, for example, there’s a huge outbreak associated with injected drug use because there’s no needle and syringe exchange. And so that’s one place where we work. We also work on prisons and linking prisoners upon release with access to services in the community. We work on issues around children working in tobacco fields in the U.S., which exposes them to green tobacco sickness.

There’s a range of issues that we take on, but we haven’t taken on any major issues around Obamacare, per se.

DP: Do you steer clear of abortion, reproductive health?

JA: Not at all. We work on reproductive health in countries where it is limited, we work on it very clearly. In some countries they’ve tried to criminalize physicians providing life-saving abortions, It’s something that we’ve taken on, and it’s an issue that’s come up.

DP: I’ve read that the United States has signed, but has yet to ratify, the International

Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Do you work on campaigning for them to ratify that?

JA: There’s an aspect where we look at what’s likely, and our assessment right now is that it’s unlikely that there will be an effort towards ratification.

In recent years there’s been a move towards ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, so that was something we were working on. But to me it’s a very peculiar position for the U.S. to be in, and I often use a parallel with education. We believe in a right to education, and we guarantee education to all children. The right to health is not about the right to be healthy, it’s about the right to emergency care, minimal care. The U.S. often provides that – we’ve got public hospitals, we’ve got Obamacare, but it’s often unwilling to recognize that obligation, and I find that to be quite out-of-step with most countries in the world and a very strange and archaic position to be.

DP: To what extent do you think big pharmaceutical companies, or big pharma, aren’t doing enough to tackle diseases like HIV which may affect those who are unable to afford expensive drugs?

JA: HIV is one where I think pharma has done a lot to develop drugs, to find new drugs, second-line, third-line drugs, etc. There is a lot of companies producing endorphin drugs, companies mak-

ing drugs that there aren’t a lot of alternatives for, increasing the price, and I think that’s very troubling. I think when companies do that, it casts a negative light on all pharma companies because pharma companies are trying to make an argument that their cost is rational and that it’s set in terms of research and development expenses.

But when you get one pharma company that increases the price from $20 to $20,000 a year, you could call it a rogue but it’s causing a shadow on the industry as a whole.

DP: So do you think big pharma aren’t doing enough – maybe HIV was not a good example – to fight diseases which affect people who can’t pay $20,000 a year for drugs?

JA: The argument, and Hepatitis C would be an example, is one that’s more importantly focused on the government, because the idea that pharma should be pricing its drugs so that people can pay for them misses the role that government should be playing in ensuring that people can have access to health care, and so the consequence of the U.S. not having a universal health care system is that it doesn’t do a good job of ensuring affordability, so I think I would structure that argument a little differently.

DP: President Barack Obama has suggested engaging, rather than ostracizing, countries with terrible human rights records. In his inaugura-

tion he said, “We will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” How has this changed conditions on the ground? To what extent has this been an effective strategy?

JA: There’s always a message from government about the importance of quiet diplomacy, of not sort of naming and shaming or ostracizing countries, but there’s a lot of tools in the toolbox and you see the argument as often one of how far to push or which tools to use to try and press governments to be more respectful of human rights. Obviously trade agreements are an area in which there is a lot of economic leverage, and insisting that there is free trade, respect for trade unions, environmental protections, I think that’s an area in which you can see an impact occur.

Countries, I think, want to be recognized as part of the international community and acting appropriately with regards to human rights, and so the visibility of abuses can have an impact on their behaviors, but I understand the constraints that politicians sometimes feel about how far they can go.

DP: You mentioned trade agreements, and brief ly touched on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in your talk. What is Human Rights Watch’s stance on the TPP? JA: I’m not sure if we have a formal policy on the final agreement, but we engaged in advocacy during the pro-

cess a bit on issues like labor and on some of the issues around forced labor in particular. Certainly there were other parts of the agreement as well, like property restrictions, that were things we were following and concerned with too.

DP: Human Rights Watch is based in New York, but it works in countries across the world. How does it develop and support advocacy groups?

JA: So it’s a challenge, because our collaboration with local advocacy groups can sometimes put them at greater risk. We have formal partnerships and coalitions in some cases, in other cases we work quietly with people, and they’re increasing our knowledge and capacity. There’s an element where it’s a real twoway street and it’s not just us coming in and building capacity. Often times what we can do is we can help elevate an issue or bring an issue beyond the borders to human rights activists, and sometimes we can act in solidarity and provide support that way.

I think there’s bigger task to be done in terms of funding local human rights groups, building their capacity formally, that goes beyond what Human Rights Watch has the resources or the capacity or really the mandate to do.

DP: Other than human rights, what do you like to watch?

JA: What do I like to watch on TV? Uh…baseball.

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The Fault in Our Heroes

A word from the meek Christian Wawrzonek

Imani Thornton columnist

I

n the age of the Internet, onceglorified idols fall. In an era of the 24-hour news cycle, formerly upheld individuals are summoned from their hallowed depths of revered obscurity and examined by social analysts, pundits and those random guys in the comment section of Yahoo News.

Sometimes these individuals make it out of the fire; many times they do not.

Now, a recent Daily Princetonian oped has highlighted the way in which a particularly revered figure on Princeton’s campus is f lawed beyond reasonable doubt. Woodrow Wilson’s discriminatory and often blatant segregationist views are evidenced by various quotes and policies that the former Princeton and U.S. president long supported. In response, several have contested that all humans are f lawed and therefore, we cannot reasonably condemn those figures who we deem to be f lawed by modern standards. If we went along with this method of thinking, they argue, there would be no one left to revere. I beg to differ.

One of the first problems with this notion is that we must indubitably revere anyone at all. There are very few figures now about whom everyone agrees. Despite this, there are several individuals whose disturbing hobbies, misdeeds and beliefs we would soon like to forget.

When people bring up George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, how many people do you know actively remember that both were slaveholders? That Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps? The list goes on and on, as it should; there is no denying that indeed every figure of which we can think is f lawed in one way or another (and if we can’t think of their f laws, don’t worry, they’ll soon come out).

While some are able to recognize that no individual is worthy of unquestionable praise, this way of thinking is abnormal. Many of us in the United States have been trained to think in certain dichotomies. If we are lucky, we are able to break free of these polarizations and understand people and circumstances in a nuanced way. This is not to say that the misdeeds of individuals should be neutralized away, but rather that we dismount those figures that the vast majority still cannot look at from a leveled perspective.

The question here is not whether we should condemn these individuals, but how.

When we allow certain figures to remain unchallenged in their problematic beliefs and actions — even if it is with the benefit of retrospect — we are essentially warranting them. In failing to properly acknowledge their faults, we are indirectly accepting these faults as parts of our present culture. It may be argued that no one is allowing these figures to remain unchallenged deliberately.

It may have been easier to accept ignorance as an excuse in the past, when information was less accessible. However, according to the International Telecommunication Union, 3.2 billion people will have access to the Internet by the end of 2015, including 85% of the developed world. This gateway allows access to information that would have been difficult to obtain fifty years ago.

For many of us, there is no longer an acceptable excuse.

Yet, most of us appear indifferent about the negative aspects of some of the world’s most revered figures. I admit that many times I find it more convenient, for example, to forget that Gandhi may have held negative sentiments against South Africans. I would rather remember him solely for his Indian independence movement. However, when we do this, are we truly learning from history? We are not perfect beings and it is likely we never will be, but where better can we look for answers to a greater future than from what we can denounce from the past?

Holding every last one of our heroes accountable for their misdeeds is not a very fun task, but it is one we must aim toward if we want to further learn from history. Each of us is f lawed, and for this reason we can begin the complicated road toward teaching and understanding history in ways that do not make heroes out of people, but makes people out of people — all of us f lawed for different reasons, whose offenses are as impactful as our virtues.

Imani Thornton is a sophomore from Matteson, Ill. She can be reached at it4@ princeton.edu.

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columnist

T

his past weekend, I opened up a copy of the Nassau Weekly to find an intriguing piece by Elliott Eglash about the nature of music streaming and its implications on our listening experience. Given that I had just recently fallen in love with Spotify’s innovative new music suggestion feature, Discover Weekly, this seemed too bizarrely relevant to pass up. Typical of the Nass, the piece was an interestingly personal and enjoyable read that I highly recommend.

However, I found myself quite disappointed to find that instead of the awestruck admiration that I felt for this novel application of data science, the author seemed to take a subtly mournful tone, as if realizing the end of some intangible aspects of music as we have come to know it. All in all, Eglash’s pensive journey through his listening habits lead to some truly insightful observations, though I find his apprehensions and reservations to be misplaced. Music is different now than it was even 10 years ago when we were children, and Eglash’s column correctly identifies many of these major shifts. However, this idea that our interaction with music is somehow worse off or less valuable today is where his opinions fall short.

A major theme that Eglash touches on is that there is value in the personal journey of searching, finding, and discovering your own music.

On an individual level, much of the enjoyment from music comes from the satisfaction of searching endlessly for that new sound, much like explorers breaking new ground on the frontier. On a broader scale, each generation pushes the limits of music to find something uniquely “us,”

be it the free-form expression of jazz in the early 20th century, the visceral engagement with accentuated beat and rhythm of rock and roll in the ’50s, or the rebellious, angst-filled disillusionment of grunge in the ’90s. All of this defines our personal autonomy in music, the dimension of enjoyment defined solely by the effort we spend finding something new that we enjoy. Whether you spent hours tediously searching through old record stores or spent Saturday nights finding new bands playing at the local concert hall, the effort spent searching for new music was just as important as the music itself.

Of course, our musical autonomy is being replaced by bits and data.

Where once we spent time searching for something fresh, programs and algorithms have taken over the job as our musical explorers, and to Eglash, it seems awfully bleak.

In a true Huxley-esque fashion, this willful abandonment of our musical sovereignty has led to an automated feeding of an endless stream of musical pleasure. Given the current technological revolution, the marketplace of available music is magnitudes larger than anybody could have imagined even just a few years ago.

As such, there is always new music available just around the corner for us to feed on. Eglash astutely points out that our appreciation for each discovery of new music disappears as it becomes easier to find new music, which is supported by empirical research. The less we have to work for something, the less we ultimately value it. Perhaps this has or will lead to a more superficial appreciation for music as a whole, perhaps not. But really, it doesn’t matter either way.

Music, or at least our interaction with it, is constantly changing. Eglash freely admits this. The way we listen to music now is different than

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how we listened to music 50 years ago, and will be fundamentally different from the way we listen to music 50 years in the future. This is not a normative statement about the “best” way to listen to music, but simply an observation that generationally, we listen to and value music in fundamentally different ways. Each member of the previous generation must necessarily observe this changing dynamic and will ultimately feel a nostalgic sense of longing for the way things once were. This is the feeling facing Eglash, and it is one that anyone who values music must eventually come to terms with.

But despite his observations, Eglash has a major reservation, one that is entirely separate from music or our appreciation for it. Once he realized just how effective these algorithms are (admittedly better than what he could ever find alone), he naturally reflects on the empirical nature of the human condition, and it’s a bit scary. He remarks that it’s “as if a human being, like a math equation, were merely something to be solved.”

It’s entirely true, and that’s the beauty of it all. The very reason these algorithms are so effective is that they begin with the assumption that we can figure ourselves out. Music is simply another aspect of the entirely material human experience, and we’ve started solving the equation..

Left mourning the loss of personally valued aspects of music, Eglash can’t help but search for a transcendental justification for those aspects that are gone. The unfortunate truth is that sometimes, what we value isn’t better or worse than what was once valued or what will be valued in the future. In the end, it’s just different.

Christian Wawrzonek is a computer science major from Pittsburgh, Pa. He can be reached at cjw5@princeton.edu.

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Cartoons Editor Terry O’Shea ’16

NIGHT STAFF 10.6.15 senior copy editor Megan Laubach ’18 contributing copy editors Arthur Mateos ’19 Samantha Zalewska ’19 news Shriya Sekhsaria ’18 design Ien Li ’19 Jessica Zhou ’19

Barbara Zhan columnist

I

don’t usually talk in my columns. I mean, I say things, but you don’t hear my voice. I’m distant — linking and referencing the crap out of every fact. After four years, I’m out of those measured opinions — it’s hard to have (publishable) opinions on a regular, biweekly basis. All I have left are thoughts.

First, I cannot believe I’m a senior. After the trauma of trudging through midterm after final, semester after semester, Lawnparties after Lawnparties (of acts I’ve never heard of — oops), I’m here and I’m alive. It’s jarring because time felt endless as a freshman. OA leader training during Hurricane Sandy? It felt like it was a month long.

Walking to the EQuad? Miles.

80-minute classes? No freaking way. I wanted so badly to get over prerequisites and writing sem papers, small talk and small at-

Imminence, Eminence tendance quizzes.

But now it feels like time is nudging me towards FitzRandolph Gate, about to give me a swift kick out the door. I’m pretty sure I want to leave and start real life in a big city, but I know that after I do, I will never walk in feeling the same way. Princeton will never be home again, but only a reminiscence, a sentiment of a dream that I used to take for granted as bare, mundane reality.

I miss so many things about this place, even before it’s over.

I’m going to miss waking up at 11 a.m. each day. I’m even going to miss waking up at 9 a.m., because that is still far more generous than real life. I’m going to miss listening to Bach’s Chaconne on my phone in the University Chapel at night just because I felt like it. I’m going to miss getting to see Hilary Hahn herself play the Chaconne in Richardson Auditorium. I’m going to miss feeling sheltered — if I failed a job interview, I could just walk to my friends’

rooms and they would make me forget it with one well-edited Imgur gif. I’m going to miss the freedom of having time to waste because it’s a rare commodity in the real world.

I’m certain I’m going to leave wishing I had done more or done better. Sometimes I already kick myself for things in the past, wishing I could tell myself just to “DO BETTER.” Why did I spend so much time debilitated over minor tragedies that eventually led me to greater things anyway?

Why did I care what this person said if he didn’t really know me to begin with? I wish every opinion article I wrote, every word I contributed, could have been a masterpiece. I wish everything I did could have been a masterpiece, but I know it wasn’t.

The urgency is building now to feel like I’ve made some kind of grandiose mark on this place in any possible way. We walk among named buildings and dining halls and fountains and even benches that are testaments to people who have done

great, great things and made great, great amounts of money. These are the people who separated themselves from the masses of the nameless who have passed through this prestigious campus without etching its walls.

But maybe it’s not so bad to pass through Princeton quietly.

All I hope at the end of it all, for myself and for fellow seniors, is that we’ve learned things we truly wanted to learn. I hope that we’ve all met people who are warm candles and people who are ignited sparks. I hope that we ourselves are each a source of light for somebody else.

I know for certain that when I step out of those gates, I won’t be ready to leave, but I guess the imminence is what makes these short, happy, painful four years so beautiful.

Barbara Zhan is an operations research and financial engineering major from Plainsboro, N.J. She can be reached at barbaraz@princeton. edu.

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday october 7, 2015

No. 28 women’s cross Tigers push through country sweeps meet tough conditions to win XC

Continued from page 6

.............

rankings to 16th, but Providence and North Carolina both dropped out of the top 30, with neither teams garnering any votes.

The women’s team fared even better than the men’s team in its own meet, as they won the event. The Tigers, ranked 28th in the nation, showed that they were a force to be reckoned with as they faced a host of top teams, including No. 18 William & Mary, No. 21 North Carolina and No. 25 Villanova.

Junior Lizzie Bird led the charge for the Tigers, storming out to an impressive 3rd place finish, followed by seniors Emily de la Bruyere and Kathryn Fluehr. Bird finished in 20 minutes and 42 seconds, followed by de la Bruyere’s finish nine seconds later, and Fluehr finished in 21 minutes

and 6 seconds. Rounding out the scoring and top five for Princeton were juniors Ally Markovich, who finished 19th, and Nicole Marvin, who finished 48th. These top five finishes gave the Tigers the victory at 80 points, beating North Carolina by 10 points.

This victory saw the women’s cross country team move up three spots in the rankings to the 25th place. The Tigers currently have 94 points and are only one behind both William & Mary and Minnesota, so an impressive performance in future meets will see them move up the rankings.

Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams will compete at the Wisconsin Invitational on Friday, Oct. 16 and the Princeton Invitational on Saturday, Oct. 17.

The teams’ top runners will travel to Wisconsin, while the rest of the team will stay in Princeton to compete.

GOLF

Continued from page 6

.............

Women’s Golf Coming off a two-week break following the Bucknell Invitational, the women’s golf team put up another strong performance as it competed for the first time at home this year in the Princeton Invitational.

The first day may have been dampened by the rain, but the Tigers certainly came out hot. Playing just 36 holes because of the weather, Princeton found itself with two players in the top five by the end of the day. Sophomore Tenley Shield was tied for first after one at 2 above, with senior Alexandra Wong was tied for fifth at 4 above.

The Tigers held first over Columbia as they went into Sunday, the second day of play.

The last day of the week-

end, however, saw some major shakeups in the standings.

A few Tigers saw significant gains from their previous day’s results — junior Jordan Lippetz, tied for 13th at the end of Saturday, pulled herself into 4th at 9 above by the end of the event. Freshman Amber Wong, Wang and Shield all finished well — Wong and Wang in joint 12th, Shield in joint 2nd — as junior Hana Ku rounded out the group at joint 31st, 19 above par. However, the Tigers saw their lead from the first day slip away as the Harvard Crimson made a furious comeback. Harvard finished 4th on the first day, only to move into the top spot when all was said and done. The Tigers would settle for 2nd in the field of 15 teams.

With this result in the books, Princeton makes a quick turnaround with the prep for the Yale Invitational starting Friday, Oct. 9.

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Sports

Wednesday october 7, 2015

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } CROSS COUNTRY

Meet brings success for Cross Country

By Tom Pham associate sports editor

Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams competed in the Princeton Inter-Regional Meet this past weekend, hosted on West Windsor Fields on Saturday.

The men’s team was coming off a three-week break after a fantastic victory at the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet hosted in Cambridge where they beat perennial rivals Harvard and Yale to first place. The women’s team had themselves a two-week break after finishing second in the HYP and coming third in the Iona Meet in New York.

With such strong performances, both teams looked to capture the Inter-Regional Meet title and continue their great season.

Coming into the Inter-Regional Meet, the men’s cross country team was unranked but competed in a field against No. 19 Indiana, No. 24 Providence and No. 29 North Carolina, so if the team im-

pressed, the Tigers could see themselves in the NCAA rankings. The team did not disappoint, finishing second in the tournament with an impressive 70 points, which was only bested by Indiana’s 47 points.

Impressing on the day for the Tigers was freshman and California native Steven Sum, who finished sixth in the 8K event, crossing the finish line in 24 minutes and 12 seconds. He was closely followed by senior Michael Sublette and sophomore Noah Kauppila, who came within five seconds of Sum’s finish to claim 8th and 11th places, respectively. Rounding out the top five for the Tigers was senior Sam Berger who came in 21st and freshman Jeremy Spiezio who came in three spots behind Berger.

With this impressive performance, the Tigers recently placed 27th in the NCAA rankings with 38 points. The weekend’s winner Indiana jumped three places in the See XC page 5

GOLF

MARY HUI :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Both the men’s and women’s cross country teams saw success at the Princeton Inter-Regional Meet, finishing second and first, respectively.

O N TA P

On Tap with... Nina Sola

By Sydney Mandelbaum associate sports editor

Just last year, sophomore Nina Sola walked onto the men’s heavyweight crew team with no experience to be a coxswain. This week, The Daily Princetonian sat down with Sola to talk about rowing, embarrassing incidents, and PB&J sandwiches.

BEN KOGER :: PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR EMERITUS

Both golf teams faced tough conditions over the weekend.

Tough weekend for both golf teams

By Miles Hinson sports editor

Men’s Golf Last weekend’s downpour affected students both on and off Princeton’s campus.

Traveling to New Haven, Conn. to play in the MacDonald Cup at Yale, the men’s golf team only played one day of what was originally intended to be a two-day competition, where they finished ninth out of 15 teams.

After strong starts to open their fall calendar — Princeton earned two first-place performances to start the year — the Tigers appear to have slowed down some.

This result follows a fourth place showing at the Windon Memorial event a weekend prior.

As for the players, sophomore Michael Davis was the high performer for the Ti-

gers on the day, as he tied for 30th by going 8 over.

Following him were sophomore Marc Hedrick in joint 38th place at 10 over and junior Quinn Prchal tying for 41st place at 11 over. Prchal, coming off a spring season where he represented Princeton at NCAA regionals, saw a dropoff from his final placing at the Windon Memorial, where he and sophomore Eric Mitchell led the Tigers at joint 24th overall (2 above). Mitchell would this time finish in joint 59th at 17+, along with junior Alex Dombrowski.

With a storm-filled event now in the books, the team can look forward to a rest this weekend before heading out to Beallsville, Md. a week from Monday, where they will compete in the Georgetown Hoya Invitational.

See GOLF page 5

Daily Princetonian: Where are you from and what’s the best part about being from there?

Nina Sola: I’m from London and it’s nice because I have a memorable accent.

DP: What are you studying?

NS: Woodrow Wilson [School] and Russian.

DP: How did you get into being a coxswain?

NS: A friend of mine on the lightweight team told me to come join and I showed up — they threw me in a boat in the rain, and it was a great time.

DP: What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you while on the team, on or off the water?

NS: I once unzipped my pocket and a bunch of tampons fell out, and I’m on the boy’s team, and someone went, “Ooo, what’s that?…

Oh, uh, never mind.”

DP: If you did another sport at Princeton, which one would it be, and why?

NS: I think hockey, because it just looks like a great time.

DP: In your opinion, what’s the weirdest American food?

NS: Probably Uncrustables because you can make yourself a PB&J with relative ease — I’m not quite sure why it’s neces-

COURTESY OF NINA SOLA

Sophomore Nina Sola sat down with The Daily Princetonian to talk about rowing and PB&J sandwiches.

sary to buy them in a bag.

boat?

quite boring.

DP: If you were a marshmallow-related food, what would you be?

NS: Definitely a Peep.

DP: Sure, anything you want.

NS: No. It would be a surfboard, because I’d spend my time learning to surf, and a pony and a flashlight — a flashlight might be useful.

And the pony would give me something to do — I imagine a desert island would be

DP: And for the typical on tap question, if the four fingers and thumb on one of your hands were drink dispensers, what drinks would they dispense?

NS: Definitely White Russian, Ginger Ale, Gatorade, a good triple IPA and maybe strawberry mint spa water.

DP: If you were on a deserted island and could bring any three things, what would they be?

NS: Am I allowed to bring a

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The women’s cross country team dominated this weekend.

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