Today's Paper: Tuesday, Sept. 17th

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Tuesday september 17, 2013 vol. cxxxvii no. 68

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Announcement

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In Opinion

Shruthi Deivasigamani argues against unpaid internships, and Kinnari Shah explores how our personal politics influence our decisions. PAGE 4

Today on Campus 10 p.m.: Study break for the class of 2017 to learn about on-campus resources. Whitman Dining Hall.

The Archives

Sept. 17, 1993 Cottage Club named in Miller ’93 negligence suit against the University and New Jersey Transit.

By the Numbers

7

Number of students transported for alcohol intoxication on Sunday, the day of Lawnparties.

News & Notes Drug possession case transferred to Prosecutor’s Office

the case of the undergraduate student charged with possession of illegal drugs by the University’s Department of Public Safety will be handled by Mercer County’s Prosecutor’s Office, a representative from the local Princeton Municipal Court said Monday. Joseph Gauvreau ’17 faced a routine court date on Sept. 10, after which his case was transferred to the prosecutor’s office because of the nature of the charges, according to the representative Casey DeBlasio, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor’s office, said they had yet to receive the paperwork for the case but noted that it would likely be received later in the week. The alleged drug remains to be identified and the testing process could take weeks, University spokesperson Martin Mbugua said. He confirmed that the case has also been referred to the University’s Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, which will conduct a separate investigation of the incident. - Associate News Editor Marcelo Rochabrun

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ACADEMICS

Duneier quits Coursera platform By Regina Wang senior writer

Less than a year and a half after the the University first began offering online courses through the massive online education platform Coursera, one of its first and most popular courses will be discontinued. Sociology professor Mitchell Duneier was an early champion of Cousera. His Introduction to Sociology course was profiled in a front page article in the New York Times last November and he even invited some of his online students to visit Princeton. He publicly left the platform this month after he was asked to license his content to other universities, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. As a for-profit company, Coursera hoped to use Duneier’s course content as

part of a blended format of online and face-to-face instruction that could help institutions save money. The platform landed deals earlier this year to offer licensed courses on 10 state university systems, including systems in New York, Tennessee, Colorado and Texas. Duneier’s decision to leave Coursera comes amid a national debate about the role of massive open online courses in traditional college education, especially in cash-strapped state systems that could use the licensed content to save money. But plans by MOOC providers, including Coursera competitor edX, to license their content have also met with resistance. In April, philosophy professors at San Jose State University sent an open letter to Harvard professor Michael Sandel, whose online lectures were See COURSERA page 2

WELCOME BACK BBQ

AURELIE THERAMENE :: STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The LGBT Center hosted a Welcome Back barbeque at Frist South Lawn at 4 p.m. on Monday.

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

STUDENT LIFE

Q&A: Republican Senate Candidate Steve Lonegan

Butler and Pace team up for service initiative

By Hannah Schoen staff writer

Late last week The Daily Princetonian spoke to Steve Lonegan, who is running as the Republican candidate for the late Senator Frank Lautenberg’s seat. He will face off against Newark Mayor Cory Booker in the special election scheduled for Oct. 16. Lonegan spoke about his agenda and expressed confidence in his campaign’s momentum. The Daily Princetonian: How do you feel your campaign has been going, and has your campaign been focusing on any specific constituencies or communities?

Steve Lonegan: The campaign is going extremely well. We’re very focused on the issues of the NSA abuse of power, assault on our individual liberty [and] the failures of the Obamacare system. […] You know, we’re just focusing on those issues. And of course, the president’s failed leadership when it comes to foreign policy in the Middle East is a big issue. So I think the three big issues are Obamacare, the NSA abuse of power — which also includes the IRS abuse of power — and of course our failed Middle Eastern policy. Secondary issues which we all support are just overall economic policy. The people we’re reaching out to

STEVE LONEGAN Senate Candidate

are the people we think are going to be voting. You know, of course, there’s a lot of different groups impacted by the failures. Every single one of us should be concerned about the NSA reading our emails and listening to our phone calls, and you know, now we learn they can break encrypted codes and read all of our See LONEGAN page 3

By Paul Phillips staff writer

Butler College will partner with the Pace Center for Civic Engagement in a new initiative to provide Butlerites with opportunities to become engaged with their local communities. The program, called Building Communities, aims to bring the Pace Center to the residential colleges. Building Communities focuses on four areas of community engagement: Housing, education, arts and culture and environmental sustainability. In the coming week, Butler College will host four evening programs focusing on one or more of these issues. The programs will include documentaries and discussions with experts

on the minority achievement gap. Students will also have the opportunity to sign up for a service trip on Sept. 20 or 21. The projects will include the “Greater Donnelly Documentary,” an opportunity to help make a documentary on the lives of teenagers in the Greater Donnelly neighborhood of Trenton. Another offering will be an “International Coastal Clean Up Day,” when students will help the Sierra Club to clean up New Jersey beaches devastated by Hurricane Sandy. Butlerite Alex Bi ’17 said that he would consider participating in the program. “I’m pretty proud to be a Butlerite and to have my See BUTLER page 2

ACADEMICS

Saitta ’14 discovers new way to distinguish dinosaur sexes By Elizabeth Paul staff writer

Evan Saitta ’14 discovered a new way to distinguish between male and female stegosauruses while completing his senior thesis research in central Montana this summer. Made possible by high-power CT scans of dinosaur stegosaur bone plates and comparisons with tibia bones, the discovery may provide the first evidence for female sexual selection in dinosaurs. Saitta has spent five summers working to uncover fossils at the Little Snowy Creek site. He said that he first observed the sex-specific differences between fossils two summers ago, but only confirmed his findings with CT scans this summer. “In paleontology there has been a very strong quest for finding something called

sexual dimorphism,” Saitta explained, describing the practice of finding differences between male and female behavior and anatomy. He explained that his research likely employed one of the highest-powered CT scans ever performed on any dinosaur fossil. Stegosauruses carry bony plates along their spine that form a protective “body armor,” which are generally broad and oval-like, Saitta said, but some of the bones his excavation crew recovered from the site were tall, narrow and pointed. He explained that he and his mentor, Nate Murphy of the Judith River Dinosaur Institute, were initially baffled by this difference in the plates but that he soon recognized that the differences between plates could suggest the sex of the individual stegosaur. See DINOSAURS page 3

COURTESY OF EVAN SAITTA

Evan Saitta ’14 poses with a fossil at the site of an archeological dig this past summer.

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