Today's paper: Wednesday, Oct. 9

Founded 1876 daily since 1892 online since 1998

Wednesday october 9, 2013 vol. cxxxvii no. 84

WEATHER

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } HIGH

LOCAL NEWS

LOW

All clear.

66˚ 53˚

Mostly cloudy skies in the day and night. chance of rain: none

Follow us on Twitter @princetonian

In Opinion

Benjamin Dinovelli urges us not to rush things, and Barbara Zhan discusses the pitfalls of upward social comparisons. PAGE 4

Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: Career Services teaches sophomores how to land their dream internships.

36 University Pl.

The Archives

Oct. 9, 1972

New Jersey voters face casino gambling choice due to change in the New Jersey Constitution.

On the Blog Ben Dinovelli previews the Supreme Court’s upcoming affirmative action case, ‘Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.’

On the Blog Emily Tseng reviews ‘Bitter Rivals,’ the new album from noise-pop duo Sleigh Bells.

News & Notes Chinese activist accepts fellowship at conservative Princeton research center

chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng has accepted a three-year fellowship at the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative research center in Princeton.

Chen will join University politics professor Robert George, who is the Herbert W. Vaughan Senior Fellow at the Institute. He will also be a visiting fellow at the Catholic University of America and an adviser for the liberal advocacy group Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice.

In 2012, Chen, a blind selftaught lawyer, was placed under house arrest following a four-year prison sentence for challenging government authorities’ inappropriate enforcement of China’s one-child policy. In April 2012, he escaped to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he was allowed to remain for six days. In May, the Chinese government allowed Chen leave to study at an American university.

Chen took the position of fellow at the New York University School of Law, but he later accused the university of succumbing to pressure from the Chinese government by ending his fellowship a year early. Chen alleged that NYU was worried his stance against the Chinese government would harm its presence in China.

In March 2013, Chen was presented with the James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service by the American WhigCliosophic Society in a ceremony on campus.

Nassau Hall reopens after gunshot report deemed unfounded

By Marcelo Rochabrun associate news editor

A report of gunshots at Nassau Hall prompted the Princeton Police Department to close the building and search it for two-and-a-half hours Tuesday evening. The reports were ultimately determined to be unfounded, no injuries were reported, and the area was cleared at around 10:25 p.m.

The University did not shut down campus during the incident. Events in buildings nearby were allowed to continue.

The University’s Department of Public Safety received a phone call at 7:55 p.m. from an individual within Nassau Hall who reported hearing gunshots in the building, according to University Spokes-

person Martin Mbugua.

Emily Wibberley ’14 was approaching FitzRandolph Gate in front of Nassau Hall at around 8 p.m. when Princeton police cars pulled up.

“Guys got out with rifles drawn and went onto campus,” Wibberley said. “They were around the gates for a while, and then they walked back in and went into Nassau Hall.”

The University community was first informed of the situation starting at around 8:40 p.m., through the Princeton and Telephone Email Notification System.

The PTENS message alerted the University community of the reports of gunshots at Nassau Hall and instructed everyone to stay away from the building.

See ALARM page 2

LILIA XIE :: ASSOCIATE PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

The University’s FitzRandolph Gate was closed during police investigation of gunshot reports.

STUDENT LIFE

Sixth U. meningococcal case is recovering

By Emily Tseng managing editor

The female student who received treatment at a local hospital last week for meningococcal disease has been discharged from hospital care. She is currently recovering, according to New Jersey Department of Health spokesperson Daniel Emmer.

The bacteria responsible for her illness has been identified as serogroup B Neisseria meningitidis, Emmer said. Hers is

the sixth University-affiliated case of illness caused by this strain of meningococcal bacteria since March. The student developed symptoms on Oct. 1, Emmer said. She reported to University Health Services on Oct. 2 with a high fever and was referred to a local hospital for treatment.

As a preventive measure, 22 individuals who had come into close contact with her were identified and offered antibiotic treatment at UHS, University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua

added.

Mbugua declined to disclose whether the student has returned to campus, citing privacy concerns.

The student’s case of meningococcal disease is distinct from the five previous cases of meningitis in the outbreak. All six cases are now confirmed to have been caused by the same strain of bacteria. In the most recent case, however, the bacteria did not infect her brain and spinal cord but instead resided in her bloodstream, according

to an email sent to residential college advisers Tuesday morning by Dr. Peter Johnsen, director of medical services at UHS, and obtained by The Daily Princetonian.

Meningococcal infections that manifest in the bloodstream are referred to as “meningococcal disease,” while infections of the coverings of the brain and spinal cord, called the meninges, are called “meningitis.” “Individuals may become very ill with meningococcal disease without having

the signs we usually associate with meningitis, like headache and stiff neck,” the email to RCAs stated.

“Our most recent student was experiencing only a high fever and did not present with signs of meningitis,” the email added. “Because of this, we are encouraging all students who think they have a high fever to report to UHS.” The University issued a new health advisory email Tuesday afternoon to all undergraduate See OUTBREAK page 3

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S

By Loully Saney

Eisgruber ’83 weighs field study in thoughts on grade deflation

Ezra Klein speaks on “why Washington is horrible” staff writer

Award-winning Washington Post reporter Ezra Klein spoke on increasing polarization in Congress and ways to fix systemic problems within the government in a lecture titled “Why Washington is Horrible (In Charts)” Monday night.

“Americans agree. Congress is horrible,” he said.

“Congressional polarization has never been as high as it is now.”

Klein called politics “a war in which every procedural part of artillery is used to

block the other side.”

“You don’t have to agree that things are working badly,” he added. “The only thing that is fundamentally true is, no matter where you are on the political spectrum, American politics has, in important and fundamental ways, changed in the last couple of decades.”

He said that while the founding fathers designed the U.S. government so it would be difficult to make quick structural changes or pass new legislation, they did not envision the need for a supermajority.

If James Madison or Al-

exander Hamilton wanted a filibuster, they would have made one, Klein said. From the New Deal to Vietnam, parties have abstained from filibustering each other, Klein said, but the practice has now become commonplace. Polarization, a phenomenon absent in those times, has fundamentally changed the way Congress operates for the worse, he said.

Citing Texas U.S. Congressman Pete Sessions, Klein explained that the purpose of the majority — in Congress and in other See WASHINGTON page 2

By Teddy Schleifer senior writer

University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 said “lots of concerns” have been raised by a field study released this summer showing graduate schools do not consider an undergraduate program’s grading policy when evaluating applicants.

Eisgruber, who charged a University committee Monday with a wide review of the University’s 10-year-old grade deflation policy, mentioned the study in an event that night with New York City alumni. In

an interview with former ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson ’65, Eisgruber said the study raised concerns that the policy increases the difficulty of seniors landing a job or a spot at a top graduate school.

The study, published by UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School researchers in PLOS ONE in July, argues that students who come from schools with tougher grading standards are less likely to earn admission to choice graduate schools. The researchers had admission professionals evaluate undergraduates for See DEFLATION page 2

ACADEMICS

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize recipient, claims momentous change in Latin America

By Charles Min contributor

SHANNON MCGUE :: SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa speaks on Latin America.

Latin America is improving and undergoing transformative democratization, Mario Vargas Llosa, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, said in a conversation Tuesday with visiting lecturer in the Program in Latin American Studies Enrique Krauze Kleinbort. The two discussed the wide scope of culture and politics within Latin America.

Vargas Llosa, who is also a visiting lecturer in the Lewis Center for the Arts, explained

that comparing the Latin America of today with that of 20 or 30 years ago offers signs of these momentous changes within Latin American history.

“Latin America is improving. We have more democracy; we have large consensus on what kind of economic policies we need to develop and become modern and successfully fight poverty,” Vargas Llosa said, adding that the transformation of most Latin American nations in recent years has been formidable. “Poverty has diminished; in statistical terms, the poverty level is still large,

but the way which the middle classes have been grown in the country is fantastic.”

Vargas Llosa cited Uruguay’s economic success as a model for the rest of Latin America.

He said that the country has seen very liberal social reforms, including gay marriage and gay rights. “Not liberal in the American sense,” he added to the audience’s laughter.

Despite the promising improvements in the last few years, both Vargas Llosa and Krauze acknowledged one of the largest obstacles to Latin See LLOSA page 3

The Daily Princetonian

page 2

Wednesday october 9, 2013

Minority shouldn’t want majority to fail, Klein says No injuries, no evidence WASHINGTON of gunshots on campus Continued from page 1

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

domains of life — is to govern, but the purpose of the minority is to become the majority in American politics. In spite of this, there is no incentive for the minority to cause failure for the majority, he said.

“It makes sense for the minority to have the incentive to see the majority fail but not the power to make them fail,” Klein said.

To explain the notion that the minority never wants the majority to fail, Klein provided an analogy to his household with his wife and two terriers. He said that while he is the minority in his household and he has the ability to destroy the life

of his household at any moment, that is not something he wants to do.

“I could leave here now and drop the mic and go and blow our savings on hookers,” Klein said by way of illustration.

Polarization in Congress has sharply reduced the amount of legislation passed, Klein said, which could have very negative consequences. The White House does not have much power to fix these problems of government; instead, the impetus for change must come from Congress, he said.

Klein outlined several ways the problems in the government could be fixed.

Among these options is the elimination of the debt ceiling, an institutional mecha-

nism that he compared to a ticking time bomb. He also suggested that Congress could improve the way government operates by making it easier for majorities to vote, undo gerrymandering and get rid of the filibuster.

Klein currently works as a blogger and columnist for The Washington Post, a columnist for Bloomberg View and a contributor to MSNBC. He manages the “Wonkblog” at The Washington Post, where his writing focuses largely on health care and budget policy. Klein formerly wrote and blogged for the political magazine The American Prospect.

“The core of my work is in blogging. It’s the stuff I love the most,” Klein said of his passion for blogging. He said that blogging doesn’t

restrict journalism in ways that print or even broadcast journalism limit the number of words that a journalist can write.

“I am free from the fundamental of scarcity of journalism, of pages,” he said.

The lecture and subsequent question-and-answer took place in Whig Hall. The event was sponsored by the American Whig-Cliosophic Society.

CORRECTION Due to a production error, the caption of one of yesterday’s photos misstated the name of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. The Daily Princetonian regrets the error.

ALARM

Continued from page 1

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

The blue light tower speakers were not used to broadcast information on Tuesday night.

DPS created a perimeter around Nassau Hall in accordance with standard University protocol for situations involving firearms. DPS is an unarmed force that includes sworn police officers. Local Princeton police officers armed with rifles entered the building and later issued the all-clear alert.

Several events scheduled in the evening were allowed to continue throughout the twoand-a-half-hour incident without interruption.

The front doors of Frist Campus Center were locked at one point during the search, students in the area said. A concert by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra at Richardson Auditorium, which is located next to Nassau Hall, continued uninterrupted throughout the incident. Those in attendance were allowed to leave the building once it was over.

The University used yellow caution tape to block portions the perimeter around Nassau Hall.

As the police searched Nassau Hall, lights throughout the building turned on and off, particularly in the president’s suite and on the on the western side of the second and third floor.

Students in Firestone Library learned of the incident through the emergency notification communications.

Several students on the upper floors descended to the basement floors for safety until they received the all-clear message.

Students attending a lecture by journalist Ezra Klein in Whig Hall, directly behind Nassau Hall, were evacuated into the basement’s building immediately after Klein concluded the question-andanswer portion of his presentation and were told to remain there until receiving an “allclear” signal. Klein, a Washington Post reporter, stayed with students in the basement, chatting and answering questions until Whig-Cliosophic Society president Matt Saunders ’15 told the basement gathering that DPS officials had told him students should consider parts of the University south of Whig Hall to be clear and safe to move across, according to reporters at the scene.

Police officers from Plainsboro, Lawrence and West Windsor, as well as the Mercer County Sheriff, assisted the Princeton police on site. At least two helicopters were also seen hovering directly above Nassau Hall.

News Editors Patience Haggin and Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic and Managing Editor Emily Tseng contributed reporting.

New study a factor in review of grading policy DEFLATION Continued from page 1

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

admission to graduate schools and presented two main pieces of information: the student’s GPA and their school’s GPA distribution. The researchers found that admissions professionals displayed “correspondence bias,” or the downplaying of the context in which a task is performed.

“Instead of picking people who are most above average, you pick people from the most advantageous situations,” Samuel Swift, the lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at Berkeley, said. “The participants failed to take that situational information into consideration, so they ended up picking people with the highest GPA regardless of the situation they were coming from,” he explained.

Archival data from the field complemented the experiment. Swift’s team collected the data on 30,000 admission decisions to four top MBA programs and recorded how applicants’ GPA relative to the rest of their class affected the admission decision. Admissions decisions disregard the leniency of the grading system, they found.

The research also found correspondence bias in a different context: promotion decisions in a company. In a hypothetical business scenario, participants play the role of an airline CEO and unfairly favor the promotion of airport managers who have a higher percentage of their flights leave on time — even if accomplishing that task is harder at some airports than others.

While the effect of grading policies has been illustrated before in lab studies, Swift said July’s study is the first time an effect has been shown in the field. Eisgruber signaled Monday that Swift’s study might make an imprint on his thinking.

“I have not seen evidence that shows [that the grading policy hurts Princeton seniors],” Eisgruber said on Monday night.

“On the other hand, there’s a Harvard Business School study out there that’s raised a lot of concerns about that.”

Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Clarence Rowley ’95, who is chairing the committee rethinking grade

deflation, said Tuesday he had not heard of the study prior to Eisgruber’s remark, though he hopes to begin to review evidence soon.

“I’d certainly be interested in any evidence about the effects of the grading policy on students’ careers after Princeton, whether it’s employment or graduate schools,” Rowley said.

The 2004 policy — the brainchild of then-Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel — stipulates that no more than 35 percent of students in any department should earn an A in a course. Though the University consistently states that the target is not a quota but an expectation, many undergraduate students have voiced displeasure with the policy.

USG president Alex Lenahan ’07 and Malkiel argued publicly over the policy in a series of campus-wide emails in 2006.

Lindy Li, the president of the Class of 2012, said the policy has been a common gripe at many formal dinners she has attended alongside the University’s Board of Trustees.

“It’s always something that comes up. It’s an issue that won’t go away,” Li said. She has come into contact with at least 10 members of her class who refuse to donate to the University because of the policy, she said.

The trustees have advocated for a re-examination of the policy over the past three to four years, Li said, though young alumni have not made organized appeals to them. Li said that while she had heard of the new study before, classmates of hers have made similar arguments about the comparative disadvantage they face in job and graduate school markets.

“The applicant pool we’re immersing ourselves in isn’t just filled with Princeton people — it’s filled with people of all different walks of life who don’t necessarily have this extra challenge to overcome,” she said. “Things would be different if our peers followed along.”

Li’s opinion was shared by Swift, who said the implication of his research was that grade deflation policies harm schools that go it alone.

“Instead of using your GPA, what you should really have is a class rank or a percentile,” he said. “If all schools did that, we wouldn’t have to worry about the problem.”

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday october 9, 2013 U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S

New administrative center in Beijing to give U. legal standing in China

By Austin Lee staff writer

The University has plans to open a new administrative center in Beijing at Tsinghua University

by November 2013. Based in the Tsinghua campus, the center will serve all Princeton-affiliated faculty and students going to China for research, studies or work, Vice Provost for International Initiatives Diana Davies said.

The center will allow the University to more easily and extensively assist faculty and students abroad in China, Davies explained.

The center’s services will include helping faculty find temporary housing, providing students interning in China with a point of contact and facilitating University departments’ ability to conduct interviews with potential graduate students in China, she said.

“The reason that we’re doing this in China is because of the amount of traffic we already have running through there,” Davies said. “[The center] will serve all of the Princeton-affiliated faculty and students who are going to China to study or to do internships or to conduct research.”

The University’s Council for International Teaching and Research, a group of faculty and administrators dedicated to the advancement of exchanges with institutions abroad, took the lead in developing the new center, according to Council director and professor of history Jeremy Adelman. He explained that the project has its roots in the 2007 “Princeton in the World” report, in which a faculty task force — known as the Adelman-Slaughter Committee — recommended the creation of a blueprint to transform Princeton into a global university by expanding academic ties with

other countries.

China was a major point in the committee’s discussions, Adelman said, and the Council has considered creating a presence in China since 2008. He explained that the University already has many academic links with China, noting that from 2002 to 2011, the top two foreign undergraduate institutions sending graduate students to Princeton were both based in Beijing: Tsinghua University and Peking University.

“I think it’s safe to say that China is probably the country with which we have the single most intense intellectual exchanges,” Adelman said. “It’s eclipsed Canada, France, the U.K. There are so many faculty and students now going back and forth, at all levels, from undergraduate to graduate students.”

The center will provide the University with a base in China, which will give it legal standing in the country, Adelman explained. As a result, the University will be able to more effectively provide services, such as renting facilities, hiring instructors and a variety of other day-to-day tasks that require a legal presence in China.

“If Princeton wants to scale up in China, which we want to do, we have to be legally incorporated there,” Adelman said. “Whether it’s hiring research assistants or hiring language instructors, we’re in a position where we have to do this.”

Davies elaborated on these benefits, adding that the center would allow for a full infrastructure to deal with the needs of Princeton faculty, students and programs in China.

“It’s not just the number of people or the number of collaborations or programs,” Davies said of the University’s choice to open a center in China. “The other things that need to be factored in are the

complexity of working in China as opposed to other locations. So, we may have, for example, a lot going on in the U.K., and in fact we do, in places like Oxford and the Royal College of Music and so on, but the U.K. tends to be a place that’s fairly easy to operate internationally.”

Tsinghua University was chosen as the site of the center because of the close ties the University already has with Tsinghua, Davies said. Two former Princeton faculty members, computer science professor Andrew Yao and life science professor Yigong Shi, are now members of the Tsinghua faculty. One current member of the Princeton faculty, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering Chung Law, also helps run a combustion energy research center in Tsinghua.

Law, who assisted the Council and the University in their negotiations with Tsinghua, said he believes the new center will allow the University to set up far more structured, long-term programs.

“Right now [the programs in China are] more sort of individual faculty members going back and forth,” Law said. “If you do have this center there, there will be a home in Beijing, in Tsinghua, for Princeton.”

The lease agreement for the center has already been signed, Adelman said, and most of what remains to be done is related to interviewing and hiring staff. He estimates that the center will be up and running by November.

“There is a physical location.

We have signed a legal agreement; we are legally incorporated. All of the formal infrastructure is there; it’s really, at this stage, a matter of getting the right bodies.” Adelman said. “That’s what we’re doing right now.”

Corruption blocks democracy, Llosa says LLOSA

Continued from page 1

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

America’s full democratization is corruption.

“The tradition has a way of misunderstanding natural laws as ‘do whatever you wish,’ ” Vargas Llosa said.

He added that Latin American intellectuals have had a substantial impact on the vulnerability of governments on the continent. This is because the general population relied on intellectuals to adopt governmental policies that best suited their interest, but when these poli-

cies failed the government was opened to corruption, he said.

“Common people were trying to discover in their own way what would be the best way to bring about democratization …

Intellectuals were influential, but they promoted the wrong [policies],” Vargas Llosa explained. Even critical thinkers, he said, could “fail miserably” in their fight.

Krauze, however, downplayed the influence of intellectuals on the common people, saying that very few intellectuals spoke in favor of what the common people wanted.

Vargas Llosa also pointed to

Latin American attitudes toward the law as an obstacle in the development of the region.

“We [Latin Americans] don’t feel the need or the moral obligation to respect the laws,” he explained. “We just follow the laws because of its mandate.

It’s a tradition that is strong in Latin America.”

The lecture, titled “Politics and Culture in Latin America,” was part of the Spencer Trask Lecture Series, which brings distinguished scholars to deliver public lectures at the University and was co-sponsored with the Program in Latin American Studies.

page 3

U. encourages students with “high fever” to seek treatment at UHS OUTBREAK Continued from page 1

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

students emphasizing that “any student with a high fever” should seek treatment at UHS. The email also stated that someone with meningococcal disease could present only a high fever with no other symptoms.

The email to all students also emphasized that students may become ill with meningitis without coming into contact with someone who is sick. It is estimated that 5 to 25 percent of the general population carries the bacteria without developing symptoms, the email said.

Previous health advisory emails sent by the University to all undergraduate students defined the symptoms of bacterial meningitis as “high fever, headache or stiff neck” and ad-

vised students who experience these symptoms to seek medical treatment at UHS. With the outbreak of each case, the University has issued a health advisory reminding students to pay increased attention to personal hygiene practices.

The University has also posted reminders with information on meningococcal disease in bathrooms and dining halls, in addition to providing alcoholbased hand sanitizer and tissues at all event headquarters and meal sites.

The first and second University-associated cases this year, reported on March 25 and April 12, involved a female student and a male visitor to campus, respectively. The third and fourth cases, reported May 7 and May 20, both involved male students.

The New Jersey Department of Health designated the cases as an outbreak after the fourth case.

In the fourth case, the student developed symptoms while traveling from campus to his home state, where he was hospitalized.

The fifth case involved a male University student hospitalized abroad after being diagnosed with bacterial meningitis during an academic trip. All five students have since recovered, according to a health advisory email sent to students Oct. 3.

The New Jersey Department of Health is not changing its recommendations to Princeton at this time, Emmer said.

State law requires all college students living in dorms to receive a licensed meningococcal vaccine, which protects against many strains of the bacteria but does not protect against serogroup B. Cases of meningococcal infection can be treated with common antibiotics.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: The Daily Princetonian is published daily except Saturday and Sunday from September through May and three times a week during January and May by The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc., 48 University Place, Princeton, N.J. 08540. Mailing address: P.O. Box 469, Princeton, N.J. 08542. Subscription rates: Mailed in the United States $175.00 per year, $90.00 per semester. Office hours: Sunday through Friday, 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Telephones: Business: 609-375-8553; News and Editorial: 609-258-3632. For tips, email news@dailyprincetonian. com. Reproduction of any material in this newspaper without expressed permission of The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc., is strictly prohibited. Copyright 2013, The Daily Princetonian Publishing Company, Inc. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Daily Princetonian, P.O. Box 469, Princeton, N.J. 08542.

Barbara Zhan columnist

W

Barbara Zhan is a sophomore from Plainsboro, N.J. She can be reached at barbaraz@princeton.edu.

page 4

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

You’re doing fine

hen I was in elementary school, my class always had these timed multiplication tests — Mad Minutes. They consisted of 100 multiplication problems, and each person had exactly one minute to complete them. Every week, my class had a competition based on these Mad Minutes, and the winner would get a little prize, usually a colorful eraser or something else that third graders find rewarding. I was always mediocre at Mad Minutes, usually finishing in the middle tier of the class, or, on rare occasions, second or third. Either way, I thought I was pretty good at Mad Minutes. When I went home to tell my mom, I would spin the story to aggrandize my performance. I finished Mad Minutes faster than half of the whole class — I was just that good at multiplication.

What my mom told me was something that changed the way I viewed myself. She told me to look up. Look up at the other half of the class that was beating me; look up at the heights I could reach if I aspired to achieve what my classmates had achieved. This was a principle I carried in my back pocket, especially throughout high school. There was really no measure of how well I was doing in school or extracurricular activities outside of the context of my peers. As much as we try to evaluate ourselves objectively, it’s impossible to remove ourselves from our circumstances. So most Princeton students, including me, strove to be the best in their schools — whether that meant taking more AP classes than others, winning more sports championships than others or some other measure of success. Even though it wasn’t the most objective method of self-evaluation, it was a pragmatic gauge of how well we were doing.

That sort of mindset doesn’t work here at Princeton. Upward comparison doesn’t motivate us anymore; it just hurts. There’s no all-encompassing way to be the best at everything anymore, even if we got close to it in high school. Here, there will always be someone better than you in Latin class, someone else better than you in debate club, someone else who is in the eating club you bickered but didn’t get into. There is no feasible way to “win” the comparison on all fronts because everyone has a leg up over someone else on one front or another. No one at Princeton gets the undisputed title of “best person on campus.”

I hear a lot of worry among students that, in comparison to others, they’re not doing enough, well enough or fast enough.

I hear a lot of students ask each other what internships they’ve applied to and received offers from in order to make these sorts of comparisons, even though hearing other people’s internship successes doesn’t at all change their own. I hear students ask each other what level classes they’re taking, as if other people’s course decisions should impact their own. This competitive comparison doesn’t benefit anyone.

Everybody’s path through college is unique — there is no need to keep up with people who are taking harder classes or getting internships earlier.

Upward comparison is prevalent outside of the academic context as well. There’s definitely the sentiment around campus that students should not only be brilliant, but also “well-adjusted” — have tons of friends, go out to all the parties or be active in the eating club and Greek scenes. This is where “fear of missing out” comes in — students see each other’s glamorized pictures on Facebook and feel inadequate about their own social lives. It’s hard to remember that social media is content-edited: People won’t post pictures of themselves doing laundry or homework, but everyone will put up isolated snapshots of the most interesting parts of their lives. The truth is, everyone has days when they just want to stay inside and watch entire seasons of TV shows consecutively on Netflix. That’s normal. It’s just that few people will show that side of themselves on social media, so it just seems like everyone else is hyper-social.

I used to think Princeton was asking more of me than I could supply, but, in truth, I was asking the impossible of myself by taking the best bits and pieces of everyone else and holding myself to those standards. Just because comparison was a way to measure progress in high school doesn’t mean it’s a viable or accurate gauge at Princeton. Some of our classmates are physics geniuses, some are world-class chess champions and some just seem to know every single person on campus. We can’t be all of them, all at once, and there’s no reason we have to be. Our only gauge should be ourselves — as long as we’re content with the trajectory we’re taking, we’re doing just fine.

Opinion

Wednesday october 9, 2013

The rush of rushing

Benjamin Dinovelli

senior columnist

S

aturday morning, my Facebook feed appeared more like a physics problem set than English, as posts mostly consisted of a wide array of Greek letters. What some may have potentially mistaken for a Facebook language settings malfunction was actually the beginning of sorority pledging.

In 2011, Princeton announced its decision to ban freshman affiliations with fraternities and sororities. In her original announcement, former President Shirley Tilghman noted her conviction that “social and residential life at Princeton should continue to revolve around the residential colleges, the eating clubs and the shared experience of essentially all undergraduates living and dining on campus.”

In doing so, the University hinted at its opposition to Greek life on campus, highlighting that fraternities and sororities created an atmosphere of “social exclusivity and privilege and socioeconomic stratification among students.” Two years later, however, the Class of 2016’s desire to rush seems unfazed.

The question isn’t whether the ban decreased the inf luence of fraternities or sororities on campus; that clearly isn’t the case. The real question is why.

With a whole year for people to build lives and social groups revolving around residential colleges, sports and clubs, why do people still feel the desire to rush?

One reason offered is curiosity.

As Cuauhtemoc Ocampo ’14, former Sigma Chi president, mentioned in a Daily Princetonian news piece, restricting rush for

freshmen may have actually turned Greek life into “a forbidden fruit kind of thing.” Since the option to rush is withheld from freshmen, the next year they “want to know what this organization is about, and so they come in large numbers.” Others suggest that people rush because of their friends, wanting to find a group of like-minded people through Greek life.

However, I tend to disagree.

There is a reason that we subjected ourselves to the tiring process of Ivy League college applications.

There is a reason that we subjected ourselves to the grueling process of tryouts for musical groups, debate teams, comedy groups, club sports or even The Daily Princetonian itself. We like being judged favorably, and one way to measure ourselves is by the exclusivity of what we do.

After finishing a full year at Princeton, you realize that Princeton isn’t perfect: There’s stress, lack of sleep and work that you feel completely incapable of accomplishing. The optimistic aura of ivy-clad towers, free food and smart people is replaced by reality. You realize that fitting in or climbing the networking ladder is not only important, but also can be difficult.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone is a die-hard social climber or that people don’t do these activities out of legitimate interest in writing, singing or playing a sport. I think that people do. However, there is a reason that a lot of people try out for Fuzzy Dice or Quipfire yet won’t consider joining an alternative, non-tryout improv comedy group like Lobster Club.

Students already have so many commitments, yet they are still drawn to the allure of Greek life. It appears that the answer may be positive judgment. Who doesn’t like to

be specially chosen among a group of your fellow peers based on your qualities? After all, being prepared for the judgment of others has real applications, such as future job interviews.

However, there is a fundamental difference between applying for a job or musical and rushing for Greek life. One is based on your talent. The other is based on your personality. When we value ourselves based on how others judge our personalities, we cross into dangerous territory.

The tangible is quickly replaced by the subjective.

I’ll admit, nothing is absolutely wrong with forming opinions about others based on personalities. As humans, we unintentionally do it all the time.

However, being formally judged is a completely different manner. On campus, we are so obsessed with what clubs we are in, what classes we have taken or what internships we have held, that we overindulge in a gluttonous contest to see who can accumulate the longest, fanciest resume. Because of this, Greek life transforms from a form of brotherhood or sisterhood into an important status symbol.

With little cost to rush, it is easy to see why so many are drawn to the race to the top.

Exclusivity isn’t necessarily bad, but an indulgence of it is.

We should avoid using Greek life merely as a means to boost our social standing. As the rush season comes to an end, we should be careful not to become too concerned about whether we did Greek life or not. It can be fun; it can be disappointing. In the end, though, there is much more to life than the number of Greek letters that fill our Facebook pages.

Luc Cohen ’14

editor-in-chief

Grace Riccardi ’14

business manager

managing editor Emily Tseng ’14 news editors Patience Haggin ’14 Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic ’14 opinion editor Sarah Schwartz ’15 sports editor Stephen Wood ’15 street editor Abigail Williams ’14 photography editors Monica Chon ’15 Merrill Fabry ’14 copy editors Andrea Beale ’14 Erica Sollazzo ’14 design editor Helen Yao ’15 web editors Sarah Cen ’16 Adrian De Smul ’14 multimedia editor Christine Wang ’14 prox editor Daniel Santoro ’14 intersections editor Amy Garland ’14 associate news editor Catherine Ku ’14 associate news editor for enterprise Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 associate opinion editors Richard Daker ’15 Tehila Wenger ’15 associate sports editors Damir Golac ’15 Victoria Majchrzak ’15 associate street editors

Urvija Banerji ’15 Benjamin Dinovelli is a sophomore Catherine Bauman ’15 from Mystic, Conn. He can be reached associate photography editors at bjd5@princeton.edu.

Conor Dube ’15 Lilia Xie ’14

Marks of a Tiger

vol. cxxxvii

Caresse Yan ’15 ..................................................

associate copy editors Dana Bernstein ’15 Jennifer Cho ’15 associate design editor Allison Metts ’15 associate multimedia editor Rishi Kaneriya ’16 editorial board chair Ethan Jamnik ’15

NIGHT STAFF 10.08.13 news Monica Chon ’15 copy Lily Lesser ’17 Marlyse Viera ’17 Anqi Dong ’16 design Morgan Taylor ’15 Gerardo Lerena ’16 Jean-Carlos Arenas ’16

On loving college (or not) Shruthi Deivasigamani columnist

T

he summer after freshman year, I reconvened with my friends from home to rehash details of the first year out of what would supposedly be the greatest four in our lives.

We aggressively agreed with each other: Yeah, man, college is the best. It’s so great. I am having so much fun. And then one friend sighed: “Actually, I hate it. I’m thinking of transferring.”

There was a silence. For most of us, college had been the shining beacon of hope at the end of the tunnel. It represented unlimited freedom, no parents, no curfews, classes you loved and living 40 feet away from your best friends.

After having the idea built up so much, incoming freshmen expect their college experiences to be positively utopian. The idea of not loving college with ever fiber of your being is practically sacrilege.

And yet, college is built up so much that it’s arguably impossible for reality to ever

measure up to the fantasy.

No one ever dreams of the hard parts, though we all subconsciously know that they exist. No one dreams of consecutive all-nighters pulled during midterm week to study for back-to-back exams. No one dreams of being hosed from an a cappella group when you were first-chair alto in your hometown’s regional choir or of living with a roommate who sexiles you four nights out of every week.

The thing is, there’s a pretty strong stigma around the idea of being unhappy at college.

You are allowed — even encouraged — to feel stressed, annoyed or frustrated, but never for long stretches of time.

This might go hand-in-hand with the more overarching stigma that surrounds clinical depression, but I think it reaches further than that.

There’s a distinct difference between being depressed and just being unhappy with your college experience. No one wants to admit that they are sad at school, particularly when that school is Princeton and they worked so hard to get here.

But the fact that no one wants to admit being down at school gives rise to people pretending

to love college, sometimes with a more than average amount of enthusiasm. This causes a sort of chain reaction in which no one thinks anyone else is unhappy, making people even unhappier because they feel like they’re the only ones having feelings of doubt about the Great College Experience.

What’s worse is that there’s nothing they can do to change their lives without clueing others into what’s going on.

In 2009 the American College Health Association asked students what their numberone cause of unhappiness is in college, and almost 45 percent said it was academic stress.

Here at Princeton, everyone graduated at or near the top of their high school classes.

While I’d been told many times and objectively knew that college would be much harder, I didn’t actually conceptualize it until I came here and took 8:30 a.m. organic chemistry.

That discrepancy — the feeling that you were once a big fish in a small pond and now you’re a tiny one in an ocean — is enough to cause a serious downward spike in emotional well-being.

The website Princeton FML often features posts from

students lamenting the fact that they let college pass them by. Many feel bad about not enjoying their time here at Princeton, but they only feel comfortable posting about it when the sentiment can’t be traced back to them.

Anonymously, almost half of the student population has admitted to feeling sad at school, according to the 2011 COMBO survey. This even led to the formation of a “People Who Blew Princeton” club that anonymously provides support for people who feel as though Princeton passed them by.

The thing is, if we’re all more honest about the fact that college isn’t a f lawless paradise, there wouldn’t be such a need for secrecy. College is a great time for most people, but not for everyone. The common gripes that many of us brush off resound much more deeply with others and cause a much stronger reaction. To pretend to love college because the alternative is so undesirable is only going to exacerbate the problem.

Shruthi Deivasigamani is a sophomore from Cresskill, N.J. She can be reached at shruthid@ princeton.edu.

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday october 9, 2013

page 5

Rookie forward leads Tigers in goals FEATURE Continued from page 6

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

one of the smallest, skinnier girls on the team.”

In 2006 she was invited to participate in the Olympic Development Program, where young players exhibited their skills for coaches around the country. Lussi said everyone who saw her play was shocked that she was playing on the defensive side.

“They all said, ‘No, you need to go play forward. No way can you play center back,’ ” Lussi said.

So Lussi’s coach started moving her up. She moved from cen-

“Why not have an Ivy League — why not have Princeton — win the College Cup? Tyler Lussi

ter back to defensive center mid; then she played wide for a while and moved to attacking center mid again before finally ending up at the top of the field at forward.

“My coach told me that usually you start as a forward and then you go back, but I went the other

way,” Lussi said.

Her time with Bethesda mattered the most to Lussi during her pre-collegiate soccer career — she has only ever played one year of high school varsity soccer, when she was a freshman. After that, she decided not to continue because she didn’t want to risk being injured and miss playing games for her club. It ended up being a smart choice for Lussi: She garnered attention at a national level, with Top Drawer Soccer ranking her as a four-star recruit.

But long before the women’s soccer coaches at Princeton had Lussi on their radar, Lussi was already scouting Princeton.

Both her maternal grandfather and great-grandfather attended Princeton, and Lussi knew that was what she wanted.

“Ever since I was like, five, I heard stories about Princeton, and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to go here,’ ” she said.

Lussi also considered team camaraderie as part of her decision.

“When I was here at Princeton I said, ‘This is perfect; this is what I want.’ The team is so close,” she said.

On the field, Lussi’s chemistry with junior forward Lauren Lazo is nearly perfect. For the first five games of the Tigers’ season, the duo combined to score every single one of Princeton’s goals.

“I think we work really well up top together,” Lussi said. “We’re always going for the ball, and we’re always going to go hard into tackles.”

Lussi has a real chance of

breaking the 32-year-old program record for goals in a season by a freshman, set by Sue Mooney ’85.

With nine regular-season games left, Lussi needs eight more goals to break the record of 13, but she says her sights are set on some-

Lussi has six goals and two assists in 10 games so far this season. thing bigger — she’s chasing the NCAA Championship.

“I’m very intense. What I really want to do is win the College Cup,” she said. “That’s what I’m really striving to do. Coming in as a freshman, it’s just kind of hard to get that message across, and I think that by showing them how hard I work and my determination, I think that down the line we’ll get across to them because I think that would be awesome.

Why not have an Ivy League — why not have Princeton — win the College Cup? And I think I know what it takes to get there.”

Lussi will continue trying to set the Tigers on that path on Tuesday, when Princeton (4-4-3 overall, 0-2 Ivy League) takes on Brown at 4 p.m. in Providence in search of its first Ivy League victory.

NO ALCOHOL BEFORE TATTOOS

- Kanye West, Twitter.

Have something better to say?

Say it with a ‘Prince’ ad.

Call (609)258-8110 or Email business@dailyprincetonian.com

MERRILL FABRY :: FILE PHOTO

Freshman forward and Maryland native Tyler Lussi has already been named Ivy League Rookie of the Week twice. She is the first Tiger freshman to win the award twice in a season since junior Lauren Lazo.

Done reading your ‘Prince’?

Recycle

Sports

Wednesday october 9, 2013

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S SOCCER

{ Feature }

Sanner’s lone Lussi brings winning ways to Tigers goal pushes Princeton ahead

By Victoria Majchrzak

Associate Sports Editor

By Crissy Carano & Stephen Wood senior writer & sports editor

The Princeton soccer team hit the ground running, following up its season opener against Dartmouth on SaturDREXEL 0 day with PRINCETON 1 T u e s d a yn i g h t non-conference play against Drexel.

The Tigers (4-5 overall, 1-0 Ivy League) had reason to be confident after their 2-1 win over Dartmouth, which was the Big Green’s (4-1-4, 0-1) first loss of the season.

Junior forward Cameron Porter, who scored the gamewinning goal, earned his second-straight Ivy League Player of the Week award.

Sophomore forward Thomas Sanner scored as well, putting him in first for the most goals of any player in the Ivy League so far this season with six.

In their first match-up since 2005, the Tigers and the Dragons proved to be evenly matched, and for the first half neither gained a clear advantage. Princeton managed to thwart Joaquin del Rosario’s shot about

halfway through, but for the most part play was concentrated in the middle of the field. By the end of the first half, each team had taken just two shots, and none had found the back of the net.

Each goalie had a save.

The tie was finally broken in the 58th minute, when Sanner scored, unassisted, his sixth goal of the season.

This was the one and only goal to go up on the scoreboard, ending in a Tiger victory.

While in the first half both Drexel and Princeton took few shots, the Tigers ended up shooting much more frequently than Drexel, taking 13 as opposed to the Dragons’ four shots.

The Tiger offense took control in the second, taking five times as many shots as they had in the first.

This continues the trend of Princeton play, as the team has consistently both shot and scored more in the second half than the first.

The Tigers return to league play this weekend with their first Ivy League away game on Saturday against Brown at 7 p.m.

Winning is in freshman forward Tyler Lussi’s genes. Gustave Lussi, Tyler’s great-great-grandfather, is considered to be one of figure skating’s greatest trainers — he coached 16 world champions and seven Olympic gold medalists. In 2007, her younger brother Hunter, inspired by the Ironman races that their parents

run, became the youngest person in the world to complete a 2.4mile swim, 112-mile bike and 26.2mile run at age 13.

But Lussi refuses to be outdone by anyone in her family. The forward from Maryland currently leads the women’s soccer team in goals with six, twice the total of the next highest scorer, and has scored three game-winning goals this season. With her two assists factored in, Lussi is second in the

Ivy League in points with 14, and she has been awarded Ivy League Rookie of the Week twice already.

When Lussi started playing sports as a child, however, no one would have guessed she would become the goal-scoring machine she is today for the Tigers.

Her parents got her to try playing almost every sport — so many that she says her friends called her house “Camp Lussi.”

“I kind of had to do a little bit

Jen Hoy ’13

of everything, but I stuck with soccer,” Lussi said.

Even when she began playing with the Bethesda Soccer Club in Maryland, she didn’t start out finding the back of the net.

“When I started out at Bethesda when I was seven years old, I started as a center back, because I was really good at anticipating the ball,” Lussi said. “I played that for five years or so. I was probably See FEATURE page 5

Tyler Lussi ’17

% GOALS THEY TOOK PART IN

42 . 3% 61 . 5%

% OF TEAM’S SHOTS

21 . 5% 25 . 7%

SHOT %

33 . 3% 20 . 7%

GAME-WINNING GOALS

5

3 LIN KING :: DAILY PRINCETONIAN DESIGN STAFF SOURCE :RESEARCH BY ASSOCIATE SPORTS EDITOR DAMIR GOLAC

Forward Jen Hoy ’13 left a big offensive hole to fill when she graduated and went to play for the Chicago Red Stars in the NWSL. A look at Hoy’s statistics her senior year compared to forward Tyler Lussi’s numbers show how much the rookie has stepped up just ten games into the season.

THE

AROUND I V I E S The Ancient Eight kicked off their seasons last weekend, and though they had a late start, some of the Ivy League men’s soccer teams have already made a big impact. Below, we try to make sense of the league so far: Penn (4-6 overall, 1-0 Ivy League): The Quakers are certainly not unbeatable — they lost five straight contests earlier this season — but they beat Drexel 3-2 on Oct. 2 and won their Ivy debut against Cornell on Jonny Dolezal’s goal in the 81st minute. Goalie Mark Polkinhorne had seven saves, each one vital in the 1-0 win.

1.

Princeton (4-5, 1-0): The Tigers got off to a rough start but surprised the league when they handed Dartmouth its first loss of the season in Hanover last weekend. Forward Cameron Porter’s header made the difference in that game, and the junior is second on the team with four goals and two assists this season — sophomore forward Thomas Sanner has six goals and an assist. Princeton’s next Ivy match is Saturday at home against Columbia, which holds one of the best overall records in the Ivy League.

2.

Yale (2-6, 1-0): Like Princeton and Penn, Yale’s out-of-league record is unimpressive, but the Bulldogs won their first league game. Last weekend’s win against rival Harvard was exciting but may not bode well for Yale, as it needed a lastminute free kick deflected into the net to top the 1-6 Crimson. The Bulldogs’ next match against Dartmouth will most likely prove even more challenging.

3.

4.

Brown (3-4-2, 0-0-1): Brown also kept its unbeaten streak alive when the Columbia game ended in a tie and has not lost since Sept. 22. Though their offense has yet to score more than two points in a game, the Bears’ defense has kept them competitive this season, and goalie Josh Weiner leads the Ivy League in saves. They will face a team much like themselves in Princeton this weekend before heading to Cambridge on Oct. 19.

5.

Cornell (6-2-2, 0-1): Though it couldn’t hold on to beat Penn in its first Ivy match, Cornell’s defense has propelled it to the best overall record in the league despite a mediocre offense. The Big Red has shut out four opponents in 10 games and has not let up multiple goals in a match so far. Meanwhile, the offense has earned the most corners and taken the most shots of any team in the league, though it is sixth in the league in goals scored.

6.

Dartmouth (4-1-4, 0-1): The Big Green will hope that its recent loss to Princeton, the first of its season, was just a bump in the road as it journeys to Yale and Penn for its next two games. Dartmouth has the makings of an Ivy champion: Goalie Stefan Cleveland leads the league in save percentage, and junior midfielder Gabe Stauber has already proven he can come through in the clutch with two game-winning goals.

7.

8.

Columbia (5-2-1, 0-0-1): The Lions went down early against Brown, came back with two unanswered goals while still in the first half, and then played three more periods of scoreless soccer on Saturday. David Najem, who had an assist in the marathon match, which ended in a tie, is tied with Sanner for the most points in the Ancient Eight. The Lions are rolling: They lead the league in points per game with 1.88 and had won five straight games before the Brown game.

Harvard (1-6-2, 0-1): Little has gone right for the Crimson this season — it has scored only six goals and come away with just one win in nine games. Though things don’t look too good for the Crimson as it heads to Ithaca this weekend, it may get a chance for its first Ivy win when it hosts Brown on Oct. 19.

Tweet of the day

Friday

Follow us

‘Excited to get back on the field for some fall ball action against crosstown rival @TCNJLacrosse’

Check out the ‘Prince’ for a graphic spread that breaks down the football team’s performance on Saturday.

Prince Sports is now on Twitter!

Follow us at

men’s club lacrosse team, on twitter (Tigersclublax)

is

www.twitter.com/princesports

for live news and reports!