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Tuesday november 19, 2013 vol. cxxxvii no. 106

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In Opinion Isabella Gomes advocates theory over application in STEM classes, and Jiyoon Kim considers the significance of names. PAGE 4

Today on Campus 5:30 p.m.: A nondenominational vigil for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines will be held. Firestone Plaza.

The Archives

Nov. 19, 1941 The Department of Health of Princeton and the State of New Jersey sponsored free chest x-ray exams to detect tuberculosis in students.

On the Blog Ye Eun Charlotte Chun discusses the challenges of spending the holidays on campus.

PRINCETON By the Numbers

2 million The estimated number of undocumented immigrants deported by the Obama administration.

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AN EMERGENCY MEASURE STUDENT LIFE

U. to sponsor two rounds of meningitis vaccine

By Emily Tseng The University will sponsor two rounds of an emergency meningitis vaccination campaign for the Princeton community pending a final goahead from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vaccine, called Bexsero, is produced by Swiss-based pharmaceutical company Novartis. Talks on whether to bring Bexsero to Princeton have been ongoing since summer, CDC meningitis and vaccine-preventable diseases branch head Dr. Thomas Clark confirmed.

Bexsero is not yet licensed for use in the United States. On Thursday it received a provisional go-ahead from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration for use only at Princeton.

Two doses of Bexsero are required for maximum immunity: one to allow the immune system to begin developing an immunity to the bacteria and a second one to act as a booster.

The first round of vaccines will be made available in early December, with a second round in February. Specific dates will be announced soon, the email read.

The University will cover the costs of the vaccine for those who receive it. Vaccination will be voluntary, although students under 18 will be required to obtain parental permission before receiving it.

According to CDC guidelines, all Princeton undergraduate students, graduate students living in dormitories and other University community members who have medi-

cal conditions predisposing them to severe meningococcal disease — including sickle cell disease and other illnesses affecting regular spleen function — will be recommended to receive the vaccine. It will be available to those groups only.

“Pending final CDC approval, the University is prepared to accept these recommendations and make arrangements to provide access to this vaccine as soon as possible,” an e-mail announcement sent to the University community read.

Maxim Health Systems, a privately held community immunizer headquartered in Maryland, will administer the vaccines, according to the email. Maxim has previously worked with the University on FluFest, its annual influenza vaccination campaign.

Jason Schwartz ’03, a research associate in bioethics at the University’s Center for Human Values who studies vaccine policy, said the vaccination campaign represented a major response to the outbreak from health authorities.

“I hesitate to say it’s unprecedented, but it’s highly uncommon to have a program like this, particularly one of this scale,” Schwartz said. “[Health authorities] wouldn’t make this decision lightly. It reflects the assessment of gravity of the unfolding public health threat here on campus and experts’ judgment of the benefits of this vaccine on helping to minimize or eliminate this risk.”

Nicole Basta ’03, an associate research scholar in the Department of Ecology See VACCINES page 4

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

ACADEMICS

managing editor

Footnotes to compete in NBC’s ‘The Sing-Off’ the princeton footnotes, one of Princeton’s four all-male a cappella groups, will compete in “The Sing-Off,” NBC announced on Monday. The reality competition features 10 of America’s top a cappella groups who perform popular songs for $100,000 and a recording contract with Sony Music.

“A 50-year-old tradition is holding strong with this Ivy League group — classically trained, perfectly polished and technically great. Although they stick to tradition, they also like to mix a modern f lair,” the press release said of the Footnotes.

The fourth season of “The Sing-Off” will debut on Dec. 9, with the twohour finale set for Dec. 23. The show is hosted by singer Nick Lachey and features celebrity judges Jewel, Ben Folds and Shawn Stockman from the band Boyz II Men.

‘The fastest, most unsettling disease’

One student’s recovery from bacterial meningitis

By Charles Min contributor

On May 6, Peter Carruth ’14 was admitted to the hospital for symptoms of meningococcal disease. Carruth was the third case in a meningitis outbreak that has seen seven people hos-

pitalized with the disease since March. He was hospitalized at the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro for five days before being transferred back to University Health Services at McCosh Health Center for a week and a half of treatment.

“I woke up the morning after spring Lawnparties just feeling really miserable, which I first thought was mostly the hangover,” Peter Carruth ’14 said. “But my headache wasn’t getting any better, and I was still feeling very awful.”

See RECOVERY page 5

Plans for vaccination discussed since summer

By Emily Tseng & Marcelo Rochabrun managing editor and associate news editor

A plan to import a meningitis vaccine not currently approved in the United States for use at Princeton has been in the works since the summer.

The Centers for Disease Control first contacted the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in late July or early August with an informal phone call to initiate the process of bringing the vaccine, called Bexsero, to Princeton, where seven people have been hospitalized with the disease since March.

“We’ve talked for several years that someday there might be an outbreak for which we would recommend or consider recommending a serogroup B vaccine,” CDC meningitis and vaccine

preventable diseases branch head Dr. Thomas Clark said.

“You always think about vaccination,” Clark added. “The art of it is determining when the occurrence of cases starts to suggest that more are likely.”

The University announced Monday that it will approve the Bexsero vaccine for use in the campus community.

The University Board of Trustees discussed at their meeting this weekend whether to allow the vaccine to be used at Princeton. No officials from the New Jersey Department of Health or the CDC were present at those meetings, agency representatives said.

Currently, state law requires college students See SUMMER page 5

Williams Rally calls for release of undocumented immigrant Perez ’84 stays as Executive Vice President

By Jacob Donnelly staff writer

News & Notes

MONICA CHON :: PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

University Spokesperson Martin Mbugua gave a statement to media organizations on Monday.

By Do-Hyeong Myeong contributor

TREBY WILLIAMS ‘84 permanent EVP

Acting Executive Vice President Treby Williams ’84 has been selected to take on her position permanently, University officials announced Monday. Her appointment comes as a departure from previous statements made by both University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 and Williams that Williams was not a candidate for the position.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian in May, Williams stated that she was “not planning on applying for that permanent position.” In September, Eisgruber mentioned that while he was grateful for Williams’ See WILLIAMS page 3

A crowd of 35 people gathered outside Frist Campus Center Monday evening to protest the deportation of German Perez, a Trenton-area construction worker and native of El Salvador charged with illegally residing in the United States.

The demonstrators, carrying signs like “Call ICE!” with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s phone number, and “Every Human Deserves Respect,” also marched through the 100-level of Frist and collected over 120 signatures for a petition by the rally’s end.

Chanting “Free German Perez!” repeatedly, many of the attendees were members of the Princeton DREAM Team, an immigration advocacy group that sponsored the event.

Characterizing Perez as a “father of five with a newborn,” Christina Chica ’15, the keynote speaker, criticized the Obama administration for an immigration system “that has deported 2 million people.”

Since Perez has resided in the United States for eight years, he is no longer eligible to make a claim for asylum, which must be made within one year of arrival.

“What we’re trying to get accomplished right now is not necessarily asylum but to get a delay in the case,” Dream Team member Logan Coleman ’15 said, adding that they are trying to lobby members of Congress to delay Perez’s deportation.

According to Coleman, when Perez was first caught after crossing the border illegally, he was given a court date in California, his See IMMIGRATION page 2

MONICA CHON :: PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Chica ‘15 calls for the release of German Perez at a Monday rally.

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Q&A: David Lisak, Ph.D., on sexual assault prevention

By Jacqueline Gufford & Regina Wang contributor and senior writer

Princeton’s sexual assault statistics in relation to nationwide statistics.

University of Massachusetts professor David Lisak is a clinical psychologist who studies interpersonal violence. Prior to the first session of Lisak’s three-part lecture on sexual assault at Princeton, The Daily Princetonian spoke with him on

The Daily Princetonian: To put this into context at Princeton, more than 15 percent of female undergraduates have reported experiencing nonconsensual vaginal penetration during their time at the University, according to an

unpublished survey. Does this 15 percent figure relate to other college campuses or national trends?

David Lisak: I have to be a little bit careful because it depends very much on what kind of questions were asked, what the time frame was, all those kinds of things which can really affect numbers

a little bit this way, a little bit that way. But, you know, generally speaking, yes, that sounds like it’s certainly somewhere in the spectrum of what most colleges experience.

DP: So, it’s not an uncommon figure?

DL: Oh, no, not at all.

See LISAK page 2

The Daily Princetonian

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Tuesday november 19, 2013

Lisak calls for culture change on college campuses to prevent sexual assault LISAK

Continued from page 1

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DP: Relating to the survey itself, the statistics are based on a self-reported sexual experience survey. Are self-reported surveys reliable?

DL: We’ve been using that methodology for close to 30 years now. Various researchers have done checks on it: so, by getting data from a survey like that and then interviewing a sample of respondents in faceto-face interviews to make sure, for example, “did they understand the questions?”

When you get more information behind the experiences that lie behind their answers, “were they clearly understanding those questions, and were those questions eliciting accu-

rate responses?” And basically what we find is “yes,” with the caveat that, in general, welldone face-to-face interviews actually tend to yield higher rates.

DP: Really? One would think that a respondent who was faceto-face with someone would perhaps play things down.

DL: Well, that’s where I said well-done. That’s one of the wonderful mysteries of social science research — that it’s not mechanical, and it’s not test tubes. A lot relies on the quality of the interview. In the other work I do with a lot of forensic evaluations, basically people bring me in to get disclosures from people of things they have not been willing to talk about for, sometimes, over decades. So the same

thing applies. In these kinds of very human interactions,

There’s no permanent source of funding; there’s no permanent or long-term commitment. david lisak

fortunately or unfortunately, a lot depends on those inter-

actions, so it can be actually higher than our big surveys tell us.

DP: There is a program on campus called “Unless There’s Consent” that’s supposed to educate the student body about sexual assault. Are those programs becoming more common at colleges, and are they having any effect on the rate of sexual assault on college campuses?

DL: Well, I’m not familiar with the details of that program here. There are on virtually every college campus now various kinds of rape prevention education programs.

Generally speaking, those are great things. What we don’t have yet, on any college campus, is the kind of comprehensive long-term rape prevention strategy implemented from

the top, sort of backed by the leadership of the university, that really seeks to not only prevent sexual assault but also to address the cultural elements on campus.

DP: Can you elaborate on what would make such a program comprehensive?

DL: Sure. [For example,] I have a slide from the U.S. Army. The military has all kinds of problems, as everyone knows, with sexual assault. But what this slide is — it’s fairly old now; it’s several years old — is a fiveyear plan, multi-demensional.

In fact, it’s one of the worst PowerPoint slides ever developed because you can’t literally take it in. It is an effort to look ahead five years across many, many dimensions and domains and put into place all kinds of

programs, evaluate those programs, change those programs according to the evaluations and keep moving forward.

DP: So, it’s progressively studying results? Is that what makes it effective?

DL: Yes, and it’s backed by the leadership. The problem we have on college campuses is that somebody will get a grant and then try some innovative program, which is wonderful, but then it relies on funding from the federal government for two years. There’s no permanent source of funding; there’s no permanent or longterm commitment. And that’s what we need to start seeing, because that’s the only way we are really going to develop effective prevention education programs.

DREAM: Perez may face violence if deported IMMIGRATION Continued from page 1

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intended destination. “But plans changed, the only place he had to go was New Jersey. He had no [knowledge of] English, he was very scared and he was not able to maintain that court date. He didn’t know who to call beyond that,” Coleman explained.

“Only criminal offenders who are undocumented should be prioritized, it completely goes against [ICE’s] mandate,” Coleman added.

The ICE has three broad priority areas of immigration enforcement: immigrants who pose a danger to national security, recently arrived illegal entrants, and immigrants who do not leave the country after receiving an order of removal.

Perez falls in the latter category, which corresponds to ICE’s lowest priority of deportation.

Deportation cases, unless appealed, are not part of the public record.

Among the group’s claims is that Perez has a “credible fear” of having gang violence inflicted against him if he returns to El Salvador. Chica said Perez had recollected previous

incidents of violence against his nephew and sister.

“Violence in El Salvador is very indiscriminate,” Coleman explained. “The general population is targeted. Anyone in certain gang-run towns is being targeted. It’s especially bad if you’re a man, especially bad if you have young boys, like he has, who have been threatened.”

The Immigration and Nationality Act, however, requires “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

It is unclear if Perez meets this standard. A call to ICE was not immediately returned.

“I would say that the turnout for the event was very good,” John Parvin ’16, co-chair of the advocacy committee, said.

Chica cited the “last-minute nature” of allegedly accelerated deportation proceedings as a reason for the importance of the event.

She stated that all signatures from the petition would be uploaded to dreamactivist. org and that the DREAM Team would also be attempting to gain more signatures in support of Perez via Facebook.

PHOTOS!

Visit our website to view photos and purchase copies! photo.dailyprincetonian.com

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday november 19, 2013

Williams ’84 appointed permanent executive VP WILLIAMS Continued from page 1

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service to the University, his understanding was “that she intends to return to her previous role in the administration after serving as acting executive vice president.”

After the departure of former Executive Vice President Mark Burstein in June, Williams became acting executive vice president but continued to oversee the Department of Public Safety and the Office of Environmental Health and Safety as she had done in her previous position as assistant vice

president for safety and administrative planning.

Her permanent appointment, approved at a Nov. 16 meeting of the Board of Trustees after a recommendation by Eisgruber, goes into effect immediately.

Williams has worked in the Office of the Executive Vice President since 2007 as director of planning and administration and as assistant vice president for safety and administrative planning. Previously, she directed the University’s Office of Development Priorities.

Her achievements as the assistant vice president for safety and administrative

planning include the consolidation of the independent security functions of the University Art Museum and Firestone Library.

As acting executive vice president, Williams continued the expansion of the Lewis Center for the Arts as part of the construction of the new Arts and Transit Neighborhood.

From 1992 to 2004, Williams served as an assistant U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York and the district of New Jersey. She also spent three years working for Coudert Brothers, an international law firm that went bankrupt in 2006.

The University hired Isaacson, Miller, an executive search firm specializing in the not-for-profit community, to identify candidates for the post. The firm has previously been involved in the hiring of various positions within the Office of Executive Vice President, including vice president for finance and treasurer and vice president for campus life, according to the firm’s online list of past clients.

Williams and Eisgruber were not available for comment on Monday. Representatives of Isaacson, Miller did not respond to requests for comment.

“I DIDN’T DO IT”

LIN KING :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The University Council of the Humanities hosted the forum “I Didn’t Do It: A Conversation About Wrongful Convictions” on Monday.

page 3

Done reading your ‘Prince’?

Recycle

The Daily Princetonian

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Not-yet-licensed vaccine made available MENINGITIS Continued from page 1

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& Evolutionary Biology who studies infectious disease epidemiology and specializes in meningococcal disease, said the timing of the vaccination campaign will help curb the potential spread of the outbreak beyond Princeton’s campus.

“It’s a great strategy, especially with students about to go home for the holidays,” Basta said. “It’s good to get vaccination going as soon as possible.”

The current situation represents a unique opportunity to combat meningitis caused by meningococcal bacteria type

B, which has historically been harder to prevent, Basta said.

Because type B bacteria have a different type of outer coating than types A, C, Y and W-135, vaccines against them have been difficult to develop.

Bexsero is the culmination of over 20 years of work to develop a vaccine against type B, Basta said.

“It doesn’t cover all strains of serogroup B bacteria, but at this stage it’s our best defense against against future cases,” she said.

Bexsero was licensed for use in the European Union on Jan. 22 and in Australia on Aug. 15, but has not yet been approved for use in the United States.

The lack of U.S. approval might

Tuesday november 19, 2013

RIVALS ROAR

be attributed to a Novartis strategy to pursue licensure first in regions where the burden of disease caused by meningococcal B is higher, Basta and Clark said.

The fact that the vaccine had passed through rigorous licensure procedures in the EU and in Australia was enough to convince health authorities that it could be used at Princeton, Clark said.

“We always consider vaccination when there’s an outbreak, and now we have an opportunity to think about a vaccine that could be used,” Clark said. “It’s one that everybody’s been waiting for for a long time — it just isn’t licensed in the U.S.”

SWEET SERENADE

ALICE TAO :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Yale Whiffenpoofs performed with the Nassoons at Saturday’s Yale Jam at Richardson Auditorium.

Your Newsfeed: Baby photos, engagement rings, formals pics and all the latest news.

Like us on Facebook.

MARY HUI :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

The Princeton Glee Club performed at the Centennial Concert in Richardson Auditorium last Friday.

The Daily Princetonian

Tuesday november 19, 2013

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CDC involved in U. meningitis talks Carruth ’14 was third case in outbreak SUMMER Continued from page 1

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to receive a licensed meningococcal vaccination, but current FDA-licensed vaccines only protect against meningitis types A, C, Y and W-135, not B. Bexsero has been licensed in Australia and in the European Union, where the burden of disease caused by serogroup B is higher.

At the time of the first informal request, five cases of meningitis type B linked to Princeton had been reported. The CDC has been involved in the response to the outbreak since May 8, soon after the third case was reported, when the New Jersey Department of Health reported the Princeton cluster of cases to the federal agency.

The incidence of the disease on campus after the summer break prompted additional concern from health authorities, Clark said.

“What was most concerning was the occurrence after the new school year,” Clark said, referring to the sixth case of the outbreak, reported on Oct. 3. “That means transmission is continuing even though students went home and for the most part dispersed over the summer.”

“Outbreaks always stop, and certainly kids going away for the summer should interrupt transmission” Clark explained. “The fact that it didn’t made us worried there would be more transmission.”

Bexsero was licensed in the European Union on Jan. 22 and in Australia on Aug. 15. CDC, state and local health authorities had been in talks with Bexsero maker Novartis — a Swiss-based drug company — about the possibility of using the vaccine at

Princeton since May. Bexsero’s current lack of FDA licensure is simply an indication that Novartis has not actively pursued licensure in the U.S., Clark said. He added that the fact that Bexsero had been licensed for use in the EU was “a threshold that seemed reasonable for everybody’s comfort level.”

“This is not an experiment.

It’s not a study. It’s access to a

This is not an experiment. It’s not a study. It’s access to a vaccine so doctors can recommend it to patients. thomas clark cdc Official

vaccine so doctors can recommend it to patients,” he said.

The process was formalized in September, when the CDC sent a letter to the FDA detailing the situation at the University and asking for guidance on how to make Bexsero available to Princeton.

The FDA responded with guidelines for an Investigational New Drug application protocol.

An IND application is also part of the regular process for FDA approval.

The CDC submitted a type of IND called a “treatment IND” in October. According to FDA

regulations, a treatment IND is meant to make available experimental drugs or vaccines “showing promise in clinical testing for serious or immediately lifethreatening conditions.”

On Thursday, the FDA gave the go-ahead for the CDC’s application, a move that Clark said means the IND is “in place.”

An FDA spokeswoman would not confirm or deny the existence of the IND application Monday, citing agency regulations.

Clark added that the entire four-month process had been “quite efficient.”

“We even had discussions about the IND proposal during the government furlough, because this is what an emergency is,” Clark said.

Since the third case of the outbreak on May 7, the University has sent email health advisories to the student body with each new case informing them of the continued outbreak and encouraging students to take appropriate hygienic measures.

In addition, the Student Health Advisory Board distributed reusable drinking cups to the student body in September.

The red cups said, “Mine. Not Yours.” and were intended to remind students not to share cups with other students. SHAB’s cups were an independent effort, SHAB president Michael Kochis ’15 said, adding that SHAB had no interaction with the CDC or state health authorities.

The male student hospitalized Nov. 10 for symptoms of meningitis in the seventh and latest case is still hospitalized but is improving, New Jersey Department of Health Director of Communications Donna Leusner confirmed. All six previous cases have recovered.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 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.

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RECOVERY Continued from page 1

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Carruth lay in his bed until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Even with a Junior Paper assignment due the next day, he laid down “just sleeping and being sick,” roommate Max Rubin ’14 said. Despite attempts to wake and drag Carruth out to the common room, Rubin’s efforts were in vain.

“He just sat on my couch being incredibly out of it, just trying to sit up and breathe,” Rubin added.

Carruth soon began complaining about an excruciating pain in his feet. Rubin looked and noticed severe blisters and purple bruises all over Carruth’s feet.

“What’s wrong with your foot?” Rubin said.

“I don’t know,” Carruth said.

“Do you want to go to McCosh?”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

Department of Public Safety officers took Carruth to University Health Services that night. But it was late in the evening, and UHS didn’t have any doctors that could examine him, he said.

“They saw me slowly shuffling across the floor, and they were like ‘He’s going to the hospital,” Carruth explained.

After taking Carruth’s temperature and heart rate, he and Rubin were immediately taken to the emergency room at University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro.

Carruth was given a standard examination at the emergency room, but by then “the doctor was pretty sure what it was,” he said. Other doctors explained again to Carruth the major symptoms of the disease and noted that the severe rash on his foot was a clear telltale sign.

He was admitted that instant. Immediately following his hospitalization, the University began contacting Car-

ruth’s closest acquaintances, Rubin said.

UHS asked Carruth’s roommates and friends to develop a detailed list of the names of all who had associated with Carruth for the past two weeks.

This process, known as contact tracing, is a standard part of health authorities’ response to a disease outbreak.

“It was sort of McCarthy trial-ish,” Rubin explained. “We would write down a name and that person would be brought into [McCosh].”

Ultimately, Carruth estimates approximately 50 people were contacted by UHS and told that they should receive Cipro, an antibiotic that is a preventative measure against meningococcal disease. This included the entirety of both the Princeton and Dartmouth club lacrosse teams, with whom Carruth had competed a few days before.

While UHS worked to identify his close contacts, Carruth continued to receive care at UMCPP. He was in the hospital for five days starting Monday, a period during which he received a spinal tap to conclusively diagnose the source of his illness and what he said was a “pretty heavy dose” of intravenous antibiotics.

Carruth was discharged from the hospital on Friday of that same week and moved back to UHS, where he received care for another week and a half. By then he had recovered enough to return to his dorm room, where he finished what was left of the semester.

Even after Carruth was allowed to leave medical facilities, it took a while for his life to return to normalcy.

“Even once I was back in my dorm, I was fairly limited in activities because I couldn’t move quickly or perform the way I did before I was sick,” Carruth noted.

“I also couldn’t lift as much,” he added, referring to his current ability to lift weights.

Carruth missed two and a

half weeks of school, including Reading Period and the first week of final exams. He worked with Dean of Butler College David Stirk to get extensions for his assignments.

He took just one of his scheduled final exams in the spring, postponing the rest until the start of the fall semester.

Carruth is now completely recovered. He has moved past his bout with the disease, but has been contacted by the University this fall to check up on the details of his case as part of the outbreak investigation.

“I know they’re keeping detailed logs of all the information of all the patients — what groups I’m involved in, what eating club I’m in and all sorts of stuff like that — so that they could place any sorts of connections between different cases,” Carruth said.

It’s not clear where he contracted the bacteria that caused his illness, Carruth said, since bacterial meningitis is a difficult disease to track. “They asked me a whole bunch of questions and told me it could be passed through carriers, so there’s no way of knowing who I was around that had it that was carrying it,” he said.

An estimated five to 25 percent of the general population can carry meningococcal bacteria in their noses and throats without manifesting symptoms, a recent University health advisory email said. Because it is possible to become infected from close contact with a person who may not appear to have the illness, the University is recommending all students who experience high fever, stiff neck or headache to report to UHS immediately.

“I was with him all through Lawnparties as well, and he went from being 100 percent perfectly healthy to practically dead in a matter of like 15 hours,” Rubin said. ”It is the fastest, most unsettling disease I’ve seen in my life.”

Isabella Gomes

senior columnist

I

Merging the instructive nature of classes with the application requirement of student organizations would curb the twopronged college experience.

Remembering I’m Asian Jiyoon Kim

contributing columnist

A

couple weeks ago, Benjamin Dinovelli wrote a column titled “Forgetting I’m Asian.” In it, he describes his struggles with the notion of cultural identity as an ethnically Asian student raised by white parents. My situation is not perfectly synonymous to his, but I can relate to his experiences of trying to reconcile a name with a sense of personal and cultural identity. However, my experience is not one of forgetting my ethnic heritage, but rather one of remembering it.

My full name is Laura Jiyoon Kim. Having attended international schools since preschool, it may have been prudent to have gone by my more Western and pronounceable first name. However, throughout my entire life, I have only ever been called Jiyoon by teachers, family and friends.

I don’t recall exactly when I first learned about my official first name.

I do know that it wasn’t until several years had passed since I learned to introduce myself as Jiyoon. As a child, I resented my unfamiliar name. I couldn’t fathom why my parents had given me a name my own mother couldn’t pronounce.

In Korean, there is no distinction between the letters ‘l’ and ‘r’; “Laura” includes both and so gets muddled when uttered in a Korean accent. I eventually learned that my parents had asked a close family friend to give me my “American name.” I came to terms with it but decided that “Laura” just wasn’t a name I felt represented how I identify my heritage and myself.

Jiyoon is the name I grew up with. Jiyoon is the name my parents meticulously picked because of its relative simplicity in Korean,

Isabella Gomes is a sophomore from Irvine, Calif.

She can be reached at igomes@princeton.edu.

Japanese and even English spellings and pronunciations. Jiyoon is the name that lets the world know that I’m Korean, even when my passport is issued by the United States and Japan is where I consider home.

However, as I prepared to leave for college, my conviction to embrace the inconveniences that inevitably come with having an Asian name in a Western academic environment was shaken. Was I prepared to repeat myself over and over whenever I introduced myself throughout the awkward transitional phase when every freshman is trying to learn everyone else’s name? I’d already experienced the mildly horrifying embarrassment of watching a professor struggle to pronounce my name in front of a lecture hall of exasperated students during a summer academic program. I almost thought I would fit in better if I had an American name, instead of one that printed the label “international student” across my forehead. I was even concerned with factors that had little to do the Asian nature of my preferred name and more to do with simple logistical issues. Laura being my official first name, I knew that class rosters, official documents and even the cheesy sign that I was sure I would find on my dorm room door would say “Laura.” My Princeton netID was already set as “ljkim.”

Fortunately, since the beginning of this fall semester, Princeton has implemented a system that allows students to indicate a preferred first name on SCORE. I was spared the burden of having to decide between a sense of identity and convenience.

It was already late August when the email announcement for this new system was sent out, and I hadn’t yet made a decision. I copped out, letting a system make the choice I couldn’t quite make for myself.

vol. cxxxvii

The “American name” is a phenomenon I’ve become increasingly sensitive to in my first few months at a college in the States. Unlike me, there are many Asian students on campus who prefer to be called by an American name. At one of the initial Korean American Student Association gatherings, I was overwhelmed by the challenge of having to learn both American and Korean names. I have friends who have actually chosen their adopted American name as their preferred name on SCORE. For some, an American name is a true preference or what they’ve always gone by. But for others, it’s merely a choice of convenience. In some extreme cases, students pick an American name they like in preparation for an extended period of time at an American academic institution, as though it’s the last item on a checklist of things to pack before hopping on an international flight to college.

I’m not speaking to those who have never gone by, or don’t even possess, an Asian name, or to those who genuinely prefer their American name. But I would like to urge those who have adopted an American name merely for the sake of convenience to consider taking the extra energy and time to introduce themselves by the name they prefer. A name holds power. It is a fundamental form of personal identification. Those who care and who matter will take the time to learn the name you believe most accurately represents yourself.

I, for one, have learned how exactly to explain my name so that others can learn it with relative ease — it’s like June, but with an ‘ee’ sound in the middle.

Jiyoon Kim is a freshman from Tokyo, Japan. She can be reached at ljkim@ princeton.edu.

grades at colleges

experiments that can contribute to the fields in which we are interested. After all, safety, experience and a body of knowledge can only be acquired through study and time. In effect, we’re paying our dues so that we can develop the skills of a respected professional. In this way, labs and similarly, STEM seminars, allow students to shape their thinking so that they will have more polished, directed ways of thinking for when they want to make their own discovery, invention or theory.

Having hands-on projects in science, math and engineering classes may also be highly unrealistic time-wise if they are independent projects. But if these classes assign group projects, then we have to consider the implications of the pass/D/fail option and the lower quality of work that frequently accompanies it. Students who want to take a class for a grade (or are required to for their major) might be placed in groups with students who are not taking the class for a grade. By imposing group dynamics on previously independent courses, students who are required to take a certain class might end up needing to pick up the slack of their group members if those members don’t take the class as seriously. An interactive, application-heavy science course would cause further stress for these students who are already tied down by huge chunks of required memorization.

The distinction between classes and extracurricular activities also allows students a cushion grade-wise. If the application element of extracurricular activities were translated into classes and therefore a grade, students might be less willing to be imaginative and exploratory because they could be punished for trying something new if it doesn’t work out. Because of the fear of failing for taking a risk, students might not make as impressive of a product than if they were doing the same project for an extracurricular. Similarly, students might be discouraged from participating in extracurricular activities that are too similar to class projects that they failed. For example, a BSE student might be less willing to join Engineers Without Borders if a class he were taking in the engineering department had a project similar to those of the club and he failed it.

Merging the instructive nature of classes with the application requirement of student organizations would curb the two-pronged college experience. Students would no longer feel as free to learn in the classroom setting or as free to experiment in the extracurricular activity setting. For students who are encouraged to think “out-of-the-box,” having relatively structured outlets for doing so may be exactly what is necessary to promote “freethinking.”

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Pressurizing our passions n her Nov. 13 column, “Pursuing our passions,” Prianka Misra proposes that classes should “adopt a more applied philosophy and utilize an involved approach to assignments and activities, teaching students the problem-solving strategies that are reflected in the real world.” Misra discusses her experience in Professor John Danner’s interactive and application-heavy class, “Special Topics in Social Entrepreneurship: Ventures to Address Global Challenges.” The class allows students to delve into a “pre-professional realm of academics” by letting them apply the concepts they learn to their own venture ideas. While classes like Danner’s certainly offer students a new approach to learning about real-world subjects such as economic sustainability and entrepreneurship, Misra’s vision of the ideal course is not easily applicable to courses in other concentrations and could even be detrimental to the learning process of students in STEM fields.

Speaking as a science major, many of my classes require substantial amounts of memorization. I often see my classmates cramming weeks before exams trying to memorize the pathways of biochemical processes or the mechanisms of various species interactions. The main goal of these courses is to acquire enough foundational knowledge so that we can apply the concepts in the distant future. While many science classes also have a lab portion, which provides that hands-on experience that Misra advocates, the labs teach simple techniques developed by other accomplished scientists and researchers.

These classes acknowledge that we, as students, are far from having enough of a background in science to create revolutionary

Opinion

Tuesday november 19, 2013

rita fang ’17

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

Luc Cohen ’14

editor-in-chief

Grace Riccardi ’14

business manager

BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 vice presidents John G. Horan ’74 Thomas E. Weber ’89 secretary Kathleen Kiely ’77 treasurer Michael E. Seger ’71 Craig Bloom ’88 Gregory L. Diskant ’70 Richard P. Dzina, Jr. ’85 William R. Elfers ’71 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 John G. Horan ’74 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Betsy J. Minkin ’77 Alexia Quadrani Jerry Raymond ’73 Annalyn Swan ’73 Douglas Widmann ’90

137TH BUSINESS BOARD business manager Grace Riccardi ’14 director of national advertising Nick Hu ’15 director of campus/local adversting Harold Li ’15 director of web advertising Matteo Kruijssen ’16 director of recruitment advertising Zoe Zhang ’16 director of operations Elliot Pearl-Sacks ’15 comptroller Kevin Tang ’16

NIGHT STAFF 11.18.13 news Jacob Donnelly ’17 Lorenzo Quiogue ’17 copy Joyce Lee ’17 Natalie Gasparowicz ’16 Michal Wiseman ’16 Dennis Yi ’16 Julie Aromi ’15 design Julia Johnstone ’16 Sean Pan ’16 Alice Tao ’17

The, like, epidemic Lauren Davis columnist

I

n middle school in England, my friends and I used to entertain ourselves by exchanging overdrawn imitations of the stereotypical American valley girl: “Let’s, like, go to the mall!” “OMG, I like, love, like, that shirt!” Feeling smug, I sniggered and mocked, certain I’d never actually talk that way.

So I was horrified a few weeks ago when I relistened to an interview I had done for a journalism assignment and discovered that the word “like” featured in almost every sentence. As I played back the recording, I hoped desperately that I’d start to sound the way I thought I had during the hourlong conversation: thoughtful, mature and articulate. I didn’t.

I barely recognized myself as I listened to that recording, and not just because it can be strange to hear your own voice. The word “like” had infected the way I spoke like a verbal chicken pox: an ugly, conspicuous blemish cropping up everywhere and anywhere.

I unwittingly used it to fill pauses, link sentences together and modify words.

I used it when I had something to say and when I had nothing to say. Worst of all, “like” had become so reflexive and entrenched in my speech pattern that

I have no conscious memory of ever using it in the interview.

I am not an uncertain person. I am often passionate, and probably talk too much. So I never thought that I could come across as anything other than assertive and confident. I work hard in my written work to condense my points down to the essentials and not add needless filler words. Yet, clearly, my speech does not reflect this at all.

That one little word made me sound young, uncertain and immediately less intelligent.

I don’t notice the word “like” much in a social setting, when chatting with friends. But in a more formal setting — in a class or a job interview — it becomes conspicuous and could have implications on the way we are perceived. Do we really want a verbal tic to compromise the content of our arguments or how respect-worthy we are deemed by our peers, professors and down the line, employers, clients, employees?

The “like” epidemic is rampant here on campus and throughout our generation. Our use of it as a conversation filler is infectious and mutually reinforcing — the more our friends use it, the more we use it and vice versa. Our brains are constantly adapting, subconsciously, to the patterns of speech we hear every day, helping us to fit into our environment

and communicate more smoothly.

I’ve focused on the use of “like,” but there are other verbal trends creeping into our day-to-day communication.

Alternative filler words such as “you know,” “um” or “literally” have also become common. Then there is “uptalk,” when intonation rises at the end of a sentence as if asking a question, or “vocal fry,” a raspy, Kesha-like tone that has recently been observed in women. Everyone picks up a different tendency.

There’s a chance I’m overreacting.

Perhaps it is my British background that makes me so inclined to view these language trends as “bad habits.”

Certain linguists have actually argued that modern vocal trends are important for defining a culture and for improving the fluency with which we interact, even asserting that “like” or “uptalking” are ways of becoming more relatable or assertive. However, the stereotype — especially for young women — remains that these language trends denote insecurity, silliness or immaturity. Despite the linguists’ academic arguments, social perception matters. I highly doubt that any job interviewer down the line would find my excessive use of “like” to be impressive.

Walking across campus over the past few weeks, I’ve made a point to listen in more closely on other people’s

conversations, and I am both reassured and concerned that the majority heavily feature “like.” My similarity to others of my generation explains why my speech has become the way it is, but the incredible prevalence of our thoughtless speech habits also serves as a warning that we ought to be more aware of them. “Like” is at its heart a way of rushing through sentences somewhat thoughtlessly without pausing to deliberate. Perhaps this habit is a symptom of youth mixed with fast-paced modern life — of a generation-wide impatience that is only exacerbated by our ability to constantly check email and Facebook?

I’m not sure, but that’s my working theory.

I’m glad I was shocked by the way I sounded in that interview, as it made me aware of the contrast between how differently I perceived myself when my speech was riddled with “likes” from the way I perceive myself as I write this article. It’s no easy feat to change an ingrained behavior, but I now make a point to try to pause and allow myself time to think about what I want to say, instead of instinctively filling the gap with “like.” Maybe if we all work together, we can beat the habit.

Lauren Davis is a philosophy major from North Hampton, N.H. She can be reached at lhdavis@princeton.edu.

Tuesday november 19, 2013

The Daily Princetonian

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Sports

Tuesday november 19, 2013

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Letting the freshmen play

RUGBY

Tigers headed to National 7s Championship after Ivy title

By Anna Mazarakis staff writer

The women’s rugby team will travel to North Carolina next weekend to play in the USA Rugby National Collegiate Sevens Championship tournament.

The team, which was 5-6 in the regular season and 2-3 in the regular fifteens season, won an automatic bid to the championship after beating Penn by a comfortable 21-10 margin in the final round of the Ivy Championship tournament on campus on Nov. 9.

“It feels great,” vice president junior Cat Lambert said about being able to go to nationals. “Hopefully, we can advance and do really well.”

Lambert converted two tries in the first half, as Princeton jumped out to a 14-0 lead before the half.

The Tigers got to the final game thanks to an exciting victory, which saw them overcome a 7-5 halftime deficit against Yale. The team went 3-1 in the tournament after the Tigers had only one week of practicing sevens rugby. The team had previously had a season of playing fifteens games.

Sevens means that there are seven players per team on the field at any given point, and the game lasts just 14 minutes.

The other type of rugby is fifteens, also

known as rugby union, in which there are 15 players per team on the field, and the game lasts for 80 minutes.

Princeton was not only playing a game in which it had very little experience — it was also missing crucial veteran experience on its roster.

“It was pretty remarkable that we were able to pull out the win with only four returning players out of the 12-person roster,” Lambert said.

There are about 40 people on the entire team — which includes players who play sevens and fifteens. Thanks to heavy recruiting at the beginning of the year, the team boasts an impressive group of underclass players.

“We have a lot of young players that are really working,” senior team president Kristy Giandomenico said. “We’ve got a really strong rookie class, which makes us hopeful moving forward.”

The nationals tournament will take place this Saturday and Sunday and consists of 16 teams divided into four pools.

Each team will play the other teams in its pool, and the two best teams from each pool will advance to the quarterfinals, Lambert explained.

The Tigers are expecting quite a challenge — the pool they drew into includes Norwich University, the defending national champion. The other teams in the

{

SHANNON MCGUE :: SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHER

Freshman forward Spencer Weisz has 14 points in his first two collegiate games.

By Miles Hinson contributor

At big time college programs, there is plenty for an incoming freshman athlete to be worried about. Aside from concerns every freshman has, an athlete needs to adjust to a new system as well as more time constraints than he has ever faced before. Indeed, there are some (albeit few) who would like to have freshmen be ineligible for NCAA competition their first year on campus, allowing them to play only after spending a year adjusting to both new surroundings and new systems.

Of course, fewer people think about these issues these days, when we regularly see freshmen fill in key roles on strong teams.

Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker and every freshman the University of Kentucky has put on the court in the past few years are all prime examples. Closer to home, one can look at the freshman season of Ian Hummer ’13 (6.9 points, 3.1 rebounds, 18.6 minutes per game) and freshman forward Spencer Weisz’s first two games of the season (7 points, 5.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists in 32 minutes per game).

It may come as a surprise to some to learn that there was a time when the aforementioned concerns prevented freshmen from playing at all. Last year was the 40th anniversary of the NCAA’s repeal of its no-freshmen policy. Until 1972, all incoming freshmen were required to play a year on freshman-only teams before entering the ranks of the varsity squad. The NCAA had permitted the participation of freshmen in all sports save football, crew and basketball eight years before, but, cognizant of the financial pressures of supporting multiple teams for a single sport, it finally decided to permit freshmen play unilaterally.

The decision was not well received by Princeton athletics or by the Ivy League as a whole. Head basketball coach Pete Carril saw the decision as “accelerat[ing] the excess amount of male prostitution already going on in most athletic departments.” Many at Princeton had opinions similar to Carril’s — though they may not have phrased them quite as harshly — prompting then-athletic director R. Kenneth Fairman to say, “I don’t think the Ivy League will change its position in the near future.”

And that was the case. The Ivy League maintained its staunch position against freshman eligibility until it faced a two-part dilemma: the decreasing quality of play of Ivy League basketball itself and the increasing financial burden of supporting freshman and varsity teams. In 1974, no Ivy League team re-

ceived votes for a place in the top 25 by the end of the season — something that was unusual for the time.

By 1975, the University was reluctantly beginning to take measures to cut freshman teams in order to decrease costs, though still avoiding freshman entry into basketball, football and men’s crew. As to why these particular sports were still to be upperclassmenonly, then-associate athletic director Sam Howell ’50 said that “the psychic pressure characteristic of a highly publicized sport … is too much for freshmen at an academic institution like the Ivy League.”

It seems that such opinions were hard to shake among the higher-ups of Princeton athletics. It was believed that the issue of freshman eligibility in Princeton basketball would be resolved as soon as March of 1975, just as Princeton was beginning to make its moves cutting the freshman teams. Howell himself predicted that the coach of the freshman team would be departing from the school. However, the current system would not die so easily, and the University was still at an impasse by June of that year, continuing to lose money on the freshman squad.

In the end, the freshman ban could not hold. In 1977, the Ivy League finally decided to extend freshman eligibility to basketball, though still permitting the fielding of JV teams and promising to monitor freshmen competing at the varsity level closely. This decision came at a crucial time for Princeton basketball, as attendance at Tiger basketball games had been hitting new lows and Princeton’s long-held position at the top of the Ivy League was starting to slip away. What was previously a two-team bout between Penn and Princeton had given way to the emergence of other Ivy League schools, with Princeton unable to sufficiently replace the talent it was losing. Some recruits had turned Princeton down in favor of other schools due to the prospect of one-year ineligibility.

The entry of freshman Neil Christel ’82 into the Tiger squad illustrated how much Princeton could be rejuvenated by a strong freshman force. Christel, at whose school Carril had coached in earlier years, was a valuable contributor in the 1978-79 season, playing in 26 games. He scored 6.4 points per game and was second on the team in steals that year and would go on to serve as captain for the Tigers by his senior season.

Though now it seems like a no-brainer, Princeton’s revocation of the freshman ineligibility clause was more a product of circumstances than an idealogical shift. Still, it was a necessary step, both for basketball and for athletics as a whole.

on tap

pool include Georgia Institute of Technology and Davenport University.

“I have faith in our players, and I have faith in our talent,” junior co-captain Stephanie Kim said. “I’m really excited to see how we do up against the defending champs.”

In order to prepare, senior co-captain Morgan Arthur said the team will take time in practice this week to continue to work on plays and conditioning. Giandomenico added that an increased focus on defense is a must if Princeton hopes to succeed in sevens and that attention will also be paid to cleaning up ball-handling and passing skills in practice this week.

“Because sevens requires a lot of sprinting and open tackling, we’re really focusing on knowing when to turn up the speed and when to slow it down,” Kim said. “[The team is] training for being in control of their speed and really working on their spatial awareness because you have the same size field for sevens as you do for fifteens, but you have fewer players on the field so that means you have to cover a lot of ground.”

This will be the third time in a row that the women’s rugby team will be heading to the national championships. The team came in third place in its last two championship appearances.

“I’m just really excited to play,” Arthur said. “I love sevens — it’s a lot of fun.”

}

On Tap with ... Taylor Tutrone

By Victoria Majchrzak associate sports editor

The men’s squash team kicks off its season on Saturday against Franklin & Marshall, and junior Taylor Tutrone will be back on the court for his third year hitting for Princeton. Tutrone recently sat down with the ‘Prince’ to talk about his teammates, tracksuits and Batman.

Q: Where are you from, and what is it like there?

A: I’m from Baltimore, Md. It’s the outskirts of where “The Wire” was filmed, which is like heroin trafficking, but my life’s not quite like that. It’s kind of suburban.

Q: When did you start playing squash?

A: I probably hit my first squash ball when I was like six years old and started getting competitive around 12.

MONICA CHON :: PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR

Q: Did you play any other sports growing up?

A: Yeah, I still play tennis and golf.

Q: If you could be a professional athlete, what would you be and why?

A: I would probably be a professional tennis player. I guess it suits my personality.

Q: Who is the quirkiest member of your team and why?

A: [Sophomore] Nick Barton. He’s like this mysterious character. He’s got a couple of tattoos, and he’s done some funny stuff that I can’t say.

Q: What’s the best part of being an athlete at Princeton?

A: I’d say probably the exercise and the camaraderie.

Q: What about the worst?

A: The worst? I mean it’s like an extra two classes in your schedule.

Q: If your team had to run a triathlon, who do you think would win and why?

A: Probably [senior] Dylan [Ward]. It’d be between him and [junior] Sammy [Kang]. Sammy’s like a machine — he’s like in the Singapore Navy or something — and Dylan’s got the body type for triathlons.

Q: If you were stranded on a deserted island and you could only bring three things with you, what would you bring?

Junior Taylor Tutrone went 8-6 last year in the middle of the lineup for the squash team.

A: Are you talking the Caribbean or like an ice cap in Antarctica?

Q: So who’s better, you or David?

A: Me.

Q: We’re talking “Pirates of the Caribbean” island.

A: Okay, I would bring a dog, an acoustic guitar and a gun.

Q: Do you keep track of your all-time record or something?

A: No, but he would agree.

Q: Why? That’s an odd mix.

A: A dog for company, a gun for protection if it turns out to be crap, who knows, and a guitar because you need something to occupy your mind.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not playing squash?

A: I like to play guitar. I like a lot of old stuff.

Q: What’s the most embarrassing song on your iPod? A: I don’t have any embarrassing songs. I only listen to good music.

Q: What’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you during a squash match?

A: One time I hit [junior] David Hoffman in the face when I was a kid, and he started crying and bleeding.

Q: How old were you? Have you known David for a long time?

A: I was probably 15 or 14. We’ve been right next to each other on the lineup for like eight years.

Q: I hear you’re a huge fan of tracksuits.

Tell me about your fashion sense.

A: I just had them. I own like two or three. I’m a big fan of “The Sopranos,” and there are a lot of badasses who wear them on the show.

Q: Where do you buy these?

A: My mom gets them for me.

Q: What’s your major?

A: Psychology.

Q: If you could bring one teammate to bring along with you to this deserted island, who would you pick?

A: [Senior] Ash [Egan]. Me and Ash are pretty tight.

Q: What’s your favorite squash team tradition?

A: The Batman-Tigers thing before we play. You know the Batman voice?

He does that voice where he says, “Swear to me,” and we say “Tigers” like that. Steve Harrington [’13] started that.

Tweet of the day

Inside

Trivia

‘Remember @Princeton, in “I am Legend” the test vaccine gave the whole population rabies.’

The ‘Prince’ profiles junior quarterback Quinn Epperly of the football team.

Saturday’s victory over Yale for the Tigers marked the 26th time that Princeton had beaten both Harvard and Yale in the same season.

senior linebacker Jason Ray (@YJ43rd) of the football team weighs in on the meningitis vaccine discussion on twitter