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Wednesday february 11, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 8
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In Opinion Coy Ozias revisits the Pledge of Allegiance and Barbara Zhan compares the funding options offered by the University for summer endeavors. PAGE 4
STUDENT LIFE
USG begins event plans for coming year By Katherine Oh staff writer
Today on Campus 4:30 p.m.: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sociology professor Charles Kurzman will discuss “Discrimination on the Basis of Citizenship.” Corwin Hall Room 127.
The Archives
Feb. 11, 1953 Three men pled not guilty to showing obscene movies to Princeton students on campus, with bail set at $500.
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While Undergraduate Student Government president Ella Cheng ’16 made only one specific campaign promise — a Chipotle study break — she said the Undergraduate Student Government will see significant change this year. “The plan was first that we restructure USG, secondly explore and execute projects, both new and old, and then getting the word out better,” Cheng said. Cheng is a former staff writer for The Daily Princetonian. At the USG senate retreat this past weekend, USG members discussed the results from the recent “What Matters” campaign and brainstormed projects based on that information. “In all my experience with the USG, it’s surprising to me, we’ve never actually reached out to students before going to retreats and figuring out what to do for the year,” she said. USG members will publicly announce a more detailed agenda for the year within the next week, including a list of priorities. Cheng said the goal of her campaign was to present a broader plan for how USG might carry out tasks this year,
including incorporating the ideas of students before actually starting to take action. “It’s a multi-step process, and often I think we get stuck at different parts of it,” Cheng said. “As much as I love USG and embrace it and see it as an effective platform, I also knew that it was not reaching its full potential. I really want to loop in and meet with people who are disgruntled, because I want to hear why.” There will now be six members on the communications committee who will help plan focus groups, study breaks, videos and social media. USG also plans to hold more open forums, where students who are not formally part of USG can engage with members, Cheng said. USG is also working on building a new website, USG vice president Aleksandra Czulak ’17 said, adding that she envisions a blog-like format for each committee with regular updates to increase transparency and accessibility. While USG did not begin working on new, more specific projects before the retreat, the new leadership of USG has been working on old projects in the meantime. For example, Czulak is examining why some of See USG page 2
YICHENG SUN :: PHOTO EDITOR
USG president Ella Cheng ’16 begins her term with hopes for restructuring and exploring new projects.
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
PRINCETON By the Numbers
14
The number of museums in the new American Art Collaborative.
News & Notes Cornell student charged with murder of father
Cornell University sophomore Charles Tan was arrested Monday on charges of second-degree murder after allegedly shooting his father, Ling Tan, the Cornell Daily Sun reported. Police responded to a domestic incident at Tan’s home in Pittsford, N.Y., and found Charles Tan and his mother standing in the driveway with his father dead in the house with gunshots in his upper body. Investigators conducted a search warrant of the house early Tuesday morning and found a shotgun. Tan was subsequently arraigned at 6 a.m. and is being held without bail. Tan’s attorney told reporters there was domestic violence in the home for “decades” by the father against his wife and two sons. Police had been called to the home in the past and several neighbors confirmed this as well. Jim Tan was the president and CEO of Dynamax Imaging, a developer of imaging sensing technology. Tan is a student in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Diversity task force to address campus issues By Zaynab Zaman staff writer
The Council of the Princeton University Community Special Task Force on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, which was created on Dec. 8, and its subcommittees have already taken some initial steps to address campus diversity programming and policy. The University is creating the equivalent of 10 full-time faculty positions intended to
diversify the faculty as well as a number of task forces designed to examine the campus culture. Fifteen to 20 people are expected to be hired. The goal of this initiative is to hire individuals who would increase the diversity of different academic departments, Vice Provost for Institutional Diversity and Equity Michele Minter said. She noted that every department is different, so the definition of diversity will vary across departments. She added that the University
does not change or lower its standards in hiring any candidate, regardless of other initiatives. Moreover, students of color are a significant minority on campus, and they face a host of issues and challenges that the committee is trying to identify, according to Ricardo Hurtado GS, who co-chairs the diversity task force’s group on academics and awareness. He said diversity training is a possibility for work coming out of his group, though there
has been some research disputing its effectiveness. “If training is something that we pursue, we would want to make sure that it’s effective training … that maybe has a little more evidence behind it,” Hurtado said. He added he believed the timing of the initiatives is good, because he said he believes students are ready to have difficult conversations about race and diversity. He explained that students are engaging in conversations
with administrators to voice their frustrations and that students turned out in large numbers at the protests regarding recent grand jury decisions following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, both of whom were African-Americans killed by white police officers in highly controversial confrontations. “We are at a point where we have a window of opportunity to create some institutional change, and I think that See DIVERSITY page 2
LECTURE
U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S
U. Art Museum joins Panelists discuss mental health issues newly created American Art Collaborative By Linda Song staff writer
By Shriya Sethsana staff writer
The University Art Museum is one of 14 museums in the newly created American Art Collaborative, the Smithsonian American Art Museum announced on Feb. 2. The goal of the Collaborative is to make the museum collections more accessible and useful by connecting them in new ways, Smithsonian American Art Museum Deputy Director Rachel Allen said. The Collaborative plans to create a diverse critical mass of Linked Open Data, or interconnected bits of structured data, on the Web on the subject of American art by putting the collections of participating museums in the cloud and tagging this data as Linked Open Data, the museum’s press release said. Cathryn Goodwin, manager of collections information at the Art Museum and the University’s liaison with the Collaborative, said that the Art
Museum has been involved in this project for slightly more than a year, adding that involvement in the Collaborative was less formally organized until about nine months ago, when the Mellon Foundation funded a planning grant. Goodwin said the Smithsonian contacted the Art Museum directly to participate in the Collaborative. “We have been active in this kind of data exchange project for many years,” Goodwin said. “We are interested in this kind of research into making collections information accessible.” Allen said that the Collaborative, which began a few years ago when a small group of museums interested in Linked Open Data came together, was very excited to have several university collaborators like the Yale Center for British Art and the Art Museum. “We have large museums, small museums, we have museums that have a bigger context of support in terms of See ART page 3
Love and encouragement play critical roles in facilitating family relationships between parents and children with physical, mental and social disabilities, Andrew Solomon said in a lecture on Tuesday. Solomon is the founder of the Solomon Research Fellowships in LGBT studies at Yale and a professor of Clinical Studies at Columbia University. Solomon, who was awarded the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, discussed his latest work, “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children & the Search for Identity,” recounting his work with families over the course of 11 years in regard to schizophrenia, deafness, autism and sexual identity. Solomon shared many narratives, one of which involved an individual named Clinton Brown, born with diastrophic dysplasia or “dwarfism.” Brown’s parents were told by doctors that he likely would not survive and he was given a dire prognosis.
However, his family took him home, and since then he has undergone 30 major surgeries and became the first person in his family to go to college. “The language we use around these experiences can determine in many ways the outcome,” Solomon said. Solomon also discussed his own journey in coming out as an LGBT person. “When I was perhaps six years old, I went with my mother and brother to a shoe store,” Solomon said. “My brother and I were each told we could have a balloon. My brother wanted a red balloon, and I wanted a pink balloon. She reminded me my favorite color was blue — the fact is my favorite color is blue — but I’m still gay.” Solomon said he believes most parents continue to love their children but that many have trouble with the process of acceptance. “A lot of people I talk to describe a process of coming to terms with their own identity and their children’s identity,” Solomon said. Before the lecture, a lunch symposium was held in which students asked panel-
ists questions about mental health. Solomon and the other panelists — anthropology professor João Biehl and psychology lecturer Ron Comer — addressed and discussed experiences of mental illness and depression, the representation of depression in the literature and arts, the consequences of its medicalization, the methods in which doctors and psychiatrists are trained and the role of psychopharmaceuticals in shifting the landscape of diagnosis and care. Associate professor of East Asian studies Amy Borovoy moderated the discussion, noting before the discussion that there is a “considerable amount of uncertainty about what even is mental illness.” Biehl discussed the adverse effects of drugs use to treat psychiatric conditions and the impact of medicalization on the body and the mind. “The boundaries that makes us ourselves are blurry,” said Biehl referencing Solomon. Comer noted that the median age of depression is going downward. See SOLOMON page 2