February 18, 2015

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Wednesday february 18, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 13

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BEYOND THE BUBBLE

LOCAL NEWS

Post Office to move to Nassau Street

Mostly cloudy through day. chance of rain:

20 percent

In Opinion Ryan Dukeman breaks down the image of Ivy League elitism and Max Grear reflects on the impossible ideal of undergraduate diversity. PAGE 5

By Zaynab Zaman staff writer

Today on Campus

The post office in Palmer Square is moving to the former West Coast Video property at 259 Nassau St. There is no set timeline for when the move will take place, Ray Daiutolo Sr., a U.S. Postal Service spokesman, said, adding that the organization is waiting for the new location to be prepared and for the old building’s sale to be finalized. West Coast Video used the property from 1997 to around 2006 until the company went out of business because of the growing popularity of online streaming videos, said Robert Bratman, whose family has owned the property since the 1960s. “Now there’s nothing there,” Bratman said. “We’ve been trying to get a tenant.”

7:30 p.m.: Mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato and the Brentano String Quartet will be presenting the song cycle “Camille Claudel: Into the Fire,” composed by Jake Heggie. The event is sponsored by Princeton University Concerts. Richardson Auditorium.

The Archives

Feb. 18, 1982 The Women’s Center unanimously rejected a proposal from Princeton Pro-Life to start a pro-life task force at the center after a 45-minute debate.

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PRINCETON By the Numbers

2.5M The number of hours of computation to perform satellite constellation calculations.

News & Notes Harvard considering implementing honor code pledge

Harvard students will probably have to sign an honor pledge on their final papers and examinations if the Faculty of Arts and Sciences approves a proposed honor code, the Harvard Crimson reported. Harvard has never before had an honor code. Around 125 Harvard students were investigated for cheating on the final examination of a government class in 2012, and approximately 70 students were forced to withdraw but returned in the fall of 2013. The Faculty Council approved the honor code proposal last week, and the entire faculty now needs to vote to approve it. Some faculty members expressed concern that requiring students to sign the statement was tantamount to assuming they are cheating. An honor code was passed in May 2014 but has not yet come into effect, and a provision for required written affirmations of the honor code has not yet been required. The Faculty Council also decided against a proposal to make the honor code required on every assignment. A new Honor Council will hear matters relating to the honor code.

While his family was originally in negotiations with TD Bank, the neighbors strongly opposed the idea of a bank at that location, he said. The bank would have closed at 4:30 p.m. or 5 p.m., and because it would have occupied the whole building, it would have created a large parking lot for all the restaurants in town, Bratman said. However, because of the tension between the neighbors and the bank, the bank decided not to relocate, he explained, adding that he was surprised at the resistance from some residents. Despite an ordinance prohibiting businesses bordering residential areas from operating 247, a 7-Eleven will also likely still come to the location, Bratman said. “I think the property has been vacant for too long, and it’s going See POST OFFICE page 3

ACADEMICS

U. researchers Sebelius speaks on health care, publish study on responds to College Republicans flood predictions YASH HUILGOL :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius spoke on Tuesday at Dodds Auditorium.

By Charles Min senior writer

The Affordable Care Act, as well as other Obama administration health care efforts, has made health care more strongly rooted in adding value-based services and better delivery system reforms, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said in a lecture on Tuesday. The two primary goals of the ACA are affordable health coverage in the market and reform of the health care delivery system in ways that can improve the overall health of the American population, Sebelius said. She added that over the five years since the ACA has been implemented, it has created a competitive market where there was previously a monopoly on health

care coverage and has aided those who were previously locked out of health care because of preexisting limitations. “Overall, health care costs are trending below our levels of GDP,” Sebelius said. “Health care cost trajectory is beginning to level out, and this has been happening consistently over the past five years.” The ACA has provisions that say if experimental payment strategies prove effective and at the same don’t lower the quality of health care, they can be implemented nationally, she explained. These strategies are designed and tested by the Healthcare Innovation Center, which receives $10 billion in funding every decade. “Hospital infection rates are down, preventable readmissions are down and early elected delivery has significantly lowered,”

BEYOND THE BUBBLE

Hamm ’78 speaks on activism, civil rights By Pooja Patel staff writer

People don’t have adequate power to make needed changes to society, Lawrence Hamm ’78, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, a social and economic activism organization, said in a lecture on Tuesday. “Ultimately, that’s what we’re struggling for: to empower people,” Hamm said. Hamm said he began his work as a student activist in Newark in 1971. “Newark is a key center among several centers for the black liberation movement,” Hamm said. “Newark had been an apartheid city. It was a city with a predominantly black population that was controlled by a white power structure.” At the University, where he was known by the name “Adhimu Chunga,” which means “important youth” in Swahili, Hamm was active in leading student movements, particularly in get-

ting the University to divest from companies with links to apartheid in South Africa. His impact at the University is recounted in the documentary film, “Blacks at Princeton.” Hamm also discussed the lesser-known contributions of slaves to the present-day United States. “The capital that was used to build Princeton and Harvard and Brown and other universities was from the slave trade,” Hamm said. “That citadel of democracy, Washington, D.C., was built with slave labor. Where the leader of the so-called free world sits was built with slave labor.” After watching the film“Selma,” some people believe that Jim Crow was only a Southern phenomenon, Hamm added. “But I am here to tell you that [Jim Crow] was a national phenomenon,” he said. “The approach may have been different in the North, but See HAMM page 4

Sebelius said. “Early results are incredibly promising on the delivery system side, and it will lend itself to changes in the future.” Several emerging trends in health care that the ACA addresses include electronic health records, accessible public health data, renewed drug development trials and improving global health capacities, she said. “There is now a real move toward data-driven decision-making in health care that really hasn’t been in place before,” she said. “In 2008, only 20 percent of doctors and 10 percent of hospitals in the country were using any form of electronic health records, and most information was done on paper.” The Recovery Act has set up a national protocol to use elecSee SEBELIUS page 3

By Corinne Lowe senior writer

Satellite constellations can be optimized to better predict f looding around the world, researchers from the University, Cornell University and The Aerospace Corporation said in a study published on Feb. 11. The study examined the current global constellation of satellites used to predict f loods to determine the risk posed if any of these satellites were to fail and explored how one could optimize the constellation to more efficiently predict f loods, said Eric Wood, co-author of the study and civil and environ-

mental engineering professor at the University. “We’re interested in combining our global modeling of the hydrology of the Earth’s surface,” Wood said. “[The Cornell researchers] are very interested in optimizing how you would put up constellations of satellites, and Aerospace — which is the third party — they simulate orbits.” The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is currently using 10 such satellites, Wood said, which provides global coverage approximately every three hours. “Some of them have been See SCIENCE page 2

SNOW

YASH HUILGOL :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER


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