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Thursday february 19, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 14
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POLICE BRUTALITY DEBATE
STUDENT LIFE
TFA recruiting numbers drop, U. among top contributors
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In Opinion
By Jessica Li
Matthew Choi Taitano ’18 tackles sexual misconduct from the perspective of male victims, and Chelsea Jones ’15 suggests ways to foster more meaningful conversations on campus. PAGE 4
staff writer
In Street This week in Street, we explore cultural groups on campus, Associate Street Editor Harrison Blackman muses on running at Princeton, and Staff Writer Emily Tang talks to Tarana a cappella. PAGES S1-4
Today on Campus 9 p.m.: Throwback Thursday, a Black History Month event, will feature childhood television shows, including “Scandal” and “How to Get Away with Murder.” Frist Campus Center West TV Lounge.
The Archives
Feb. 19, 1968 Boston University filed a lawsuit against eight online term paper companies, claiming students were purchasing term papers from the Internet. The Committee on Discipline said the punishment for such an act at the University would be an automatic one-year suspension.
News & Notes Yale students petition for Af-Am House director’s ouster
Members of the AfroAmerican Cultural Center at Yale presented a petition to administrators there on Tuesday calling for the ouster of Assistant Dean of Yale College and Director of the Af-Am House Rodney Cohen, the Yale Daily News reported. The meeting saw a petition signed by 147 students presented to Yale College Dean Jonathan Holloway and Kimberly Goff-Crews, who is secretary and vice president for student life. Students who attended the meeting and letters submitted by students before the meeting alleged that Cohen was inaccessible and had engaged in poor financial stewardship of the Af-Am House. Specific allegations include Cohen not discussing the house budget with students, which had been a previous practice, and making the House’s endowment as a funding source less accessible to students. Some students also maintained he had been difficult to contact. Members of the Af-Am House had previously asked Yale to undergo additional training related to his position in February 2014. Cohen did not respond to the Yale Daily News.
RAYE KESSLER :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
The Whig-Cliosophic Society debates whether a jury or a panel of judges should convict police officers of excessive force. STUDENT LIFE
Student diagnosed with, recovered from measles By Daily Princetonian Staff A student was diagnosed with a suspected case of measles but has now recovered and is no longer contagious, the University announced in an email to students on Wednesday. The preliminary medical test results were received on Tuesday, and more tests are currently being conducted. More than 99.5 percent of University students have been vaccinated for the disease, the email said.
Faculty and staff who have not been vaccinated for the disease may be at risk if they were in Whitman College dining hall, Baker Hall, Holder Hall, McCosh Health Center, Frick Chemistry building, Wallace Hall, Blair Hall, Friend Center, Spelman Hall, 1938 Hall, Frist Campus Center, Dillon Gymnasium or the New South Building from Feb. 4 through Feb. 8. Measles can be spread when a person talks, coughs or sneezes and can be transmitted starting four days before and ending four days
STUDENT LIFE
after the onset of a rash. The virus can live on surfaces and in the air for up to two hours, the email said. Symptoms include a fever, runny nose, cough, red eyes and sore throat, which are followed by a rash. Measles has recently received national attention after 102 measles cases spread in the U.S., mostly linked to Disneyland, CNN reported. The outbreak resulted in a national debate over whether vaccinations should be mandatory. See MEASLES page 2
As the economy improves, recruiting teachers is becoming increasingly challenging for Teach for America. The idea for Teach for America, which matches college graduates with hard-to-fill teaching vacancies, came out of the senior thesis of Wendy Kopp ’89. An increasingly political conversation around public education has led to a decrease in interest for the profession, particularly for people who may have once had more idealistic expectations, Becky O’Neill ’07, senior managing director of communications for Teach for America, said. “At schools like Princeton with such competitive candidates, students are getting offers often and early from lots of great companies,” O’Neill said, adding that her group usually reaches out to individual students for recruitment based on recommendations from professors, career services offices, campus staff, student leaders, current corps members and alumni. “This year, we had 17 Princeton alums join the TFA corps,” she said. “This put Princeton on the list of top 20 contributors to the corps among medium-sized schools.” Recently, TFA held a series of events on campus to garner student interest, and other events are planned until the application deadline in March. “In the short run, we are one additional stream of people who are willing to go above and beyond traditional expectations to meet the extra needs of the kids and make up for the weaknesses in the system,” Kopp said in a Q & A with The Daily Princetonian last week. “We are certainly not the only source of these teachers. There are so many other committed teachers in the community where we work.” During a post-lecture reception last week, 60 students spoke with Kopp about her establishment of the organization and the challenges See TFA page 3
BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Student leads new efforts to petition for ending Bicker By Jacob Donnelly news editor
A student began collecting signatures for a referendum petition to end the Bicker process on Wednesday. The referendum, which was drafted by Ryan Low ’16, specifically calls for each eating club to end Bicker not later than the first day of the 2019-20 academic year, to establish an ad hoc USG committee to facilitate ending Bicker and to call on the Interclub Council to appoint a non-voting member to the ad hoc committee to work with it to facilitate ending Bicker. Low presented the referendum and began collecting signatures Wednesday evening at the Mental Health Initiative’s meeting. The proposed referendum requires 500 signatures before students can vote on it, U-council chair Zhan Okuda Lim ’15 said. Low coordinated with the Undergraduate Student Government to draft the text of the proposed referendum. USG assists students in drafting referenda they are interesting in running, but the referendum is not endorsed by USG, said OkudaLim, who assisted in drafting the resolution’s text for conformity to USG’s typical style. The process toward creating the referendum began in late January, Low said, when a Counseling and Psycholog-
ical Services counselor told him that early February was a busy time of year in their offices due to Bicker. Low added that he thought Bicker and its relationship to mental health should be a bigger discussion on campus than it has been. “This entire atmosphere of not wanting to talk about this huge issue on campus needs to change,” Low said. “Over the past two and a half weeks, I’ve been meeting with two or three people a day for many days now, and getting their input and from all those conversations. … The end result is this referendum.” The interest in reforming the Bicker process is broader than just among those who bickered unsuccessfully, Low said. “I think a lot of people in Bicker clubs don’t like Bicker, but they don’t want to talk about it because they don’t want other people in the club thinking less of them for not liking Bicker,” he said. “But now with this referendum, hopefully people will come out of the shadows more and talk about this process.” He added one of the primary goals of the referendum is to get people to talk about the Bicker system, although he noted that he expected the referendum to pass. “[People] feel like there isn’t a space for them to talk about what’s happening,” he See BICKER page 3
JESSICA LI :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER
Willie Parker spoke in Dodds Auditorium on Wednesday about his work at an abortion clinic in Miss.
Mississippi physician: well-being of patients most important in abortion cases By Jessica Li staff writer
It is a moral imperative to put the well-being of patients above personal concerns in abortion cases, Willie Parker, a physician in practice at the sole remaining abortion clinic in Mississippi, said in a lecture on Wednesday. Current social trajectories are unsettling, Parker said, noting that in a country where one in three women will pursue abortion during their lifetimes, restrictions against the procedure are becoming increasingly stringent. In Mississippi, recent laws have mandated women to receive counseling, accept ultrasound exams and, for minors,
obtain parental consent before they can step into an abortion clinic. “Women don’t have the health care called abortion,” Parker said. Born in Birmingham, Ala., Parker grew up with five siblings all raised by a single mother. Though never pronounced, the prejudice and stigma against abortion were well-visible in Parker’s community. “I was raised a fundamentalist Protestant and took my religious belief and understood it seriously,” he said. “Though I had no explicit teaching, I saw that teens and single parents were forced to parent regardless of whether they’re ready.” During his foundational
years, Parker became inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech on good samaritans and described the civil rights leader’s words as “a come-toJesus moment.” Nonetheless, the decision to accept employment in an abortion clinic was not easy for him, he said. “When I got the call to work in Mississippi, I said two things,” Parker said. “The first was no. The second was hell no.” As Parker drove through Mississippi after receiving the offer and traveled along roads marred by the violent expressions of racial tension, however, he said he was reminded of the countless women who See LECTURE page 2