April 10, 2019

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Wednesday April 10, 2019 vol. cxliii no. 43

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U . A F FA I R S

U . A F FA I R S

JOE SHLABOTNIK / FLICKR

Two fires occurred in different restrooms at Princeton Stadium.

Two juvenile Karen Richardson ’93 named local suspects new chief admission officer arrested for campus arson

ALONSO NICHOLS / OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

“Karen Richardson has a remarkable track record as a pioneer in college admissions,” said Eisgruber.

By Oliver Effron

Assistant News Editor

By Benjamin Ball Head News Editor

A joint investigation by Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office, the Princeton Police Department (PPD) and University Public Safety into several arson fires on and nearby campus resulted in the arrest of two local juvenile suspects at 12:40 p.m. on Tuesday, April 9.

According to a Tiger Alert sent to the student body, the arrests were made after a caller to Princeton Police Headquarters reported two males starting a fire in the wooded area behind Holly House.

Arson, burglary, and other related charges are pending against two juvenile suspects, according to

the PPD press release.

The juveniles were arrested for the four fires caused on campus and one additional fire at the Institute for Advanced study. The fires collectively caused an estimated one million dollars in damage, according to the Tiger Alert.

PPD also reported that the two suspects are ages 14 and 17. One boy is a resident of the town of Princeton, and the other is a resident of Montgomery.

The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office has not immediately responded to request for comment at the time of this publication.

The Office of Communications deferred to the Tiger Alert sent to the student body.

Following her graduation at the University, Karen Richardson ’93 has dedicated her entire career as an administrator to promoting equity and diversity within higher education. Now, she will have the opportunity to continue that mission as the University’s chief admission officer.

In a press release on Tuesday morning, the University announced that Richardson, current dean of admissions and enrollment management at Tufts University, will serve as the new dean of admission beginning on July 1, 2019. She will succeed former Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye, who has served as president of the Consortium on Financing Higher Education since November 2018. Dean Richardson, a native of Roebling, NJ, served as assistant dean

for undergraduate admission at the University from 2002–2004, prior to becoming Tufts director of graduate admissions in 2014 and Tufts dean of admissions in 2016.

“Karen Richardson has a remarkable track record as a pioneer in the field of college admissions,” President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 said in the statement. “We are fortunate that Karen is returning to Princeton, and I look forward to working with her to bring talented students of all backgrounds to this University.”

Her appointment signals the continuation of the University’s effort to create a more diverse and equitable campus. As assistant dean for undergraduate admission at the University, she focused on diversity recruitment efforts, and before serving in the Tufts admissions office, she joined Tufts as director

ON CAMPUS

of diversity recruitment in 2008.

“Her professional experience at the helm of the Tufts admissions office, her heartfelt commitment to diversity and inclusion, and her deep knowledge of this University make her an ideal leader for our Office of Admission,” Eisgruber continued.

Richardson looks forward to this new role and is “thrilled to be taking on this role at a place that has been so impactful on [her] life.”

“Attending Princeton was a transformational experience, and the opportunities I was given here have opened so many doors in my career in education,” Richardson said, according to the press release. “I’m looking forward to giving back and to working with the admissions team to continue to attract stellar applicants and craft great classes for the University.”

ON CAMPUS

Art Museum explores Karamo Chinese government Mexican migration in Brown talks offers to help with case bilingual folk exhibit identity, BEYOND THE BUBBLE

By Bill Huang Senior Writer

The Chinese government has offered to assist in the case of University graduate student Xiyue Wang, who has been imprisoned in Iran since August 2016.

According to Wang’s wife, Hua Qu, Beijing “has offered to assist in the resolution of Xiyue’s case on humanitarian grounds.” Chinese diplomats recently met with Swiss officials at least once in Tehran and are planning additional talks.

Qu said that China’s “gesture lifts our spirits.”

Wang was conducting research on 19th-century Persia in Iran when he was accused by Iranian authorities of espionage. Just hours from making his f light back to the United States, he was instead sent to Evin

In Opinion

prison after a period of interrogation and solitary confinement. Wang now faces 10 years in prison.

Nearly one thousand days have passed since Wang was detained, despite global efforts to release him.

“This separation has taken an emotional toll on our son,” Qu said. “Xiyue has been deprived of liberty and subjected to harsh conditions for three long years. Let our family reunite and heal.”

Since Wang’s arrest, the United States, the United Nations, and international scholars have all called on Iran to release Wang. Trump has threatened “serious consequences,” the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has condemned the arrest, and 32 organizations have signed a statement in See WANG page 2

Contributing columnist Jae-Kyung Sim argues for diversifying one’s media sources, columnist Hunter Campbell suggests the University adjust its distribution requirements, and guest contributor Amanda Eisenhour criticizes the University’s continued investment in the prison industry. PAGE 4

By Paige Allen Staff Writer

The University Art Museum is currently featuring its first bilingual exhibit, “Miracles on the Border: Retablos of Mexican Migrants to the United States | Milagros en la frontera: Retablos de migrantes mexicanos a los Estados Unidos.”

All titles, captions, descriptions, and online content related to the exhibit are offered in English and Spanish, thanks to the translation work of a University graduate student in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese.

The exhibit showcases ‘retablos,’ a form of devotional Mexican folk art created by unknown artists. Traditionally, those who had been delivered from crisis or danger would commission a retablo as an offering of thanksgiving to the holy figures who had provided salvation. These retablos then hung on the walls of churches and shrines.

Juliana Ochs Dweck, the curator of the exhibit and the museum’s Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Engagement, described the idiosyncratic nature of the works, noting that “these objects are so many things at once.”

Today on Campus

“They are sacred objects, but also they tell stories of everyday life,” Dweck said. “They’re personal objects — they’re objects that depict individuals, that share emotion, that show experiences from people’s lives — but they’re also presented in a public setting, in a church or a shrine. They are objects with religious value, representing holy figures, but here, they’re presented in an art museum.”

While each retablo depicts an individual story, the composition of the pieces is somewhat formulaic. In the lower register, a written inscription explains the details of the story surrounding the offering. Above it, the artist pictorially depicts the moment of crisis or thanksgiving. The artist also typically renders, in a standard iconographic style, one to three holy figures taking the form of the Christ, a saint, or the Virgin Mary — in the case of the retablos in the exhibit, often in her distinctly Mexican incarnation as the Virgin of San Juan de los Lagos, the holy figure most frequently called upon by Mexican migrants.

Though the tradition of retablos in Mexico began with the SpanSee ART page 2

4:30pm: 2019 Princeton Environmental Film Festival Computer Science 104

‘Queer Eye’

By Linh Ngyuen Associate News Editor

In front of a fully packed audience in Betts Auditorium, “Queer Eye” star Karamo Brown spoke with LGBT Center Director Judy Jarvis about navigating identity, mental health, and toxic masculinity — often concurrently.

Within the first few minutes of the conversation, Jarvis asked Brown to elaborate on a point that he made in his memoir, “Karamo: My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope,” to “change the paradigm from ‘coming out’ as LGBTQ to ‘letting people in.’”

In response, Brown noted that, to him, the distinction between the two terms lies in boundaries and LGBTQ+ individuals’ rights to privacy.

“I think about all of my straight counterparts: none of them has to make these grand announcements to See BROWN page 3

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Qu: Separation has taken toll on our son, let us reunite, heal

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday April 10, 2019

COURTESY OF THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM

Retablo of Juan Jose Sánches C., 1990. Oil on metal. Arias-Durand Collection.

COURTESY OF THE PRINCETON UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS

Fourth-year history graduate student Xiyue Wang is pictured with his wife, Hua Qu, and their five-year-old son.

WANG

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support of Wang.

“We continue to do everything we can to support Wang and his family and to try to find a way to secure his release so he can return home,” said Ben Chang, a spokesperson for the University. “This includes reaching out to others — in our government, in other countries, and outside of government — who may be able to offer advice or to help. These conversations typically take place on a confidential

basis, so we are not in a position to say more about them.”

“What [Wang] is going through on a daily basis behind the bars is very, very difficult,” Qu said. “The support from Princeton [sic] community is important to give Xiyue hope.”

On the 1000th day of Wang’s detention in early May, the members of the FreeXiyueWang working group will host events. Qu thanked them “for their huge moral support.”

FreeXiyueWang members did not immediately respond to a request for comment by the ‘Prince.’

Bermann: It brings us insight ­— what do the migrants themselves feel?

ART

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ish conquest of the 16th century, the pieces featured in “Miracles on the Border/Milagros en la frontera” span a period from 1917 to 1996 as they narrate stories of Mexican migration to the United States. Many of the exhibit’s retablos were commissioned by Mexican migrants returning home who wished to give thanks for having been delivered from difficult experiences migrating to and living in a foreign country, ranging from surviving near-fatal injuries to receiving an insurance check.

Displayed in chronological order, the retablos reveal a narrative of Mexican migration, providing a record of the shared and shifting concerns in Mexican migrant ex-

periences. Earlier pieces show how the construction of the railroad initiated movement to the United States. The concerns of migrants gradually become more legalistic throughout the 20th century, and one of the most recent retablos depicts incarceration.

“They are incredibly powerful, delicate, intimate, multivocal paintings and objects that offer an incredible way to look at votive traditions and the stories of migrants,” Dweck said.

The 50 retablos on display in the Art Museum were collected

by Douglas S. Massey, University Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, and Jorge Durand, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Guadalajara.

Massey and Durand serve as co-directors of the Mexican Migration Project (MMP), a binational research effort initiated in 1982 which seeks to gain sociological and economic data on migration from Mexico to the United States.

The MMP publishes its data on a public-use server and, according to Massey, is the largest and most reliable source of information on undocumented and documented migration from Mexico.

On a trip to the Church of San Juan de los Lagos in west-central Mexico, Massey and Durand discovered retablos relating to migration and thought the artworks could be used to analyze the experiences and the feelings of migrants to the United States.

Massey and Durand began collecting and photographing retablos in 1988, and in 1989, a small collection first debuted in a museum in Mexico City. The collection has now grown to a total of 58 retablos and travels all over the world.

The idea of bringing the exhibit to the Art Museum was originally conceived by University professor of comparative literature Sandra Bermann. Bermann is the coordinator of the University’s Migration Lab, a multidisciplinary research community founded in 2016 dedicated to examining issues of migration. Through the Migration Lab, Bermann became aware of Durand and Massey’s collection and the book which catalogued it, “Miracles on the Border.”

“The artworks shown there and the narratives that accompanied them were so moving and so beautiful that I thought they would be amazing to see on campus,” Bermann said.

Bermann approached James Steward, the Nancy A. Nasher-David J. Haemisegger, Class of 1976, Director of the Art Museum.

“I knew it was not the usual thing that appears in our art museum,” said Bermann, referencing the fact that the museum does not often show folk art and does not have a long history of featuring Mexican art. “But James seemed very eager to have exactly this kind of thing appear.”

Indeed, Steward noted that he found immense value in the exhibit as a display of underrepresented art as well as for its connection to previous projects with Bermann.

“I immediately embraced the material and the subject matter, both for its arresting quality —

which can be thought of as a kind of modern folk art practice — as well as for its unexpected relationship to certain modernist practices, its relationship to the migrations project we mounted a year ago, and the opportunity to collaborate with Professor Bermann and her team once again,” wrote Steward in an email to The Daily Princetonian.

The exhibit is now presented in conjunction with the University’s Migration Lab. The art pieces provide rich material for study from many disciplines, drawing visitors from Spanish classes, art classes, history classes, and local schools. The Migration Lab’s Mellon-Sawyer Seminar Series featured talks on topics such as the retablos’ religious significance, their historical context, and their influences on other modern artists, including Frida Kahlo.

Massey and Durand use the retablos to aid in their sociological research as the pieces provide a self-narrative of migration.

“When you’re a social scientist, you’re studying something and you’re explaining to other people about what an experience is like that you’re studying, and this was an opportunity to let the migrants tell us how they see the experience, what happens to them, what it was about from their point of view,” Massey said.

The bilingual nature of the exhibit is partly an effort to reflect this migrant perspective and provide a more direct experience to visitors who can read Spanish. “[It] brings us insight: what do the migrants themselves feel? Not just what are we saying as sociologists or literary professors or whatever. But what are the people themselves saying?” Bermann said.

Dweck also emphasized the power of personal narratives.

“The migrants’ retablos allow us to humanize the experiences that we’re reading about in the newspaper in ways that are attentive to the individuals, and that give us insight into the lives behind the statistics,” she said.

Steward echoed Bermann’s sentiments, noting that he hopes the exhibition will inspire empathy and understanding among viewers.

“Beyond the obvious fact that the exhibition provides a certain historical context to a set of issues with remarkable topicality, I hope visitors will rediscover the power of the individual human voice, the fact that individual experience from decades ago, in some cases, lives on through these works, that they attest to the enduring qualities of hope, suffering, loss, the aspiration to a better life,” Steward wrote. “After all, isn’t that part of what good art does — it invites us into contact with and empathy for people whose lives and experiences past and present might be quite different from our own?”

“Miracles on the Border | Milagros en la frontera” will be on display at the Princeton University Art Museum through Sunday, July 7. More information about the exhibit, including information on all of the featured retablos, can be found on the museum’s website.

The Daily Princetonian

Wednesday April 10, 2019

Revealing the truth, one story at a time. join@dailyprincetonian.com

COURTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY LGBT CENTER

Brown delivered a talk to a full house, and additional audience members listened from outside the open windows.

Brown: Journey of selflove, self-worth, mental health is a daily practice BROWN

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family members or strangers at family events about who they’re having intimate moments with, but yet, somehow, we tell LGBTQ people that they have to do this or they’re not proud of themselves, or they don’t want to be visible,” Brown said. “But no, I’m very proud of myself. I just have very clear boundaries about who I want to let into my life.”

Less than two weeks after the publication of Brown’s memoir, the third season of “Queer Eye” was released on Netf lix on March 15, in which the Fab Five — comprised of Brown, Antoni Porowski, Tan France, Bobby Berk, and Jonathan Van Ness — provided “make-betters” (the show’s term for makeovers) for eight new individuals. Although Brown is officially the show’s “culture expert,” he believes that he is much more involved with cultivating mental health rather than “culture.”

“What everyone else does is awesome, but if you don’t figure out what the core issue is, then you’re just going to revert back once we leave,” Brown said. “Something that I tell people is that if it’s hysterical, it’s historical.”

Returning to his own relationship with himself, Brown noted the augmented difficulties that LGBTQ+ individuals often face when confronting their own mental health.

“Many people in the LGBTQ community have spent many years on a self-discovery journey, and it had to be internal,” Brown said.

“They couldn’t share it out of fear of being treated badly in some way … [but] your journey of healing is on your own pace, and that’s okay.”

During the Q&A portion of the event, Brown admitted that he continues to struggle with his intersecting identities of being black, gay, and Christian.

“I’ve had all those experiences where I’ve felt like the outside world is challenging who I am,” Brown said. “Anybody who says that they don’t wake up — even the most confident person — and feel that way is lying. The journey of self-

love, self-worth, and mental health is a daily process and a daily practice.”

When questioned about how he sees “Queer Eye” evolving in the future, Brown said that the Fab Five agree that they “constantly need to do more,” especially in terms of diversity.

“We need to see more, and people need to understand more,” Brown said. “It’s an ongoing conversation, and even if it doesn’t finish with us, the next show that comes after us will hopefully think, ‘Oh, Queer Eye was a success, so we need to do this, but we need to do it even better.’”

Brown’s appearance attracted a crowd beyond University students, including former alumna Taylor Morgan ’16, who found Brown “incredibly inspiring.”

“I love watching the show, and I just think that everything that Karamo and all the Fab Five do is so inspiring,” Morgan said. “Even though I’m not part of the LGBTQ , black, or male community, I think that everything that they say is so applicable to everyone.”

Conversely, Jared Holeman ’21 noted that Brown’s intersecting identities were exactly what made Holeman feel “very validated and so honored to be in [Brown’s] presence.”

“Karamo is one of the very few black gay celebrities that’s really out there,” Holeman said. “It’s just so inspirational to see someone so successful who keeps owning himself, especially because he’s also Christian, which really resonates with me.”

LGBT Center design intern Wendy Ho ’21 pointed towards the high turnout as an indication of Brown’s impact as a celebrity.

“I didn’t expect so many people to come, but at the same time, it speaks to how inspirational he is and how being radically honest about who you are draws people toward you,” Ho said.

“An Evening with Karamo Brown” was co-sponsored by the LGBT Center, the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, the Office of Religious Life, the Women*s Center, the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding, and the MAVRIC Project.

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Opinion

Wednesday April 10, 2019

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What I learned from Breitbart Jae-Kyung Sim

Contributing Columnist

I

am a liberal. Although what it means to be a liberal is not clearly defined and sometimes comes with a negative connotation, I can reasonably say I am not conservative.

My preferred news sources are The New York Times and NPR. If I’m feeling a little neutral, maybe I’ll visit Real Clear Politics, but that’s about it. Memes about Ben Shapiro frequently pop up on my Facebook feed, and — quite frankly — I enjoy them.

I did not realize, however, how deeply entrenched I was in my liberal camp until I landed myself on the front page of Breitbart. As I scrolled through the biased conservative headlines, I then saw the fundamental reason for our society’s rising polarization.

When both sides believe that their opinions are based on facts, but those facts are distorted by distinct political leanings, there is no way we will ever reach compromise.

I was perfectly fine with being within my echo chamber because, to me, arguments from the left were the truth — there was simply no way to contest them.

While the specifics could be disagreed upon within the

left, I subscribed to some general principles shared by most who identify as liberal: Democrats needed to win in 2020, borders should be more open, etc. For example, I just couldn’t understand how some conservatives would think undocumented migrants should all be deported.

There on Breitbart, I felt as if I was uneasily eavesdropping into another secret echo chamber that existed for conservatives. On the news websites I subscribe to, which are identified as left-leaning, a common view was that border patrol agents were culpable for migrants’ suffering. A recent article in The New York Times, for example, was titled “Another Sick Migrant Dies in Border Patrol Custody in Texas.”

On Breitbart, the issue was framed very differently.

Border patrol agents played a largely commendable role.

They could be kindhearted to undocumented immigrants at times; this article, featured on the home page of the website, was titled “Border Patrol Orders Quick Releases of Families.” For those who rely on Breitbart as their primary source of information, the world must seem very different than the one I envision, and the principles they subscribe to must simultaneously be radically

different.

Where is the truth? The point is that there really is no one truth. While such articles are disguised as a neutral discussion of facts and real-life events, their headlines and narratives are inevitably tainted by some form of political bias. And this is not just about Breitbart. Any news source could pick and choose different events to shed light on, and the way articles are headlined is also completely up to the choice of the individual reporters.

This is a major issue. The point of politics is to persuade others to join our cause; that is why politicians spend millions of dollars simply to persuade people to join their cause and support their platform. However, when the two sides simply inhabit heavily insulated echo chambers and subsequently treat their opinions as absolute truths based on “facts” from their own news sources, it is simply impossible for any kind of persuasion — or even any form of productive discussion — to occur.

I urge conservatives and liberals alike to break the little shells of their echo chambers. Perhaps go to a different news source and really try to understand where people come from and why and how people come

to believe in certain things.

Doubt the validity of your own opinion, be genuinely willing to be persuaded, and more importantly, treat the other side’s arguments as legitimate opinions to be discussed on the table.

It’s cool to be radical. It’s cool to believe in things. But we have to be practical — and practical politics require us to talk to people who disagree with us. And thinning our echo chambers begins with our own agency. That is where real change begins; the people you really need to talk to — those from whom you yourself could be challenged, and furthermore, those whom you yourself could persuade — are out there where you can’t see them.

For me, that would mean interacting with groups like the Princeton Pro-Life, Tigers for Israel, or more generally, the Clio side of Whig-Clio — groups that I previously dismissed as being irrelevant to my world.

For you, the nature of the groups may be completely different. The point, however, is that engagement is the basis for any political change, and all of us should be more willing to do it.

Jae-Kyung Sim is a first-year from Sejong City, South Korea.

He can be reached at j.sim@ princeton.edu.

Adding options to the liberal arts Hunter Campbell

Contributing Columnist

O

n the University’s admission website, the first academic topic to explore is: “What does liberal arts mean?” In this section, the University argues that by exploring issues, ideas, and methods across the humanities, the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences, students will learn to read critically, write analytically, and think broadly.

The University hopes its general education requirements will ensure that students take courses across many academic disciplines. I argue that these requirements are a one-sizefits-all answer to the question of how to create well-rounded learners.

A far better option is to simply

require that students take a certain number of courses outside of whichever broad field their majors fall: the humanities, the arts, the natural sciences, or the social sciences. In our current system, students may have to take courses that lie significantly outside of their comfort zones. For example, an arts major will need to take two science and technology courses, one of which will need to have a lab component, and at least one quantitative reasoning course.

Many STEM majors will have to take two literature and arts courses and one ethical thought and moral values course. Some students might excel across disciplines, but others who are geared away from the extreme of either the arts or the natural sciences will resort to methods which subvert the entire goal of the liberal arts in the first place.

One common tactic for dealing with the general education requirements as they currently are is to enroll in courses which are well

known on campus as being easy A’s that require little work. Within just a few days of being on campus, firstyears will have a good understanding of which courses are good for avoiding a large hit to their grade point averages and a large workload.

When students take these courses, they are doing to get around the potential dangers of taking a rigorous course which is simply outside of their realm.

Another common tactic is to use the pass/D/fail option for the general education requirements. Yes, this can be done in order to avoid getting a low grade if the material is too difficult, but when the PDF is combined with an easy course, it can almost negate the rigor of the course, where the students only need to walk away with a C- in a course which is well known to be relatively easy for students with no background in the field. This defeats the purpose of PDF, which is to allow students to experiment with courses they actually

CHARLOTTE ADAMO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

wish to take, and instead becomes a tool to subvert the general education requirement. Some students may wish to ease their workload for the semester by taking an easier course or by using a PDF; this is a legitimate desire, especially when taking other more difficult courses. Yet, this is an entirely different situation than employing these tools simply to avoid the negative consequences of a requirement which a student knows is really not a good fit for them at all.

How should the University maintain its goal to broaden students’ academic experiences while also keeping them engaged in the process? The University could divide up academic departments into broad categories such as the humanities, the arts, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. There could be more or fewer categories as the University sees fit. Then, it could mandate that a certain number of credits are needed outside of a student’s primary field in order to graduate. If, for example, a student’s major fell within the arts, they would need to take a certain number of courses outside of the arts in order to graduate. The University could determine for itself what this number of courses should be.

The key difference between this system and the one we currently have is that it would make students take a diverse array of courses but not force them to take courses which may be so far out of their area of skill that they would resort to taking easy A courses or PDFing many of the requirements. Instead of being able utilize their talents where they see fit, students currently face situations where they feel like they are simply rubber stamping a requirement. In place of mandating a certain number of courses from the natural sciences or a certain number from the humanities, the University should allow students to choose for themselves from where these out-ofdiscipline credits should come. The expectation of liberal arts, that students will all enjoy taking courses from as many disciplines as they possibly can, is far different from the reality of subversion and apprehension that we find on campus. The sooner we acknowledge this reality, the sooner we will see students embrace the University’s view of the liberal arts.

Hunter Campbell is a junior from East Arlington, Vt. He can be reached at hunterc@princeton.edu.

vol. cxliii

editor-in-chief

Chris Murphy ’20 business manager

Taylor Jean-Jacques’20 BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 secretary Betsy L. Minkin ’77 treasurer Douglas J. Widmann ’90 trustees Francesca Barber David Baumgarten ’06 Kathleen Crown Gabriel Debenedetti ’12 Stephen Fuzesi ’00 Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05 Michael Grabell ’03 John Horan ’74 Joshua Katz Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Alexia Quadrani Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 Kavita Saini ’09 Richard W. Thaler, Jr. ’73 Abigail Williams ’14 trustees emeriti Gregory L. Diskant ’70 William R. Elfers ’71 Kathleen Kiely ’77 Jerry Raymond ’73 Michael E. Seger ’71 Annalyn Swan ’73 trustees ex officio Chris Murphy ’20 Taylor Jean-Jacques’20

143RD MANAGING BOARD managing editors Samuel Aftel ’20 Ariel Chen ’20 Jon Ort ’21 head news editors Benjamin Ball ’21 Ivy Truong ’21 associate news editors Linh Nguyen ’21 Claire Silberman ’22 Katja Stroke-Adolphe ’20 head opinion editor Cy Watsky ’21 associate opinion editors Rachel Kennedy ’21 Ethan Li ’22 head sports editor Jack Graham ’20 associate sports editors Tom Salotti ’21 Alissa Selover ’21 features editor Samantha Shapiro ’21 head prospect editor Dora Zhao ’21 associate prospect editor Noa Wollstein ’21 chief copy editors Lydia Choi ’21 Elizabeth Parker ’21 associate copy editors Jade Olurin ’21 Christian Flores ’21 head design editor Charlotte Adamo ’21 associate design editor Harsimran Makkad ’22 cartoon editors Zaza Asatiani ’21 Jonathan Zhi ’21 head video editor Sarah Warman Hirschfield ’20 associate video editor Mark Dodici ’22 digital operations manager Sarah Bowen ’20

NIGHT STAFF copy Wells Carson ’22 Isabel Segel ’22 design Helen So ’22 Isabel Hsu ’19

Opinion

Wednesday April 10, 2019

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Missing the (Ara)mark on divestment Amanda Eisenhour

Guest Contributor

L

eaving the dining halls, you may notice white vans with the red Aramark logo pulling out of loading docks. One of the nation’s largest food service purveyors in a variety of institutions, Aramark maintains large contracts with state departments of corrections to provide food, commissary products, and facility management services. Paid on a per-meal basis, food providers like Aramark are incentivized to cut costs by reducing quantities and substituting ingredients for cheaper alternatives.

Aramark in particular has found itself at the center of several scandals, with widespread reports of maggots in kitchens and sexual acts between Aramark employees and incarcerated people, leading Michigan to cancel its $145 million contract.

Evidence of similar staff abuses in Ohio and sanitation violations in New Jersey have apparently not deterred the University from using its services.

Last April, the University thought it had finally put to rest calls for divesting its endowment from private prisons. After a year of deliberation, the resource committee refused to recommend full divestment, but administrators claimed the University was not invested in the 11 specific private prison operators named in the divestment coalition’s proposal.

However, far more than a few notorious private prison companies reap profits from mass incarceration; the deep entrenchment of the vast industry of human caging throughout our economy requires that institutions like the University analyze much more

rigorously how they indirectly benefit from our investments in and contracts with companies profiting from exploiting incarcerated people as both captive laborers and consumers.

In solidarity with the National Freedom Campus Day of Action, SPEAR joins students across the country to call on the University to fully divest its endowment and operating contracts from the Prison-Industrial Complex and actively reinvest in the communities harmed by a racist and classist criminal punishment system.

My class did not experience much of the Princeton Private Prison Divestment Campaign (PPPD), but its work forced the Trustees’ incredibly stringent divestment policy to face public scrutiny. The policy establishes a “strong presumption against” the University taking any position through its investment strategy on “external issues,” but allows consideration of divestment proposals when there is a “a central University value clearly at stake.” Although the Resources Committee agreed the divestment campaign demonstrated “considerable, thoughtful, and sustained campus interest,” only half the committee voted to recommend divestment. The official rationale claimed that private prisons were a “consequence,” not a cause of injustice, that the rise of private prisons was not “historically exceptional,” and that not enough research exists on the practices of private prisons to conclude their “practices do or do not align with Princeton’s values.” The Resources Committee concluded that it does not conf lict with the University’s core values to benefit from our investments in companies that profit off of the warehousing of black and brown people.

However, Princeton’s repeated assertions that our endowment does not invest in the 11 major private prison operators indicates that the University feels at least some urge to distance itself from private companies with a vested interest in filling prisons with bodies. These same companies actively lobby for the creation of public policies that further criminalize and incarcerate the most marginalized communities.

But lest anyone be mollified that our tuition dollars are not directly invested in these private prison companies, the insidious reach of the Prison-Industrial Complex extends much further into our economy than a few high-profile villains.

Annually, billions of dollars in the United States f lows to private companies contracted to provide goods and services in incarceration facilities. A 2018 report by the Corrections Accountability Project at the Urban Justice Center exposes the more than 3,100 companies that profit from the PrisonIndustrial Complex. Contracting goods and services to the prison system, while disturbingly common, cannot be treated as business as usual. Commissary vendors, for example, are able to disproportionately profit off of those incarcerated because they avoid the costs of brick and mortar retail by selling directly from the warehouse to the facility.

All service and good providers within prisons can operate as legal monopolies within prison walls, allowing them to charge exorbitant prices that are not only high for the free world.

These prices are especially unaffordable to those incarcerated, who on average nationally make between $0.33 and $1.41 per hour, working for both the state and iconic brands, such as Wal-mart,

K-mart, Microsoft, AT&T, and more — quantifying the full extent of the companies benefiting from this labor is incredibly difficult as the supply chains of corporations are often shrouded in secrecy.

So what does Princeton have to with this?

Aramark is only the tip of the iceberg, but it is a telling place to start to understand the extent of our entanglement with the Prison-Industrial Complex. The administration would like us to believe that our contracts and investments are entirely apolitical; in 2017, President Eisgruber asserted that the University “aims to inf luence society principally by the scholarship we generate and the people we educate, not through economic clout or institutional position-taking.” But we cannot simply choose to ignore the consequences of the economic power held by the University — in addition to our $25.9 billion endowment, we generate an annual economic output of $1.58 billion into New Jersey’s economy. The choices made by PRINCO and the University itself carry real economic consequences, which implicate our investment and contract decisions in upholding those companies with a vested interest in perpetuating mass incarceration.

As Claire Wayner deftly observed in her March oped, when we choose not to divest from an industry, we are not remaining neutral — we are making a fundamentally political and moral decision that the concerns raised about a particular industry are not far enough out of line with “University Values” to outweigh our economic interests. In effect, the University is saying that the investments growing our giant stockpile of institu-

Princeton Endurance Track Tashi Treadway ’19 ..................................................

tional wealth that primarily serves to build itself is more important than what those investments are doing and more important than preserving a system that keeps 2.3 million lives in cages.

The University can do far more than simply divest from the Prison-Industrial Complex. Student coalitions like the Princeton Reconstruction Project are calling for the active reinvestment of the University’s resources in repairing the harm that the University has caused to marginalized communities throughout its history, led by representatives from directly impacted communities, rather than reliant on the institution’s assumptions about their needs. The University can eliminate its use of the racist, classist criminal punishment system in determining who may benefit from our educational resources, and counter the collateral consequences of incarceration by introducing the affirmative hiring practices toward formerly incarcerated applicants for employment at the University.

Given the massive extent of the entanglement between the profit motives of private companies and the industry of incarceration, the task of disentangling this institution from the Prison-Industrial Complex may seem herculean. But precisely because the University is so wealthy and financially solvent, it is in a position to lead other institutions in reducing the harm enabled by our economic leverage. Princeton, with the largest per-student endowment of any institution of higher education, can afford to be held to a higher standard.

Amanda Eisenhour is a second-year student from Alexandria, Va., and a co-president of Students for Prison Education and Reform (SPEAR).

Sports

Wednesday April 10, 2019

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } GOLF

Men’s, women’s golf compete in last tournaments before Ivy championships

By Owen Tedford Senior Writer

This past weekend, both the men’s and women’s golf teams hosted events in New Jersey. The men’s team hosted several teams in its annual Princeton Invitational at Springdale Golf Club. While not winning the team or individual titles, Princeton still performed well, including a third-place finish by sophomore Jake Mayer at -8. Along with Columbia, the women’s team cohosted a new tournament, called Match Madness, at Fox Hollow in Branchburg, N.J. The women’s team was narrowly defeated in the final round by the University of Delaware in a contest where four of the individual matches came down to the final hole.

In the men’s tournament, Yale walked away with the individual and team titles.

The top two golfers for the Bulldogs were also the top two overall finishers. Mayer, Princeton’s top scorer, was on pace with the leaders heading in to the final round and finished just three shots back of first place. Mayer finished tied with players from Loyola University Maryland and

Penn for third.

The rest of the team had less success, as Mayer was the only Princeton golfer to finish the tournament under par. Princeton shot +11 as a team to finish eighth out of 13 schools.

In the women’s tournament, Princeton again dominated its Ivy League competition as it had in Florida, beating Dartmouth and Harvard on the way to the championship match by a score of 3.5–2.5 in both matches. The Tigers also finished ahead of Brown, Columbia, and Penn. The only Ivy League team not competing in last weekend’s tournament was Yale.

Princeton’s leading scorers were first-year Emma Zhao and junior Alison Chang who each picked up 2.5 points for Princeton, scoring in every match.

On Sunday, Princeton women’s golf fell by a score of 4.5–1.5 in the final against Delaware. Princeton lost three of its matches in the final and halved the other three to finish second out of eight teams in the tournament.

Both teams have next weekend off as they rest up and get ready for the Ivy League Championships starting on April 19. The

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Sophomore Jake Mayer shot 8 under par to finish tied for third at the Princeton Invitational.

men will travel to Hidden Creek Golf Club in Egg Harbor, N.J. The women will be at The Ridge at Back Brook in Ringoes, N.J. Women’s tennis will be looking for its three-peat in the Ivy League to continue the

juniors’ unbeaten streak in the Ivy League championship. Men’s golf will be looking to improve on last year’s performance where it finished seventh as a team just ahead of Columbia. Yale ran away with last

year’s title, winning by 22 strokes over Dartmouth.

The Tigers were led by nowjunior Evan Quinn, who finished +17 tied for 15thplace and only eight shots off the lead.

WOMEN’S TENNIS

With the pressure on, women’s tennis delivers, beats Harvard 4–3

By Olivia Meyer Contributor

The women’s tennis team (14–4, 3–0 Ivy League) is dominating the Ivy League on the road with an undefeated record they extended to 3–0 this past Sunday as they beat Harvard 4–3. Senior Nicole Kalhorn helped seal the win for the Tigers to just edge out Harvard.

Kalhorn won a grueling match on court 5 only after a tiebreaker to clinch the win for her team. Kalhorn had a rocky start, losing the first set 4–6. The pressure was on: this was the last match still in play, and both teams had 3 points. Unwavering, Kalhorn turned the match around, showing grit and perseverance in the face of her opponent’s momentum.

Kalhorn won the next two sets 6–3 and 7–6. In the final effort, Kalhorn clinched the win for her team against Harvard, beating her opponent in a tiebreaker 7–4.

The Tigers had solid performances in doubles. No. 2 doubles first-year Grace Joyce and junior Clare McKee and No. 3 doubles sophomores Nathalie Rodilosso and Stephanie Schrage pulled out smooth wins to earn the majority doubles point, which was necessary in their slim win against Harvard.

Yet, the Tigers’ win wasn’t

going to be so easy. Harvard proved themselves a threat when they came back and won No. 1, 2, and 6 singles back-to-back, giving up no more than two games per set. Harvard’s Erica Oosterhout was a force to be reckoned with, winning both her No. 1 doubles and singles matches.

Tweet of the Day “After a 13-point week, Kyla Sears is the @IvyLeague Offensive Player of the Week” Princeton WLAX (@princetonwlax)

Princeton did not falter, as No. 3 singles Joyce bolstered Princeton’s score with the match she won 6–2, 6–3. McKee won her No. 4 singles match after three sets, defeating her opponent 6–4, 5–7, and 6–3.

With a good record behind them, the women’s tennis team will once again

be on the road, heading to Columbia (13–2, 2–1 Ivy) this Friday. Columbia is having a strong season having just lost a 12-game win streak against Yale. On Sunday, the team will have their home opener against Cornell.

Princeton is tied for first in the Ivy League with Yale; both teams have 3–0 con-

ference records. Princeton’s start to Ivy play is even more impressive given that the team has played each of its first three conference matches on the road. The Tigers will play their final three matches of the season at home, including the season finale against the Bulldogs.

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Nicole Kalhorn won the game-deciding match Sunday at Harvard.

Stat of the Day

57.22 meters

Sophomore Obiageri Amaechi set an Ivy League record with a 57.22 meter discus throw at Saturday’s Sam Howell Invitational.

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