April 3, 2015

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Friday april 3, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 39

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LOCAL NEWS

STUDENT LIFE

Campus conflicted on ‘Hose Bicker’ reform

Showers with afternoon thunderstorms. chance of rain:

90 percent

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In Opinion The Editorial Board suggests ways to facilitate greater involvement of women in leadership roles, and contributor Yoni Benyamini discusses the necessity of a college education in post-secondary plans.

PAGE 5

By Cassidy Tucker contributor

Today on Campus 3 p.m.: Princeton Entrepreneurship Club is sponsoring a lecture on Bitcoin and Entrepreneurship.

Dodds Auditorium.

The Archives

April 3, 1998 Senator Tom Harkin was announced to be the Class of 1998 Baccalaureate speaker.

COURTESY OF SHIRLEY SATTERFIELD

The town of Princeton is considering demolishing an 1870 house in order to expand the neighboring Mary Moss Park.

Plan to demolish historic town property meets resistance

By Annie Yang staff writer

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A house in the town of Princeton constructed in 1870 that has been home to several generations of occupants faces possible demolition if Mary Moss Park is to be expanded.

The town had planned to expand the half-acre park and renovate various aspects of the park, including replacing a wading pool with a “spray ground,” which would include a number of sprinklers.

This plan met resistance, however, when local residents began to speak

out against demolishing the house located at 31-33 Lytle St., and the town and residents are still discussing the next steps. The home is privately owned and was slated to be demolished in order to make room for two newly constructed houses, Mayor Liz Lempert said.

“When the municipality learned that the demolition was slated to occur, we reached out to the developer to see if he’d be willing to sell the property to the municipality in order for the park expansion,” she said.

Local real estate developer Roman Barsky holds the demolition permits,

which he obtained last October, Lempert added.

Barsky did not respond to requests for comment.

Mercer County offered Open Space funding, which provides money to help preserve areas of land, in order to match the municipality’s contribution towards the park, Lempert said.

She added that the funding would not be available for building acquisition.

“We might be able to partner with Habitat for Humanity or some other private group that would take on the responsibility and cost of See TOWN page 4

Eating club presidents and other students have mixed opinions about the special referendum to end the Bicker process at eating clubs.

The referendum called for each eating club to end Bicker no later than the first day of the 2019-20 academic year.

In addition, if the referendum succeeds, the Undergraduate Student Government senate will be required to establish an ad hoc committee to facilitate ending Bicker no more than 45 days after the approval of the referendum.

The referendum also requires that an Interclub Council member be appointed a member of that committee.

The text of the referendum cites the allegedly negative impact that the Bicker process has on campus life.

Swetha Doppalapudi ’16, president of Colonial Club, said she thinks the referendum is about starting the conversation about the pros and cons of Bicker within the University community.

“The referendum, if passed, can only serve to advise the clubs to change their systems,” Doppalapudi said. “It doesn’t have any legislative power over these independent entities.”

Ed Walker ’16, president of Cloister Inn, said he is proud to lead a club that does not bicker, but noted that the decision regarding whether to bicker is made by the membership and graduate board of each club.

The presidents of every Bicker club either declined to comment or did not respond by press time.

Students’ opinions on the referendum vary.

See BICKER page 2

ACADEMICS

News & Notes Harvard Law creates Title IX committee

Dean of Harvard Law School Martha Minow created a Title IX committee to oversee the law school’s schoolspecific policy for investigating cases of alleged sexual harassment, the Harvard Crimson reported.

Minow has appointed tenured faculty members to the committee, and the committee will appoint individuals to investigate and adjudicate reports of sexual misconduct within the law school.

The Office for Civil Rights found Harvard Law School to be in violation of Title IX of the Education Amendments in December 2014. The OCR charged the institution with failing to respond promptly and fairly to reports of sexual harassment.

In response, Harvard Law adopted a revised set of policies, including the formation of the committee, to deal with reports of sexual harassment independently from the university’s centralized procedures.

Harvard Law spokesman Robb London said the appointed individuals would begin their terms as soon as the OCR finalizes its review and provide feedback on the proposed procedures.

PPPL physicists move forward in fusion energy research

By Catherine Offord contributor

Physicists at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, General Atomics and other research institutions have made new observations that help to understand one of the major barriers to developing fusion energy.

The new findings, published in two back-to-back articles in “Physical Review Letters” on March 12, present novel observations from experiments that sought to control damaging heat bursts that routinely occur in a type of fusion machine called a tokamak. The work builds on previous observations made at the same tokamak, located in San Diego, Calif., and known as DIII-D. Although fusion power is still in the experimental stage,

the findings represent a step forward in understanding how fusion reactors might one day feasibly provide an alternative to the combustion of fossil fuels.

“These two papers actually contribute significantly to our understanding of the physical processes,” Alberto Loarte, a physicist and section leader at ITER — the world’s largest experimental tokamak reactor — who was not involved in the study, said. ITER will benefit from the team’s measurements, he added.

Inside a tokamak, a plasma — made up of charged ions and electrons — is confined in a donut-shaped chamber by magnetic fields. A successful, energy-producing fusion reactor would have to harness the energy created from matter See PHYSICS page 3

COURTESY OF LISA PETRILLO AND GENERAL ATOMICS

Two PPPL physicists contributed to the understanding of obstacles to fusion energy.

ACADEMICS

STUDENT LIFE

Robert George, prominent conservative, Website connecting recounts non-conservative beginnings students over summer

By Olivia Wicki staff writer

Robert George, the University’s only professor of jurisprudence and one of the country’s most prominent conservative intellectuals, was not always a conservative.

George, the grandson of coal miners, grew up in the West Virginia Appalachians.

Though one of his grandfathers spent his entire life in the mines, the other was able to save enough money to leave and open up his own business.

“We were union people, we

believed in the Democratic Party and the United Mine Workers of America, and that is what I was brought up with, that the government had a very important positive role to play,” George said.

However, after entering Swarthmore College in 1973 and studying under the tutelage of James Kurth, a conservative political science professor there known in part for his frequent magazine articles about international relations, George said his ideological outlook shifted.

He ultimately questioned

his core political beliefs after seeing first-hand the apparent lack of success of government economic programs in his hometown combined with the influence of Kurth.

“This was during a period when I was really beginning to question the old-fashioned, the old-time religion of the New Deal and Great Society liberalism,” he explained. “[At Swarthmore], I found that I was now thinking for myself and not simply letting myself be directed by whatever the dominant opinion of people See PROFILE page 2

expanding to Ivy League

By Kristin Qian contributor

Summer Playbook, an online map of the summer locations of Ivy League students, is expanding later this month to encompass all Ivy League colleges, including the University.

Neeraj Bajpayee ’17 is mapping University students’ summer locations, expanding the website founded by Harvard sophomore Luke Heine last April.

Heine said that many people have asked why the site is only

restricted to the Ivy League, with people raising concerns about elitism.

“It’s not supposed to feel that way,” Heine said, “and I don’t want that to shine through.”

He explained that he chose the Ivy League because there is camaraderie — or “shared culture” — between the schools.

Ivy League students are also some of the most likely students to travel all over the world during the summer, Heine added.

See IVY LEAGUE page 4

The Daily Princetonian

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Friday april 3, 2015

George offered to take 100 lashes for Saudi Arabian activist, free speech PROFILE Continued from page 1

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around me.”

George’s views, however, did not shift toward libertarianism, but rather away from the idea that government programs could be productive solutions to people’s problems, he said, adding that his views shifted toward what he called “civil society conservatism.”

Civil society conservatives believe government can play a constructive, but less direct, role that is primarily concerned with assisting institutions of civil societies such as families, civic associations, religious communities and fraternal organizations, George said.

“I believe when they are properly empowered and have the resources, they can do a much better job than the government at assisting the family in meeting the health, education and welfare needs of people,” he said.

Melding politics, ethics and religion

George has been appointed by presidents of both parties to offer his advice, serving on the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2009 and serving as the presidential appointee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1993 to 1998.

“Rob is a great paradox because he’s a cheerful and optimistic conservative,” Michael Reynolds, associate professor of Near Eastern studies, said.

George has also worked closely with black church communities for over 10 years, inviting them to lecture and lead seminars at the University, said Eugene Rivers III, founder of the Seymour Institute for Advanced Christian Studies.

“Professor George is an enormously influential philosopher in growing numbers of black church circles in the United States and abroad,” Rivers said.

These communities draw upon George’s scholarship and published works on natural law, like his book “Embryo: A Defense of Human Life,” to inform their philosophies, Rivers

explained.

George’s scholarship helps inform conservative views in Jamaican religious communities, Rivers added.

“We need professor George as a bridge-builder to help us be in conversation with the white evangelicals,” he said.

“There is increasingly an effort … to force U.S. cultural values onto Jamaican society and to force people to embrace things like gay marriage.”

At the University, George and professor emeritus Cornel West GS ’80 are currently coteaching — and have co-taught in the past — a seminar. The seminar this spring is called “Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities — Adventures in Ideas.”

“We both strongly believe in the method of dialogue as the best way to pursue understanding,” George explained.

George and West have given joint lectures at other institutions, such as Swarthmore, but have sometimes been met with boycotts and protests by students, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a former Swarthmore class-

mate and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, said.

“It’s extremely valuable that the University has Robbie George, because on many campuses, they believe in diversity as skin color, they believe in diversity as sexual identity but they don’t believe in diversity of intellectual opinion and this is a big lack on many, even Ivy League, campuses,” Furchtgott-Roth said.

The Case of Raif Badawi On Jan. 20, George, who is vice chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, and seven of the nine other commission members sent a letter to the government of Saudi Arabia requesting immediate action against the imprisonment of liberal Saudi activist Raif Badawi.

Badawi was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for operating a website advocating for free speech.

The letter said the commission members would each take

Regardless of ‘Hose Bicker’ referendum results, no direct effect on Bicker clubs will be enforced BICKER

Continued from page 1

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Many students do not agree with the referendum itself because they view Bicker as just another selective process, similar to the college and job application processes, Jennifer Bu ’17 said.

“I and a lot of people I’ve talked with do have some ethical problems with the Bicker system,” Bu said. “But I think it should be up to every eating club to adjust their own system rather than a collective call to ‘Hose Bicker.’ ”

Bu said she did not vote on the referendum.

One of the reasons Bicker is necessary is that the eating clubs do not have enough space and resources to support every single student who wants to get in, Cristin Shanahan ’16 said.

Hannah Sorkin ’18, who also didn’t vote on the referendum, said she understands why people would be interested in ending Bicker.

“The main reason is that Bicker is a very exclusive process,” she said, “and it makes our community go from inclusive to exclusive, and a lot

of people feel left out.”

Alysia DaSilva ’18 said she

“I think it should be up to every eating club to adjust their own system rather than a collective call to ‘Hose Bicker.’ ” Jennifer Bu ’17

realizes that Bicker might make some people feel excluded, but that she herself is looking forward to going through the Bicker process.

“I’ve heard it’s a lot of fun,” she said. “I think Bicker is one of Princeton’s many traditions, and aside from that, each eating club has its own identity, and if we got rid of Bicker, then the identity of that eating club would probably be destroyed.”

Voting on the referendum took place Monday through Wednesday. The results of the referendum are expected Friday afternoon.

100 of the lashes assigned to him instead of doing nothing.

George mentioned Badawi’s sentence at a meeting of the USCIRF earlier this year.

The commission advises Congress and the President about religious freedom abroad and makes related recommendations about executive and legislative foreign policy.

“Our commission immediately saw the need to press our own government — that’s our job really — to bring pressure on the Saudi regime to correct this really great injustice in human rights abuse against Badawi,” George said. The meeting between the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States and commission members had been fruitless, he said, and there was a need to “up the ante.”

The letter was also motivated by the need to disrupt a larger pattern of human rights abuses by the Saudi Arabian regime, especially because Saudi Arabia is an economic and military ally to the United

States, George said.

“Three-quarters of the world’s population, roughly, live under regimes that are regular abusers of religious freedom and other human rights,” he said.

The lashings have been temporarily discontinued since the release of the letter, Katrina Swett, the chair of the USCIRF, said. Members of the USCIRF knew they could not send such a bold letter unless prepared to follow through, she added.

“I’m just so grateful to Rob for, first of all, his moral clarity of courage and creativity, all three of which were brought to bear in this instance,” Swett said.

In recent weeks there have been rumors relayed to the commission by the Badawi family that the Saudi Arabian judiciary intends to retry Badawi, this time for a capital offense, which could result in the sentence of a beheading, Swett said.

“We are all very nervous about the uncertainty that remains,” she said.

CORRECTION Due to an editing error, an earlier version of the April 2 article, “ ‘For Colored Girls’ explores racial and gender identity,” misstated that the show is an adaptation. Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of the April 2 article “Falcon ‘15 first U. student awarded David-Weill Scholarship,” misstated where Anne Scattolin works. She is the executive director of US Sciences Po Foundation. Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of the April 2 article, “News & Notes: Stanford offers free tuition,” misstated the point at which Princeton grants students free tuition. Students whose parents earn less than $140,000 receive free tuition.

Due to reporting errors, an earlier version of the April 2 article, “Women’s swimming and diving dominates, wins Ivy League title,” contained a number of inaccuracies. First, an earlier version of this article misstated Sada Stewart’s name and misspelled Elizabeth McDonald’s last name. Second, an earlier version of this article misstated the race in which McDonald and Nikki Larson competed. They placed first and third in the 50-yard freestyle. Third, an earlier version of this article misstated Claire McIlmail’s appearance in the final.

The 200 freestyle race was her second championship final and her first win. The ‘Prince’ regrets the errors.

The Daily Princetonian

Friday april 3, 2015

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No clear understanding of mechanisms behind heat bursts, says Wade PHYSICS Continued from page 1

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when ions in this plasma collide and fuse with each other. This energy release is described by Albert Einstein’s observation that energy equals mass times the square of the speed of light.

However, maintaining the plasma at its hot, high-energy state presents a number of challenges. One challenge is the control of heat bursts caused by instabilities called “edge-localized modes.” Appearing like solar flares escaping the surface of the sun, which is a large ball of plasma, these ELMs allow a large amount of heat to escape all at once, rather than in a lower-energy, steady stream.

ELMs create difficulties for physicists hoping to create a fusion reactor, Loarte said.

“If there are many of them, they can erode the wall of the reactor very quickly,” he said.

“This is a problem because we would have to stop the operation to replace the components.”

Previous work at DIII-D revealed that applying small, additional magnetic fields to the plasma helped to suppress ELMs by allowing heat to escape more gradually, Mickey Wade, program director at DIII-D, said.

Theoretical work at other fusion research centers has since made several predictions about how this suppression might occur, and focus has been directed at tiny ruffles that appear at the edge of the plasma, allowing heat to leak gradually instead of building up into bursts.

However, experimental observations to support this theoretical understanding were lacking, he said.

“Until these articles were published, there wasn’t a clear scientific understanding of the underlying mechanisms that led to the elimination of the ELMs,” he explained.

Something of a crucial step was the team’s decision to change the placement of sensors measuring the plasma’s behavior inside the tokamak, said Raffi Nazikian, the second pa-

per’s lead author and a research physicist at PPPL. The second paper is entitled, ”Pedestal bifurcation and resonant field penetration at the threshold of edge-localized mode suppression in the DIII-D tokamak.”

Previous experiments had placed sensors only on the longer, outer edge of the donut ring.

However, the scientists in these experiments placed sensors along the shorter, inner edge of the donut ring, Nazikian said.

“That’s usually a place that is quite inaccessible and rather hostile to measurement,” he explained. “But it was on the inside of the donut that all the interesting action was taking place.”

Combined with high resolution measurements and finelytuned application of magnetic fields to the plasma, this new position allowed the team to see things they hadn’t seen before, said Carlos Paz-Soldan, lead author on the first paper and a scientist at General Atomics.

His paper is entitled ”Observation of a multimode plasma

INSPIRATION NIGHT

YASH HUILGOL :: CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER

Faculty members discuss the art piece “Shanghai” at the annual Inspiration Night at the Art Museum.

response and its relationship to density pumpout and edge-localized mode suppression.”

“We found that we could excite a different ruffling of the plasma, one that was concentrated on the inside where the new sensors were located,” he said.

While plasmas exhibiting ELMs often showed ruffles on the outside edge, the plasma that had reduced ELMs had lots of little ruffles along the inside edge, extending up to the top and bottom surfaces of the donut, Paz-Soldan explained.

These smaller, inside-edge ruffles were associated with gradual heat release from the plasma, Nazikian said.

These new observations have already supported calculations made by physicists at other facilities, predicting that secondary ruffles could occur in some conditions, Wade said. The team cannot completely confirm that these ruffles reliably cause the suppres-

sion of ELMs, not least because the effect was only observed in a small fraction of the tokamak.

“The real question is, as we expand and go to different operating space, does this correlation between the second ruffle and the ELM suppression still exist?” he said.

It will also be important to scale the experiment up for different tokamaks, Ken McClements, a theoretical physicist at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy who was not involved in the study, said.

“One of the questions that’s raised is ‘Can similar effects be seen on other machines?’ ” he said. “It’s always good to try to see how generic this behavior is, or whether it’s peculiar to one particular tokamak.”

Another concern is the production of instabilities in the plasma by the very act of trying to suppress ELMs. One of the next directions for research will

be to find out how to apply magnetic fields to retain the benefits of ELM suppression without introducing other problems into the tokamak, Nazikian said, adding that theoretical work will be crucial to develop this understanding.

With these trade-offs in mind, other facilities such as ITER will be taking advantage of the new results to see if they can optimize ELM suppression in their machines, Loarte said.

Ultimately, the need to make fusion in tokamaks a financially viable method of energy production puts constraints on how to design future reactors, he explained.

“You can always limit the erosion of the walls of the reactor at the cost of not producing any energy,” Loarte said. “So we need to optimize the erosion compared to the energy production, because all of these integration issues come at a price.”

The Daily Princetonian

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Friday april 3, 2015

Partnership with Habitat for Humanity possible TOWN

Continued from page 1

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rehabilitation,” she said.

Due to the house’s condition, cost estimates currently start at $200,000 but could be substantially higher, Lempert said.

Recently, a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling said that courts could enforce towns’ affordable housing requirements.

However, this will not impact decisions on the potential Lytle Street property, Lempert said.

“The Council typically turns to our Affordable Housing Board for advice about how best to appropriate those funds,” she said. “The board advised against using affordable housing funds to purchase the Lytle house because of the high price tag.”

While the town has a trust fund designated for affordable housing and renovations on existing units, it is still necessary

to be fiscally responsible with the funds, Lempert said.

However, the house characterizes those constructed in the 1870s and is located in the heart of a neighborhood with significant history, Kip Cherry, a member of Witherspoon-Jackson Neighborhood Historic District committee, said.

The area was primarily settled by African-Americans from the South, as well as Italian Americans, and remained segregated for decades, Cherry said.

The wading pool also has symbolic importance that harkens back to the age of segregation, as residents were unable to use other local pools, Cherry said.

She said that many residents did not want an expansion of Mary Moss Park because they believe the size is fine for the scale of the neighborhood, and a larger pool for older children is only a few blocks away.

“We want to evaluate the pos-

sibility of reusing the structure and probably adding a couple more units to create more affordable housing,” Cherry said, noting that local residents are not focused on preserving the house as a museum but renovating it for affordable housing.

There are two primary impediments to rehabilitating the house, she said, including the relatively expensive price of the land and the cost of rehabilitating the house.

“The town has limited funds,” Cherry said. “The Open Space fund could be used for historic preservation, but it couldn’t be used for affordable housing, so we would have to find another source of funds for that.”

A number of citizens are also planning on working with Habitat for Humanity, which would also assist with fundraising, to restore the house, Cherry said, adding that she has spoken with the owner of the property and is

currently waiting to hear back from him. Appraisals and cost estimates are still in the works.

While it would be too costly to purchase the property from the general budget or the affordable housing trust fund, a number of residents are not happy with the idea of purchasing the property using Open Space funds, councilwoman Jenny Crumiller said.

“It seems to me that I would want the expanded public space if I lived there, [but] I don’t live there,” she said. “[However,] at several meetings, the vast majority of residents who spoke strongly opposed the playground expansion, and I couldn’t brush their objections aside.”

Several residents are working to allocate funds to purchase the house, Crumiller noted.

“If they can figure out a way to do it, I would support their effort,” she said.

Summer Playbook to launch for Ivy League in April IVY LEAGUE Continued from page 1

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Summer Playbook is taking part in a venture capital incubator for startup companies but is currently a not-for profit project, Heine said.

The endeavor started off as a Facebook post in which Heine asked his classmates to mark the places where they would be over the summer, he said. Within a week, 800 people had responded, posting locations in 36 countries and six continents.

Bajpayee met Heine in his senior year of high school in Singapore and responded enthusiastically when Heine asked him to help coordinate the project at the University.

“Something really fantastic about Princeton students is that they have both the opportunity and the interest to go around the world,” Bajpayee said, adding that it can be daunting to be in a foreign country without

knowing anyone upon arrival, and that the website can help students get acquainted with each other.

Data from last summer indicates people who signed up through Summer Playbook used it frequently over the course of their internships or study abroad programs, Heine said.

Among those interviewed, University students shared mixed feelings about the new project.

The program is interesting and has potential, Patrick Flanigan ’18 said, noting, however, that he would not use it himself.

“It just doesn’t seem like it would work for me, but I could see it working for others,” he said.

Others said they believe the website may be unnecessary.

“I think it’s a good idea, but I feel like it’s a bit redundant,” Amanda Blanco ’18 said. “Any other form of social media like Facebook and Twitter could serve the same purpose.”

Jessica Ma ’15 created an application called Spot last year for

University students, whose purpose was also to help students meet other students over the summer and find roommates while traveling. The program was inspired by the original platform called Pton.in, which was launched in 2013. Ma, Momchil Tomov ’14, and Raymond Zhong ’15 created the new platform from scratch last year and ended up having over 2,000 users.

Spot is currently still in use and is partnered with the Undergraduate Student Government, but it only connects University students.

Ma said she does not see any problem with Summer Playbook affecting the number of people signing up for Spot.

“I don’t really see it as a competition,” Ma said. ”We already have 2,000 people in our network, so we already have this user base. When you register for something, you want to register because tons of people are already registered.”

Spot has partnered with Ca-

reer Services and the International Internship Program, and hosted a meet-and-greet event last year that allowed students to meet the other students in person before the summer. This year, the USG has expressed interest in working with Spot.

Compared to Summer Playbook, Spot is open to the public, since people sign up through their Facebook accounts. People can also sign up for Spot anytime throughout the summer, whereas Summer Playbook has a registration deadline. Additionally, Spot has filter features that allow people to filter by class year or by Princeton students only.

Nonetheless, Ma thinks that Summer Playbook is noteworthy.

“I have nothing against Summer Playbook,” Ma said. ”I think they have a good idea and I would use it. It’s fun.”

Ma estimates that Spot will revamp around the end of April.

Summer Playbook will launch on April 14.

The post-secondary gamble

Opinion

Friday april 3, 2015

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }

EDITORIAL

Yoni Benyamini

contributing columnist

L

ast week in Las Vegas, I was confronted with a difficult reality — that your path in life may depend solely on where you live, how much your family makes, the outcome of a lottery, and even which teachers are willing to commit to your district.

If you haven’t seen “Waiting for Superman,” Guggenheim’s documentary would be a good start to understanding the problems facing the American public education system. Many academic settings in the United States are adulterated by a multitude of these structural and social determinants of education.

Perhaps the problem lies in racial and socio-economic achievement gaps, organizational structure or skewed teacher incentives. After traveling down to Las Vegas, however, for a peek at the fifth largest school district in the nation, I’d like to entertain a different idea.

Our education system is too narrow, focused on readying students to attend a four-year college or university.

As denoted by William Synmonds’ 2011 paper, the emphasis on college-going relies on an implicit assumption. It assumes that an education tailored to the academic requirements established by four-year colleges will prepare adolescents for future success.

Perhaps this isn’t true anymore — perhaps a fouryear college education isn’t for everyone.

Take a city like Las Vegas, for example, the focus of the breakout trip I participated in over spring break. Many blue-collar customer-servicing jobs, whether working hospitality at a high-end hotel or dealing cards at a Vegas casino, generate far more cash than entry-level positions requiring a college degree. I would be remiss to label any of the individuals in these positions as failures — many have bachelor’s degrees, are accredited with professional licenses and are exceptionally talented artists.

Brittany Bronson, an English instructor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is one of these figures. Despite having a Masters, she holds a second job serving at a chain restaurant off the Strip for economic security. Brittany risks the image she presents to her students as a university mentor for her true love of learning.

Like her, many of her students hold similar parttime jobs, and 60 percent of her freshman will forego their college degrees to retain them. But unlike her, their decision to enroll in college may have stemmed from a lack of alternative pathways to success.

Erica Mosca, another educator in east Las Vegas, founded a nonprofit which contributes to giving these students equitable post-secondary opportunities. She aims to make her students both collegeready and career-ready through a Leader-In-Training program, giving them the opportunity to make their own post-secondary choices.

Our curricula have not always been geared towards college. At the start of the twentieth century, our nation underwent a feat that most other western nations would achieve some 30 to 50 years later.

Newly afforded a system of education that was open to all — unhindered by universal standards and decentralized — American youth entered high school at a rapid rate to learn skills “for life” rather than “for college.”

With a mere 9 percent of 18-year-olds holding diplomas in 1910, the United States oversaw measures to increase that number to around 40 percent by 1940. By the mid-1930s, graduation rates were as high as policymakers had forecasted for 1960. At a time when no European nation had a full-time schooling rate for older youths exceeding 25 percent, the United States secondary school enrollment rate was just below 80 percent.

For decades, the United States remained at the forefront of educational achievement. Yet today, for the first time in our nation’s history, United States educational attainment is in danger of receding from current levels.

Today, we’re ranked 14th in education worldwide. Today, we’re 17th in educational performance and 54th in educational expenditures. Today, our spectacular educational transformation has been reduced to 66 percent of all fourth graders lacking proficiency in reading.

Can’t we catch up?

It turns out that early reading proficiency is one of the most important predictors of high school graduation and career success. At the end of the third grade, students transition between learning to read and reading to learn. Student who fall behind that critical milestone rarely catch up, remaining four times more likely to drop out of high school.

And because they have fallen behind in elementary school, these students are hindered from being able to make a post-secondary choice.

Perhaps college isn’t for everyone. Many of the most successful nations in northern and central Europe emphasize high-quality career counseling and career education. That is not to say Europe is perfect – the story gets a bit muddled, since students there are tracked from a very young age, and separated onto either a college-bound or vocational track. But these nations recognize that multiple pathways to prosperity exist, instead of positing college as the holy grail of post-secondary decisions.

Perhaps college isn’t for everyone. Nevada might be ranked last among the states in education, but Las Vegas’ abundance of magnet and vocational, trade and technical schools offer a new hope. Its dedicated employers are partnering with high schools to provide career-counseling and work-based learning.

Its key stakeholders have pledged to collaboratively improve pathways for those left behind.

Perhaps college isn’t for everyone. But the choice of a post-secondary path is.

Yoni Benyamini is an ORFE major from Roslyn, New York. He can be reached at yb@princeton.edu.

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Encouraging female leadership on campus

T

he Daily Princetonian recently published an article, as part of a four-part Women’s History Month feature series, on the rise of female visibility and leadership in major campus organizations as well as on the Street. While many women have been elected in recent years to ‘visible’ positions such as president of the USG, chair of the Honor Committee and editor-in-chief of the ‘Prince,’ Princeton has yet to fully bridge the gender gap. After all, while these elections demonstrate progress, many Princeton undergraduate women continue to face barriers to leadership positions. For example, when an organization’s officer corps or membership body is predominantly male, female members may drop out if they feel uncomfortable or if they do not see opportunities for leadership in the future.

This creates a cycle of low female retention rates and low female visibility in leadership roles. Thus in order to better facilitate and encourage female leadership on campus, the Board urges campus organizations such as the Women’s Center to change their outreach campaigns in order to foster more inclusive dialogue. Furthermore, the Board encourages all University and student groups to push for more diverse representation and female visibility, especially at recruiting events.

In early Fall, the Princeton Women’s Mentorship Program sent out an email to all Wilson sophomores about upcoming events. While sent out to all sophomores, the email was specifically

addressed to “Princeton Women.” This past October, the Women’s Center ran a series of poster campaigns with headlines such as, “USG: where men are presidents and women are secretaries.” While it is undeniable that these mentorship programs and publicity campaigns have increased campus dialogue about female leadership, the Board urges organizations to consider advertising that is more welcoming towards men. By making the advertising more inclusive, men could be better encouraged to attend and contribute to discussion about female leadership. Many of the current discussion groups and events mainly attract women who are passionate about gender inequality and who are already aware of the problems on campus. If these events are more welcoming of men, especially those who are not very familiar with the topic, then there is an opportunity to break out of this circle and engage a larger section of the Princeton community.

In addition to fostering more inclusive dialogue, all campus organizations should strive to promote the visibility of female leaders and highlight leadership opportunities early on in the year. An institutional problem for many maledominated clubs is female-member retention rates. Women who feel uncomfortable in these clubs or who don’t see a possibility for leadership roles often times drop out and choose other activities. This can leave clubs with a comparatively small pool of females for leadership positions, further perpetuating this vicious cycle. In order to address this issue, the Women’s Center

vol. cxxxix

Anna Mazarakis ’16 editor-in-chief

should offer workshops for student groups leaders on how to better engage and retain female members. University centers and individual student groups could also offer more programs and panels in early fall or before major election periods that spotlight female leaders and introduce the leadership positions available on campus. During the school year, student organizations with an exclusive officer corps should strive to delegate leadership opportunities to a diverse membership body, especially females. When students feel engaged and see opportunities for leadership early on, they are more likely to stay involved.

Furthermore, at recruiting events such as Princeton Preview, student groups should strive to have diverse gender representation at the activities fair and open houses. Interacting with active female club members at these recruiting events can make joining less intimidating for prospective female students.

While Princeton has made great strides towards gender equality in recent years, there still remains work to be done. Thus in order to better facilitate and encourage female leadership on campus, Princeton organizations should foster dialogue more inclusive of men and look for opportunities to spotlight female leadership on campus.

The Editorial Board is an independent body and decides its opinions separately from the regular staff and editors of The Daily Princetonian. The Board answers only to its Chair, the Opinion Editor and the Editor-In-Chief.

Matteo Kruijssen ’16 business manager

EDITORIAL BOARD chair Jeffrey Leibenhaut ’16 Allison Berger ’18 Elly Brown ’18 Thomas Clark ’18 Paul Draper ’18 Daniel Elkind ’17 Theodore Furchgott ’18 James Haynes ’18 Zach Horton ’15 Mitchell Johnston ’15 Wynne Kerridge ’16 Cydney Kim ’17 Daphna Le Gall ’15 Sergio Leos ’17 Carolyn Liziewski ’18 Sam Mathews ’17 Lily Offit ’15 Connor Pfeiffer ’18 Ashley Reed ’18 Aditya Trivedi ’16 Andrew Tsukamoto ’15 Jillian Wilkowski ’15 Kevin Wong ’17

NIGHT STAFF 4.2.15 senior copy editors Do-Hyeong Myeong ’17 Grace Rehaut ’18 news Zoe Toledo ’18

quick nap

Jon Robinson GS

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Will Rivitz columnist

A

few days ago, Girls creator and lightning rod for both endless praise and endless controversy Lena Dunham wrote what I assume was intended to be a “humor” piece in the New Yorker entitled “Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz.” In it, she cracks one-off jokes about ostensible similarities between a stereotypical pampered pooch and a stereotypical pampered Jewish man, silently chuckling at things like “hair all over his body, like most males who share his background.” The piece has blown up since its publication, as a piece like this tends to. Some critics have been bandying about its purported “disgusting antisemitic garbage.”

Some supporters (most of whom are Jewish themselves), on the other hand, praise the piece’s place in the “time-honored part of the Jewish comic tradition” of making fun of one’s own people. (Dunham’s mother is Jewish.)

Like many of the piece’s critics, I don’t take issue with tasteful Jewish humor. As a Jew, I find the norm of “self-deprecating” Jewish humor and the “wry self-knowledge” a Salon article ascribes to Dunham’s piece to be quite funny when done right.

Hence, like many of the piece’s critics, my first issue with Dunham’s piece is that at no point is it actually humorous. It feels like it’s trying to

Self-deprecating humor? make me smirk at lines like “I have more Instagram followers than he does” (given that Dunham has over one and a half million Instagram followers, I’d be more surprised if that weren’t the case). New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick praised Dunham’s piece as “a comic voice working in [the Jewish-comic] vein.”

However, I’m not so certain support of the Jewish comedic tradition can be extended to something just for being written by a (part) Jew when I haven’t found anyone (supporters included) who has laughed at it.

Here’s the rub, though: part of the reason Greenburg and Silverman succeed is because their humor is sincerely self-deprecating, able to walk the line between stifling political correctness and outright anti-Semitism thanks to an involvement of self. Dunham’s piece, on the other hand, isn’t self-deprecating in the slightest. Despite Dunham’s Jewishness, she paints herself as an almost external actor here, poking fun at her boyfriend while simultaneously removing herself from the clutches of the Jewish identity she skewers.

This stance is particularly clear when Dunham states that “he comes from a culture in which mothers focus every ounce of their attention on their offspring and don’t acknowledge their own need for independence as women.” If this piece were self-knowing, as supporters claim, Dunham might have used the word “we.” By instead using the word “he,”

Dunham moves herself out of the spotlight, accusing her figurative boyfriend of being coddled by a culture of which she wants us to know she has no part. A piece like this, in order to participate in the tradition of so many legendary Jewish comedians, must be written from a Jewish perspective first and foremost.

Dunham can absolutely write this as a Jewish woman, but in order for it to fit into the “self-knowledge” already enumerated here, the Jewishness must take precedence. In putting the word “Jewish” in the title, Dunham needs to tackle this piece as a Jew before letting any of her other identities approach.

By refusing to implicate herself as a member of the culture she criticizes, Dunham loses the credibility she needs in order to play a legitimate part in the rich history of Jewish comedy. Remnick likened the piece to “Richard Pryor and Chris Rock doing the same about black stereotypes.” Personally, I would compare it less to those honestly self-aware comedians and more to Bill Cosby’s Pound Cake Speech at the 2004 NAACP awards, in which Cosby severely criticized modern Black culture: “The lower economic and lower middle economic people are [not*] holding their end in this deal.” The most insightful criticism I’ve seen, which largely applies to Dunham’s piece as well, comes from a review of a Michael Eric Dyson book about the speech from the Harvard Education Review: “Cosby has built up years

of cultural capital and credibility while ignoring race to establish a platform for himself that he is using to lambast and criticize poor Blacks rather than defend them.” Much like Dunham, in removing himself from the group of people he’s denouncing, Cosby also removes his perspective from the place it needs to be to tackle this subject.

In the end, “Dog or Jewish Boyfriend? A Quiz” fails because it doesn’t say anything particularly worthwhile. It’s not funny, it’s not insightful, it’s not even particularly well-conceived or well-written. Most of the critics calling out the piece’s anti-Semitism (especially those who are likely not Jewish themselves) are, as Remnick puts it, “howling in the wrong direction.” However, those who would place Dunham’s piece in the pantheon of great Jewish comedy (for reasons that don’t actually relate to the piece’s comedy, I assume) are also mistaken. The “Jewish comedic tradition” many Jews (myself included) love so much succeeds largely due to an inclusion of self in the culture at which good comedians so nostalgically jab. By removing herself from this culture — whether via a choice pronoun or a more overt criticism of his failure to tip — Dunham changes her role from humorous critic to problematic accuser.

Will Rivitz is a freshman from Brookline, Mass. He can be reached at wrivitz@ princeton.edu.

Sports

Friday april 3, 2015

page 6

{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } MEN’S LACROSSE

MEN’S VOLLEYBALL

Tigers continue the chase for the EIVA title by staving off Harvard, Sacred Heart

By David Liu staff writer

YICHENG SUN :: PHOTO EDITOR

The highly ranked powerhouse that is Princeton men’s lacrosse team will take on Stony Brook this weekend.

Tigers look to rally against Stony Brook

By Andrew Steele Senior Writer

Following a 10-8 loss to Brown, one of Princeton’s most familiar rivals, men’s lacrosse (6-2 overall, 2-1 Ivy League) will renew a fixture contested only twice in program history. The Stony Brook University Seawolves (8-2, 2-1 America East) play host to the Tigers this Saturday in non-conference play.

Both previous contests ended in decisive decisions for the Orange and Black. In 1992, the then-NCAA champion Tigers topped Stony Brook at home by a score of 12-5 before routing the Seawolves in an 18-7 away win the following year.

But much has changed in college lacrosse since the early days of Bill Tierney’s tenure at Princeton. What do the rankings and statistics say about these two squads?

At this point in the season, fans of collegiate men’s lacrosse gain the insight of the objective Ratings Percentage Index, a metric which considers strength of schedule, or opponents’ records, along with wins and losses, in addition to subjective media and coaches’ polls. Some highlights from the NCAA’s RPI, updated March 30: all five Atlantic Coast Conference teams, including Nos. 1 and 2 Notre Dame University and Syracuse University, rank in the top 10, while the Ivy League comes in a somewhat distant second place for conference strength, with four teams in the top 15.

Princeton holds the No. 12 spot in the coaches’ poll and the No. 13 spots in the media rankings and the RPI. Receiving votes but unranked by the coaches, Stony Brook occupies Inside Lacrosse’s No. 20 spot and comes in

29th in RPI. Over their ten contests, the Seawolves have accrued an impressive scoring differential of +5.50. Their 14.70 goals per game place them sixth among Division I offenses. Attackman Brody Eastwood can claim more than some credit for his side’s productivity, as his 3.50 goals per game rank fourth nationally. What’s more, the 3.60 assist per game average of attackman Mike Rooney trails only that of Albany University’s Lyle Thompson — the Great Danes’ star man tallied 10 assists against Stony Brook earlier this year.

Princeton’s close defense should nonetheless confidently approach Saturday’s challenge. Although Brown topped the Tigers in Saturday’s matchup, sophomore Brian Pickup kept the nation’s leading goalscorer, attackman Dylan Molloy, from finding twine even once.

Similarly, the Tigers’ previously top-scoring threat was held without a single point by Brown’s defense. Senior midfielder and solo captain Kip Orban ranks third on the team with 27 points (22 goals and five assists).

When in prime form, his shot possesses a combination of speed and accuracy which no goalkeeper can withstand. However, twice this season (against Brown and Maryland) Orban has been held to zero points. Finding consistent and quality opportunities for their captain could unlock the Tigers’ offensive potential.

This task will prove all the more difficult in light of last week’s announcement that junior midfielder Jake Froccaro will miss the remainder of the season due to injury. The Long Island native, poised to be one of the conference’s top offensive threats,

made his mark in the record books last season with a program-high 10-goal performance against Yale. Neither of Princeton’s preseason all-American selections will exercise their eligibility this year, as sophomore long stick midfielder Will Reynolds likewise elected to withdraw following an early injury.

While Princeton’s midfield has not proven as prolific as in past years, the attack duo of senior Mike MacDonald and junior Ryan Ambler has been the backbone of the Orange and Black offense. Ambler’s 13 goals and 15 assists through eight games puts him on pace to top his career-high mark of 43 points. While his linemate has been impressive, MacDonald in particular has been sensational. His 5.63 points per game (25 total goals along with 20 assists) make him the only Division I player to rank in the top 10 in both goals per game and assists per game.

Orban and MacDonald, both of whom were recently named to Inside Lacrosse All-America second-team, will lead the Tigers against a Stony Brook defense that, save for a 15-17 loss to Albany, has proven incredibly stout. The Seawolves have held opponents to 9.20 goals per outing.

It remains somewhat unclear who head coach Jim Nagle will put between the pipes. Almost nothing separates the Seawolves’ tandem of Brandon Maciejewski and Hayden Johnstone, save maybe their last names’ pronouncability for American English speakers. The former has allowed 43 goals against 41 saves, while the latter’s managed 44 against 42.

The action is scheduled to begin Saturday at 3 p.m. Live audio will be available through WPRB, online or locally on FM channel 103.3.

Men’s volleyball (9-8 overall, 5-2 Eastern Intercollegiate Volleyball Association) will travel to Harvard on Friday and Sacred Heart on Saturday to play two high-profile EIVA games. With only one month left in the season, every conference game carries great weight for the Tigers, ranked No. 2 in the EIVA. While Princeton decisively defeated both teams earlier in the season at home, the Orange and Black will face two teams looking to protect home court and seeking revenge.

For the Tigers, this weekend is about staying af loat in the EIVA standings. Late in the season, Penn State has leaped ahead to secure the top seed, maintaining a perfect 6-0 record in the conference. Meanwhile, No. 3 Harvard trails Princeton by just half a game as the two old rivals engage in a down-to-the-wire battle. Both teams hope to stay above the fourth seed to avoid facing Penn State in the EIVA championships.

As expected, a long and growing rivalry follows both the Tigers and the Crimson heading into Friday’s game. The Tigers currently hold an edge over the Crimson, maintaining a 10-7 overall series lead. Princeton defeated Harvard in last year’s EIVA semifinals, overcoming two earlier regular season losses.

Both teams also showcase a host

of All-Conference Players. On the Princeton side, senior outside hitter Cody Kessel ranks second in the EIVA in kills, while sophomore Junior Oboh leads the conference in hitting percentage. The Crimson, however, has its own star duo in Casey and D.J. White.

In their February meeting, Princeton defeated Harvard by a set score of 3-1. However, from the perspective of the spectator, the match was far closer than the score revealed.

The Crimson actually defeated the Tigers in a close 26-24 first three sets. Yet, the initial loss only poised the Tigers for the following three victories. While all sets proved to be close, Princeton demonstrated the ability to overcome setbacks and finish sets strongly.

The Princeton teams has had even greater success over Sacred Heart, leveraging an impressive 6-2 series lead over the Pioneers. This season the Pioneers have continued to struggle with only a 1-5 record in the EIVA. In February’s matchup between the Tigers and Pioneers, Sacred Heart started all three sets with an impressive showing. However, the Tigers proved to be too dominant, finishing the match with a sweep.

While this weekend’s challenges will surely tire the Tigers, the team will capitalize upon a 10-day intermission before embarking on a three-game home stand.

KIRA IVARSSON :: PRINCETONIAN STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The men’s volleyball team will try to hold onto its EIVA ranking this weekend.

SOFTBALL

Tough weekend ahead as Tigers continue into second week of Ivy League play

By Sydney Mandelbaum associate sports editor

After sweeping a doubleheader against Brown and winning a game earlier this week against Rider, the women’s softball team will face off in twinbills against Ivy League rivals Dartmouth and Harvard. The Tigers (10-13 overall, 2-0 Ivy League) currently lead the Ivy League South Division by a narrow margin, as to be expected only one week into conference play. Dartmouth (10-13, 3-1) currently leads the

Ivy League North Division, while Harvard (10-15, 1-3) is currently sitting in third. Both teams have won their last two games. The doubleheaders against Dartmouth and Harvard will start at 2 p.m. on Friday and 12:30 p.m. on Saturday, respectively.

The Tiger pitching staff has played well this season, with freshman Ashley LaGuardia leading the team with 64 1/3 innings pitched and a 3.05 ERA. Junior Shanna Christian threw a shutout in the first game against Brown last

Saturday and had a 2.78 ERA on 27.2 innings, while senior Meredith Brown threw six shutout innings in the second game, with a 2.41 ERA on 20.1 innings. Sophomore Erica Nori also played four innings against Rider, allowing no runs.

The Tigers are led in batting by senior infielder Alyssa Schmidt, who has a .298 batting average, followed by junior first baseman Emily Viggers and sophomore infielder Haley Hineman with .286 and .273 batting averag-

es, respectively.

Last weekend, the Big Green swept Columbia on the road after splitting at Penn. Three Dartmouth players have been batting over .300, led by shortstop Katie McEachern at .458, with first baseman Maddie Damore and pitcher/first baseman Kristen Rumley batting .342 and .339, respectively. The Dartmouth pitching staff has also had strong showings this season, with Morgan McCalmon and Rumley both pitching with ERAs of 2.81 and 2.95, respectively.

The Crimson is coming off of a doubleheader sweep of Rhode Island on Tuesday after losing two games against Penn and one against Columbia. Seven Harvard batters have averages above .300, while the team as a whole has a .278 batting average. The Crimson is led by freshman Alexa Altchek at .500, followed by senior Katherine Appelbe at .396, freshman Maddy Kaplan at .377 and senior Katherine Lantz at .358. Senior Andrea Del Conte, freshman Dallas Hogan and sophomore Cathe-

rine Callaway bat .338, .333 and .310, respectively. Senior Laura Ricciardone has pitched 60.1 of the team’s innings so far, and has a 3.13 ERA and 5-5 record.

Princeton dropped the doubleheaders against both teams last year and split both the year before, so wins this weekend would mean big things for the Tigers. The last time Princeton won more than two of the four games against these teams was 2008, and a 4-0 weekend on the road would be the first against Dartmouth and Harvard since 1995.

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