May 8, 2015

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Friday may 8, 2015 vol. cxxxix no. 62

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In Opinion The Editorial Board suggests ways to improve allocation of Commencement tickets, and columnist Tehila Wenger reflects on her time at Princeton. PAGE 4

Today on Campus 3:00 p.m.:The Women’s Center presents “Battling Abortion Stigma: A Student Speaks Out About Her Story,” where a University student will speak about her experience getting an abortion. Frist 243.

The Archives

May 8, 1961 Over 150 students were hospitalized after Houseparties, following several motorcycle and car accidents and food poisoning.

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News & Notes Columbia Teachers College employees vote to strike Employees of Columbia’s Teachers College voted on April 29 to authorize a strike as a response to proposed cuts to their pension and health care plans, according to Columbia Daily Spectator. The employees, members of the United Auto Workers Local 2110 union, voted to authorize the strike by a 95 percent margin after three months of unsuccessful negotiations w ith Teachers Col lege representatives. Employees held a rally in March to protest the proposed cuts, but claim that negotiations have not made any progress since then. Union president Maida Rosenstein said that the Teachers College administration proposed reducing health benefits, requiring employees to contribute to their premiums and pay higher deductibles. The College also proposed cutting the current universitypaid pension plan in favor of one employees would contribute to. The Teachers College administration offered wage i ncreases, according to Rosenstein, but union members claimed that the increases would not be enough to make up for the proposed cuts. Final negotiations were scheduled for April 29 with union members set to schedule a strike date if negotiations continued to be unsuccessful.

ACADEMICS

Premeds explore social science majors

TEACH-IN

By Melissa Curtis staff writer

Although many premedical students at the University concentrate in the natural sciences, data shows that a growing number of students choose to major in social sciences instead. The past four years of premed students have seen 143 molecular biology concentrators, 76 ecology and evolutionary biology concentrators and 111 concentrators in the social sciences, including anthropology, history, psychology, sociology and the Wilson School, according to Director of Health Professions Advising Kate Fukawa-Connelly. Premedical students are able to pursue any concentration at the University, regardless of its association to science, she said, adding that the most popular concentration among premeds over the past four years has been molecular biology. Fukawa-Connelly said that graduates who entered medical school in the fall of 2014 represented a variety of concentrations. Out of these medical students, 41 had concentrated in molecular biology, 19 in the social sciences, 18 in a STEM major outside of biology, 16 in ecology and evolutionary biology, 13 in engineering and computer science, and eight in the humanities. See PREMED page 3

GRACE JEON :: SENIOR STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The Admissions Opportunity Campaign Teach-In opposes the policy of asking applicants about former involvement with the penal system. STUDENT LIFE

86 undergrads on waitlist for housing, will hear over summer By Do-Hyeong Myeong senior writer

When Christopher Cross ’18 saw his name on the last page of the room draw list for Whitman College, he knew the rooms would run out before his draw time. As of Wednesday, 86 undergraduate students have applied to the wait-list for the 2015-16 room draw, according to University Media Relations Specialist Min Pullan. Those students will

be notified of their room assignments sometime between the end of July and August 15, Pullan added. The University currently guarantees four years of housing for all undergraduate students. The wait-list for undergraduate housing exists because many rooms do not become available until students who are taking leave, living off-campus or studying abroad cancel their contract by July 15, Pullan explained.

“While there are enough beds to accommodate all students, many of those beds do not become available until students who have drawn rooms decide to cancel their contracts,” Pullan said. “We have to wait until after that time to begin housing the wait list.” While students who had to apply for the wait-list expressed some concern about not knowing where they will be living next year, they

also said the inconvenience is not significant. Frank Jiang ’17, who applied for the upperclass housing wait-list, said that although he thinks it is inconvenient that he won’t find out where he will be living next year until right before the start of the semester, he is optimistic about the room he will get through the wait-list. “A couple of my friends who were on the wait-list See HOUSING page 3

LECTURE

Congressman discusses economic recovery By Layla Malamut staff writer

The economic recovery from the recession of 2008 has been the slowest, statistically, since the Great Depression, House Budget Committee chairman Tom Price said at a lecture on Wednesday. Price, a former orthopedic surgeon, began his political career in 1997, and is currently the U.S. Representative for Georgia’s sixth congressional district. He has served in Congress as a member of the Republican Party since 2004. Price pointed out that even though the unemployment rate has declined to five percent since the stock market crash of 2008, the growth vitality of the economy and of the individual American has not significantly recovered. Sixteen percent of Americans and 20 percent of American children live in poverty, and real income has actually decreased by six percent.

The economy is not rolling as it normally would after an economic downturn because of ever-increasing national debt, Price said. “The federal government ought not to be able to spend money it doesn’t have over, and over, and over again,” said Price, noting that the case might be different if the country were sitting on smaller amounts of debt. ”A nation [that] has gotten as far as we have has two options — the nation can either solve the problem themselves, or someone else will solve it for them.” The three greatest factors that depress the U.S. economy are taxes, regulation and litigation expenses, Price said. In response, he listed three options for solving the national deficit: increasing taxes, decreasing government spending or growing the national economy. Price argued that growing the national economy best provides the economic vital-

SEWHEAT HAILE :: ASSOCIATE PHOTO EDITOR

House Budget Committee chairman Tom Price discussed criteria for speedy economic recovery in lecture.

ity that the U.S. needs. He noted that this option was embodied in the Pro-Growth Budgeting Act, which he introduced to Congress and which passed in 2014. Price voiced a set of even more fundamental crite-

ria that must be met on the parts of both the government and the citizens for America to begin a speedier uphill tread. First, citizens must participate in the political process, he said.

“Our system only works if everyone is involved. We can only be representatives of the people when people engage us,” Price said. “Being informed and voting, that’s the minimum.” See LECTURE page 2

U N I V E R S I T Y A F FA I R S

Legacy status remains a factor in admissions, though has recently decreased By Shriya Sekhsaria staff writer

An applicant’s legacy status has gone from being an important factor in admissions to a factor that is given some consideration over the past decade, according to the University’s Common Data Set. All eight Ivy League universities now indicate in their Common Data Sets that legacy

status is a factor that is considered during the admission process. “Every year we review our process. Every year we look carefully at how we make decisions,” Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye said. “What we try to do every year is balance out what we’re looking at, and I think that we have always valued our alumni ties.” The change in consid-

eration of legacy status as a deciding factor in the admission process came in fall 2004, which was a time when the University was receiving a great degree of criticism about admitting children of alumni, Rapelye noted. “Some of [the criticism] was even coming from the Congress and government officials,” Rapelye said. “However, I don’t think that influ-

enced our decisions.” According to the Princeton Profiles, the children and step-children of University undergraduate and graduate alumni have constituted between 10 and 15 percent of the enrolled classes at the University since the Class of 2000. In this time period, Yale has admitted between 8 and 13 percent legacy students, Harvard between 12 and 16,

Dartmouth between 8 and 14 and Cornell between 14 and 17. The University of Pennsylvania has 13 percent legacy admits in the Class of 2018. Columbia and Brown did not release these percentages in their admission announcements and class profiles. The acceptance rate for alumni children and stepchildren has wavered withSee LEGACY page 2


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