Commencement 2024

COMMEMORATION

PHOTO BY LOUISA GHEORGHITA / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

This Year’s Undergraduate Class

The Class of 2024 has witnessed Princeton in a transitional period. They started their Princeton careers virtually, with Zoom orientation and online classes, as the COVID pandemic shook the world. In the spring of 2021, the Class finally entered campus, seeing each other in person for the first time, and getting to know each other socially distanced. In the fall of 2022, they began their first full year at the University, officially marching in the Pre-Rade and marching through the Nassau Hall gates.

Upon admission, based on the Class of 2024 Frosh Survey, students came from 49 states and territories, 40 countries, and all six inhabited continents. 53.2 percent identified as women, 15.4 percent as first-generation, low-income (FGLI), with 65.8 percent receiving financial aid. A majority of survey respondents also identified as people of color.

As the Class of 2024 prepares to walk out the gates, they leave behind an evolving Princeton that they, in part, ushered in. An era of stellar athletics, expansion, spirited dialogue and competition across student life — the Class of 2024 will be remembered as a hardened and passionate group of students. Congratulations to the Great Class of 2024.

RYLAND GRAHAM / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Senior Year: Clio Hall Sit-in.

ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Junior Year: March Madness.

CANDACE DO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Freshman Year: Pandemic Snow Day.

CANDACE DO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Sophomore Year: Bonfire.

editor-in-chief

Eden Teshome '25

BOARD OF TRUSTEES

president

Thomas E. Weber ’89

vice president

David Baumgarten ’06

secretary

Chanakya A. Sethi ’07

treasurer

Douglas Widmann ’90

assistant treasurer

Kavita Saini ’09

trustees

Francesca Barber

Kathleen Crown

Suzanne Dance ’96

Gabriel Debenedetti ’12

Stephen Fuzesi ’00

Zachary A. Goldfarb ’05

Michael Grabell ’03

Danielle Ivory ’05

Rick Klein ’98

James T. MacGregor ’66

Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Abigail Williams ’14

Tyler Woulfe ’07

trustees ex officio

Eden Teshome ’25

Aidan Phillips ’25

148TH MANAGING BOARD

upper management

Ryan Konarska ’25

Naisha Sylvestre ’25

director of outreach

Lia Opperman ’25

Tess Weinreich ’25

Lucia Wetherill ’25

creative director

Mary Ma ’26

strategic initiative directors

Accessibility

Christopher Bao ’27

Education

Charlie Roth ’25

business manager

Aidan Phillips ’25

associate newsletter

editors

Victoria Davies ’27

Sunney Gao ’27

head opinion editor

Eleanor Clemans-Cope ’26

community opinion

editor

Christofer Robles ’25

associate opinion editors

Thomas Buckley ’26

Wynne Conger ’27

head photo editors

Louisa Gheorghita ’26

Jean Shin ’26

associate photo editor

Calvin Grover ’27

head podcast editor

Vitus Larrieu ’26

associate podcast editors

Senna Aldoubosh ’25

Theo Wells-Spackman ’25

Financial Stipend

Elaine Huang ’25

Sections listed in alphabetical order.

public editor

Abigail Rabieh ’25

head archives editor

Raphaela Gold ’26

Kaylee Kasper ’26

Associate Archives editor

Elizabeth Clarke ’27

head audience editor

Paige Walworth ’26

associate audience editors

Zach Lee ’26

Amparo Sanchez ’27

head copy editors

Nathan Beck ’25

Bryan Zhang ’26

associate head copy

editors

Lindsay Padaguan ’26

Elizabeth Polubinski ’25

head data editors

Andrew Bosworth ’26

Suthi Navaratnam-Tomayko ’26

head features editors

Sejal Goud ’25

Molly Taylor ’25

associate features editor

Raphaela Gold ’26

head graphics editors

Luiza Chevres ’26

Noreen Hosny ’25

head humor editors

Spencer Bauman ’25

Sophia Varughese ’26

associate humor editors

Sam McComb ’25

Mya Koffie ’27

head news editors

Bridget O’Neill ’26

Annie Rupertus ’25

associate news editors

Julian Hartman-Sigall ’26

Olivia Sanchez ’26

Miriam Waldvogel ’26 (Investigations)

head newsletter editor

Kia Ghods ’27

head print design editors

Avi Chesler ’25

Malia Gaviola ’26

head prospect editor

Isabella Dail ’26

associate prospect

editors

Russell Fan ’26

Regina Roberts ’26

head puzzles editors

Sabrina Effron ’26

Joah Macosko ’25

associate puzzles editors

Wade Bednar ’26

Lindsay McBride ’27

head sports editors

Cole Keller ’26

Diego Uribe ’26

associate sports editors

Tate Hutchins ’27

Hayk Yengibaryan ’26

head web design and development editors

Yacoub Kahkajian ’26

Vasila Mirshamsova ’26

148TH BUSINESS BOARD

assistant business manager

Jessica Funk ’26

business directors

Gabriel Gullett ’25

Andrew He ’26

Tejas Iyer ’26

Jordan Manela ’26

Robert Mohan ’26

Kok Wei Pua ’25

My Ky Tran ’26

project managers

Jason Ding ’25

Kaustuv Mukherjee ’26

148TH TECHNOLOGY BOARD

chief technology officer

Roma Bhattacharjee ’25

lead software engineer

Sanh Nguyen ’26

software engineers

Anika Agarwal ’25

Carter Costic ’26

Jessica Dong ’25

Vishva Ilavelan ’27

Austin Li ’26

Allen Liu ’27

Isabel Liu ’26

Joyce Liu ’27

Hang Pham ’26

Aidan Phillips ’25

Joe Rupertus ’26

Caitlin Wang ’26

Shannon Yeow ’26 (UI/UX)

Brett Zeligson ’24

THIS PRINT ISSUE WAS DESIGNED BY

Avi Chesler ’25

Malia Gaviola ’26

ORIGINAL TEXT BY

Ethan Caldwell ’27

Coco Gong ’27

Hallie Graham ’27

Chloe Lau ’27

Jerry Zhu ’27

FRESHMAN YEAR 2020-2021

The Class of 2024’s freshman year began with a one-month notice that the fall semester would be fully remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic. From USG’s $80K investment on Jason Derulo as a virtual Lawnparties headliner, to Paul McCartney surprising an online songwriting class as a “Test Student”, and an old version of “Datamatch” as TigerCrush (which allowed each student to choose five of their crushes), the Princeton community tried its best to keep virtual events fun.

Construction plans began for Hobson College, the first residential college to be named after a Black woman, Mellody Hobson ’91. One ‘Prince’ investigation revealed allegations that Princeton Classics professor Joshua Katz crossed professional boundaries with three of his female students, and another ‘Prince’ investigation discovered that some contract workers were laid off and furloughed with the pandemic. Beyond campus, Winter 2020 saw Biden and Harris’ victory in the U.S. presidential election, and the January 6 Capitol riots following.

Late fall 2020, the University announced that all undergraduates would be invited back on campus for the spring semester with hybrid teaching. However, study abroad programs, eating clubs, and many student spaces remained closed for the spring semester. Over the summer, Reunions 2021 went virtual, in-person 2020 Commencement was canceled, and Princeton-sponsored travel programs remained mostly suspended. After the 2020-2021 year of virtual and hybrid learning, the Class of 2024 returned fully in person for their sophomore year.

Major gift from Mellody Hobson ’91 will establish new residential college on the site of First College

By Evelyn Doskoch | October 8, 2020

Agift from Mellody Hobson ’91 will establish a new residential college — the first at the University to be named for a Black woman. The University did not disclose the amount of Hobson’s gift.

Hobson College, scheduled to be completed by 2026 and to open for the Class of 2030, will be built on the site of First College, formerly known as Wilson College.

“I’m most excited about the fact that we — meaning Black and brown communities — will have representation on campus in a meaningful way,” Hobson said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “I want to rewrite the narrative.”

Hobson is the president and CoCEO of Ariel Investments, the country’s first minority-owned asset management firm, and the former chairwoman of DreamWorks Animation. In 2017, she became the first Black woman to lead The Economic Club of Chicago.

“No one from my family had graduated from college when I arrived at Princeton from Chicago,” Hobson said in the announcement of the new residential college. “My hope is that my name will remind future generations of students — especially those who are Black and brown and the ‘firsts’ in their families — that they too belong. Renaming Wilson College is my very personal way of letting them know that our past does not have to be our future.”

Hobson’s gift follows the historic $20 million donation that Kwanza Jones ’93 and Jose E. Feliciano ’94 recently gave to the University — until then, the largest gift by Black and Latino alumni in the University’s 274-year history. Their donation will sponsor the building of two new dormitories in either Perelman College or a yet-unnamed residential college.

“This extraordinary gift will be transformative for Princeton,” President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 said

in the announcement. “It will enable us to improve the student experience at Princeton and to reimagine a central part of our campus, while also recognizing a remarkable woman who is a positive, powerful force for change in the world.”

Hobson, a member of the Class of 1991, concentrated in the Prince ton School of Public & Internation al Affairs — then known as the Woodrow Wilson School. The school, named for Woodrow Wilson, Class of 1879, was re named in June, after the Uni versity’s Trustees “concluded that Woodrow Wilson’s racist thinking and policies make him an inappropriate namesake for a school or college whose scholars, students, and alumni must stand firmly against rac ism in all its forms.”

Hobson also received the Woodrow Wil son Award in 2019, an hon or “conferred annually upon an alumnus or alumna of the undergrad uate college whose achieve ments exemplify Woodrow Wilson’s memorable phrase ‘Princeton in the nation’s service,’” according to the Alumni Associ ation’s website. She is the Wilson Award’s second African Ameri can recipient.

“When I gave my speech [for] the Wood row Wilson

Award, I actually made reference that I was struggling with the idea that I was receiving this Princeton honor named for someone who wouldn’t have wanted me to be at the University,” Hobson told the ‘Prince.’ “I made a joke about it; I said that President Wilson didn’t believe that orange belonged with

oversees the University’s $26.1 billion endowment, to adopt more transparency in reporting the diversity of its asset managers.

The opening of Hobson College will follow the opening of Perelman College and a yet-unnamed residential college, both currently under con-

NEWS USG hosts $80,000 virtual Lawnparties with headliner Jason Derulo

By Eva Veselyl | November 2, 2020

On Friday, the Undergraduate Student Gov- ernment (USG) Social Committee hosted Lawnparties virtually, with Jason Derulo headlining and Glenna Jane Galarion ’21 opening.

Viewership for the virtual event averaged around 400 at any given point in time, peaking at around 500 near the end of Derulo’s act. According to USG Social Chair Sophie Torres ’21, total viewership was “over 1,900,” not accounting for the viewing parties watching through each account.

The concert was also available for students to watch online until 9 p.m. on Saturday.

Torres told The Daily Princetonian in an email that the members of the Social Committee “are incredibly happy about the way Lawnparties turned out.”

“I thought it was an amazing concert and that our acts, Glenna Jane and Jason Derulo, were really fantastic. I could not have asked for better performances,” Torres wrote.

“I also want to give a shout-out to my amazing committee who helped me significantly and to everyone in USG for all of their hard work, both related to and unrelated to Lawnparties.”

The event — streamed live on YouTube — started at 7 p.m. and lasted over an hour. Derulo’s performance itself lasted approximately 45 minutes and featured back-up dancers, a smoke machine, and digital art montages between songs. The setlist included

recent hits such as “Savage Love,” which became popular on TikTok a few months ago, as well as some older fan-favorites like “Talk Dirty.”

Galarion sang two songs for the opening performance: “Them Changes” by Thundercat and “Redbone” by Childish Gambino. The accompanying music was played by Ed Horan ’22, Christien Ayers ’23, Ewan Curtis ’23, and George Rettaliata ’21.

As viewers waited for Derulo, students from Vote100 — an initiative focused on inspiring undergraduates to participate in all elections for which they are eligible to vote — held a brief discussion on the importance of voting in preparation for the upcoming election.

The USG Social Committee took several measures to make the event as interactive as possible, including hiring PUSH — a live streaming consultancy and production company — in the hopes of improving the quality of the show.

This year, the Social Committee hosted a virtual meet-and-greet with Derulo and a few students. Viewers could tag @princetonsoccomm on their Instagram and TikTok posts to enter for a chance to win. They also ran a t-shirt giveaway benefiting Tigers for Nassau, with proceeds going to COVID-19 relief for local businesses.

Despite the interactive elements, some students were disappointed by the performance. The criticism stemmed from earlier backlash directed at USG for

spending $80,000 on the virtual event — or 42 percent of its annual budget — during the COVID-19 pandemic. A number of students criticized the $80,000 price tag during the event using YouTube’s chat feature.

USG has maintained that rules surrounding funds already earmarked by the University prevented the Social Committee from donating the money — or from spending it on any events in future semesters.

After attending the event, Ben Guzovsky ’24 commented, “I was disappointed but not surprised. Even online, there is so much potential for an event like this to be special, but I really did just spend an hour watching Jason Derulo and three backup dancers hang around what looked like his kitchen.”

Masha Khartchenko ’24, one of the winners of the Derulo meetand-greet, also told the ‘Prince’ in

an email that it did not live up to her expectations.

Despite being informed that the meeting would last three minutes, “I did not get to ask him the questions I wanted to,” Khartchenko wrote. “When I joined the meeting, he said hello to us, told us to take a screenshot, and then left — a total of 10 seconds.”

Khartchenko said she had just enough time to ask him if he was going to vote, to which he responded that he was.

She thought Lawnparties was fun, and she enjoyed hearing Galarion sing. Khartchenko, however, expressed frustration about the event’s price tag.

“It felt so wrong to hear that they are spending 80 THOUSAND dollars to hear a TikToker sing VIRTUALLY, while there are people dying because they cannot afford healthcare,” she wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’

A screenshot of Jason Derulo’s performance

Single students are losing faith in virtual romance. Enter TigerCrush.

By Sydney Eck | November 12, 2020

On Feb. 14, 2007, Princeton’s campus received a new, digital-age twist to traditional Valentine’s Day celebrations. Josh Weinstein ’09 launched CrushFinder, a site where students could anonymously send crushes to one another.

Today, over a decade later, developers Alan Ding ’22, Oleg Golev ’22, and Gerald Huang ’22 have brought anonymous crushing back to Princeton with TigerCrush.

In a time when human connection spans opposite sides of a computer screen, students have reported isolation and loneliness. TigerCrush seeks to bridge the gap between missed connections and budding relationships, offering students a virtual outlet to confess their feelings, even when unrequited.

The fear of jeopardizing an existing platonic relationship or creating an awkward situation often prevents people from confessing their feelings. TigerCrush, however, seeks to eliminate the risk of direct rejection. The app allows users to input a baseline of up to five crushes. If the app identifies a mutual crush, that person becomes visible as a ‘match.’ The app also displays the number of crushes that someone has not reciprocated as ‘secret admirers.’

“X people that you don’t have a crush on have a crush on you!” the website reads.

For each secret admirer, users are able to send an additional crush beyond the original five, encouraging students to engage with the app more frequently.

TigerCrush currently boasts a user base of over 1,000 Princeton students, with 923 crushes and 150 matches logged at the time The Daily Princetonian spoke with the developers.

The app has garnered buzz on the anonymous student Facebook page TigerConfessions#. Students have expressed their excitement for the app during the virtual semester and poked fun at their own relationship status as they see it reflected in the app:

TC #23364: It’s always ‘new canvas notification’ and never ‘new match on tiger crush’

TC #24003: I need everyone to use tiger crush so my crush can see they have a secret admirer thanks

TC #23775: I have 2 secret admirers on TigerCrush. I am a god among men. For personal reasons I will now check that number too often because I base my value on other people’s perception of me.

The developers are pleased with how the virtual semester has given students time to engage with the site. In an email to the ‘Prince,’ the developers wrote, “Many have needed to find new

sources of entertainment or ways to obsess over things during quarantine. TigerCrush has likely been one such source. The stakes for sending crushes are lower … you’re free to contact (or to not contact!) any matches. You won’t see anyone you match with in the foreseeable future.”

The original idea for a risk-free matching site on Princeton’s campus originated right outside the building that housed Department of Music back in 2007.

“[I was] thinking ‘I wish there were a way for me to let a girl know I liked her, but she would only know if she liked me back,’” recalled Weinstein, creator of CrushFinder, in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.

With a simple premise and only five hours of coding, CrushFinder was born. The app garnered massive usership, with over 30 percent of Princeton’s campus signing up within the first twenty four hours of its Valentine’s Day release.

Encouraged by the site’s early success, Joe Perla ’12, then-president of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club, urged Weinstein to pursue CrushFinder on a larger scale. After graduating from Princeton, Weinstein co-founded GoodCrush with Shahed Serajuddin, launching a site that would gain popularity on college campuses across the country. In a single week, more than 4,000 students joined the site. At least one marriage resulted from the matching platform.

But without a central event to keep users

thing computer related on your phone was something that wasn’t really around yet,” he said. “Everyone now has a computer in their pocket, and that makes it so much easier for everyone to participate.”

Without a mobile device to send or check crushes quickly and easily, many students did not keep up with GoodCrush after logging in once or twice.

“If you can only read the message board at home, it really puts a limit on how much engagement you can have,” explained Serajuddin. Not only was it more difficult to constantly check GoodCrush, but Weinstein said, “at the time, being on a dating site had a lot of stigma.” Students were unlikely to find online dating forums appealing.

Weinstein reflected that at the time it seemed that users were not legitimately interested in finding romantic matches, but engaging with the site as a form of entertainment. He said, “[There was] some anecdotal feedback that made it seem that people were using it more for fun than actual dating/romance.”

Over a decade later, many of the issues that GoodCrush faced have become relics of what Serajuddin called a “pre-mobile” era. The popularity of dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge means that many students are far more comfortable pursuing a relationship online through a platform such as TigerCrush.

ators of TigerCrush, Weinstein said, “I am glad these entrepreneurs saw an opportunity.”

Users have reflected on the benefits of the app in the current moment both in a digital age and a distant semester.

“TigerCrush had impeccable timing,” said Justin Coon ’22. “I recently matched with my favorite person at Princeton, and I really needed that closeness and warmth in a time like this.”

But users have also voiced concerns about personal information and privacy when using the app, as the developers have the ability to view user crushes.

The site’s privacy statement acknowledges that the developers have access to user information. “With this in mind,” it reads, “we stand firm in our promise not to look at the crush information you’ve entrusted us with. By using this application, you are affirming your trust in us. Equivalently, if you don’t trust us, you reserve the right to not use this application.”

But some users remain concerned.

TC #23430: Uh, Tigercrush is a serious privacy violation to its users (they’re just expected to trust the devs not to look at their data?!). That isn’t good enough

In an email to the ‘Prince,’ the developers clarified their intent.

“We store the bare minimum amount of information for the app to work — users and their crushes — and have no incentive or reason to store anything additional since our app runs on a free hosting service with an extremely limited database,” they wrote. Nonetheless, to further protect the user information in the future, the developers have decided to take additional measures to debug and improve the app’s privacy. They are shifting any testing to an offline copy of the site, in an effort to improve data security.

They are also contemplating other upgrades to increase user engagement and improve user experience, such as the ability to send a “secret admirer message,” a short anonymous statement to accompany a crush.  Another change may allow users not currently in the TigerHub system database — notably, students on gap years — to use the app.

As the academic year progresses and isolated students grow more anxious to connect with one another, TigerCrush continues to gain more users. Weinstein commended TigerCrush for meeting what he sees as a community need.

“There is not much that is more meaningful than helping someone find their significant other,” he said.

2,887 undergraduates return to campus, begin mandatory testing and quarantine

By Anika Agarwal | January 28, 2021

Between Saturday, Jan. 16, and Sunday, Jan. 24, approximately 2,887 undergraduate students moved onto campus for the spring semester, taking part in a mandatory University testing and quarantine program to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

As of early December, around 3,400 undergraduate students had submitted their intent to live on campus. In the intervening weeks, roughly 500 students decided not to return to campus — but the 2,887 remaining undergraduates arrived on campus as planned.

Those returning to campus signed up for a movein time slot and prepared to take a COVID-19 test upon arrival before entering into a weeklong quarantine period. After their first test results, students were asked to remain in their designated sleeping space each day, except for twice-daily trips to pick up prepared meals and a one-hour “daily walk.”

The Daily Princetonian asked a few undergraduates about their experience with the campus move-in process.

Some students were initially concerned about move-in and quarantine logistics and safety. Justin Ong ’24 told the ‘Prince’ that “as an international student, I was quite worried, especially given the situation in the U.S.”

Since November, the United States has been in a “third wave” of COVID-19, experiencing its highest-ever rates of positive cases. The same is true for New Jersey, which reported over 4,000 new cases per day for much of the last two months.

However, once arriving on campus, Ong, Mariela Pineda ’24, Giao Dinh ’24, and Kartik Shah ’23 found the initial move-in process, which took place at Jadwin Gym, to be safe, smooth, and efficient.

The move-in process involved checking into campus and completing the first of three required COVID-19 saliva tests during the arrival quarantine period.

“After you’re done, they clean the section before they invite another student to come in,” Pineda explained.

Dinh noted that the “entire process took a maximum of 15 minutes.”

Shah told the ‘Prince’ that move-in was also accommodating to students’ schedules. After his flight landed two-and-a-half hours early, he was permitted to begin move-in without having to wait for his assigned time.

After check-in, the first COVID-19 test, and movein, students began a brief period of strict quarantine, during which they were required to remain in their dorms. After receiving a negative result for the first

test, students began a one-week modified quarantine phase. During this time, students are allowed to go on a one-hour daily walk, pick up bagged meals and packages, and drop off saliva samples for their remaining two COVID-19 tests of the quarantine period, which take place on the third and fifth days of quarantine.

Many students, including Archika Dogra ’24 and Tanushree Banerjee ’24, noted that it took around a half day to receive their first COVID-19 test results and, once confirmed to be negative, begin the modified quarantine phase.

During quarantine, Heather Gaulke ’22 stated that while she’s “been a little bored at times,” she passed the time by doing a paint by number kit while listening to an audiobook, calling people on Zoom, and going on daily walks.

Laura Molina ’21 has been spending her time “working on [her senior] thesis, preparing for interviews, FaceTiming [her] family, or taking breaks and playing Among Us with friends.” She also mentioned appreciating the free resistance band supplied to arriving students by Campus Recreation for indoor workouts.

Pineda said that between enjoying time inside her dorm and going on walks around campus, “quarantine is not as bad as I expected it to be.”

Banerjee and Dogra told the ‘Prince’ that daily walks provided an opportunity to explore campus for the first time.

“[I’m] still in awe of the place,” Banerjee said. “It’s magical.”

Dogra described feeling “overwhelmed” by the variety of architecture on Princeton’s campus, and she said her daily walks helped prevent quarantine from feeling “suffocating.”

Nearly all undergraduate students living on campus were put on the University meal plan for the spring semester. During arrival quarantine, students were asked to pick up bagged lunch and dinner (breakfast included with dinner) twice daily from tents and food trucks scattered across campus.

Having heard about poor experiences with quarantine food at other colleges, Shah had low expectations before arriving on campus. However, he said the food is “really good” and praised University staff for their efforts in making sure that his allergy-related dietary needs are met.

Both Dogra and Pineda were contacted by University dining when they had forgotten to pick up their food. Pineda, who was in emergency housing during the fall semester, said dining was easily reachable whenever she had any questions about the process. Molina was also able to easily reach University din -

ing to request the delivery of her meals while in strict quarantine.

Still, Ong and Banerjee pointed out that they found the portion sizes somewhat small and wished they could request multiple servings.

Given the University’s ban on students using laundry facilities until the end of individual quarantine, and limitations on ID card access to residential buildings while students are still in arrival quarantine, some students struggled with being unable to do laundry. Ong and Shah both expressed worries that students would not have enough clothing to last until February — when all residential buildings will be accessible — or that once these facilities are made available to all, there will be “long lines.

Despite these issues, undergraduates who talked to the ‘Prince’ generally agreed that the University is managing the move-in and quarantine processes well, even with all undergraduates invited back on campus.

“Everyone I’ve come across is wearing a mask and people are staying in their rooms,” Dinh said.

”[The] University is putting a lot of trust into undergraduate students to do the right thing,” Dogra said, referring to the Social Contract provision that students report others’ non-compliance with health and safety guidelines. Dogra added that while she is hopeful, she is also worried about COVID-19 outbreaks over the next two weeks, which she believes could threaten spring semester plans.

Gaulke trusts that the University, working alongside the students, will be able to keep everyone safe, but told the ‘Prince’ that as a Residential College Advisor, she “would love to be out there and like helping my zees move in, but I can’t.”

Molina said she misses “Frist late meal cheeseburgers ... essentially all the Princeton-specific experiences that we can’t enjoy now for safety reasons.”

Though students mourned the limitations of a socially-distanced spring semester, they told the ‘Prince’ that they look forward to seeing friends and meeting new people beyond a computer screen.

Shah and Gaulke look forward to finally reconnecting with friends in person, after around ten months of Zoom calls and online messaging. Molina, a senior, said, “The number one reason I’ve chosen to come back to campus is because I get to room with my friends. It is heartwarming to be around them again.”

After an online fall semester, Dinh is “excited to have opportunities to meet people in person.” Several other first-years felt the same way.

“I’m excited to meet super passionate and amazing people,” Banerjee said.

Nassau Hall becomes accessible for people with disabilities

By Miguel Gracia-Zhang | August 31, 2021

On Aug. 26, Naomi Hess ’22 became the first person in Nassau Hall’s 265-year history to enter and tour the building in a wheelchair without assistance. The installation of an elevator in Nassau Hall was completed six days prior as part of a series of construction projects intended to make campus more accessible to individuals with disabilities.

Upon special invitation from the Vice President for Facilities, KyuJung Whang, Hess entered through a new southwest entrance, ascended the newly installed elevator, and was shown around the building. In the past, ramps erected for special events only provided limited wheelchair access.

“We went to every floor, and I was just really awestruck to enter this building that is so important to this campus,” said Hess in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.

Hess is an associate news editor for the ‘Prince’.

The historic Nassau Hall, built in 1756, was once “the largest stone building in the American Colonies” and briefly served as the nation’s capital in 1783. It currently houses, among many meeting rooms and offices, the President’s office and the Faculty Room, where the Board of Trustees meets.

This summer, workers installed an elevator and a new ground-level entrance to make Nassau Hall accessible. The

maintaining the historic aesthetic and layout both inside and out, but none of those options was quite right,” she continued.

In 2017, the University hired the local architectural firm Mills + Schnoering to determine if an elevator would fit in the building and where it could be placed. The firm, led by Michael Mills ’73, decided to place the elevator in the southwest side to provide easy access to the previously installed accessible restrooms and to “have the least impact to the layout of the building,” according to Mutschler.

In the fall of 2019, shortly after these plans were finalized, Hess was taking a journalism class, JRN 445: Accountability Reporting, with Joe Stephens. One of the class’s guest speakers was Paul Haaga ’70, former CEO of NPR and Chair of the Grounds and Buildings Committee of the Board of Trustees.

“[Haaga] asked us if we had anything we’d like to say to a trustee, and I brought up accessibility,” said Hess.

“He emailed me the week after we met to say that Kyu- Jung Whang [the VP of facilities] wanted to take me to lunch, and also invited me to speak at a trustee meeting.”

Hess met Whang for lunch in Prospect House, and they spoke about how to improve accessibility on campus. Hess mentioned Nassau Hall.

“I promised her that day that she would be able to enter

really happy to see this accessibility upgrade as a symbol of improving access and inclusion even on this very old campus,” she added.

However, Hess also believes that such renovations were long overdue, and more work to improve accessibility is needed.

“In my opinion, the fact that it wasn’t accessible until recently was really disheartening because people with disabilities cannot access the most important people on this campus,” said Hess.

Other students with disabilities agree with Hess.

“I know there’s something about the aesthetics of there being steps to the main entrance that makes it feel like you’re not able to go in [Nassau Hall],” said Ellen Li ’22 in an interview with the ‘Prince’.

Li navigates campus on a scooter or wheelchair, and is one of the founding members and the Treasurer of the Disability Collective. She is also an associate features editor for the ‘Prince’.

In order to improve accessibility, the facilities team works with both students and the Office of Disability Services.

“Feedback is a vital component of the open dialogue we want to have with the campus community. Our job is to maintain the campus to allow the students to thrive,” Mutschler wrote. “We enjoy hearing what we’re doing well, but we also want to remove obstacles that make it harder for our community members to access our spaces, learn, and socialize.”

According to Mutschler, examples of recent renovations increasing accessibility include new accessible paths around campus, modifying chair/vertical lifts on campus to be keyless, an accessible ramp to the stage in McCosh 50 as well as motorized writing tables for the accessible seat locations, and more accessible restrooms in the E-Quad.

In addition, an elevator and a more prominent and accessible entrance will be added to Dillon Gym, and “the new Hobson College expansion will remove some of our inaccessible dormitories in First College, and create a more accessible college layout,” wrote Mutschler.

Still, Li noted that even when roads are technically accessible, they can still be rocky, and that “especially with construction going on I would like there to be a little bit more mindfulness about what it’s like to navigate campus on a wheelchair.”

“There are so many buildings both on campus and in town that are not fully accessible, which has definitely proven to be a challenge for me, and Princeton has so much money that I wish they would dedicate more towards these sorts of construction improvements, because if they can make Nassau Hall, which was built in the 1750s, accessible, then they have the resources to do much more,” Hess said.

“This is just a step forward in terms of accessibility, but I hope that it’s not the end of the movement and the awareness of the importance of these sorts of renovations,” she continued.

SOPHOMORE YEAR 20212022

For the first time, after a year of virtual Princeton, the entire Class of 2024 was back on campus for in-person learning. Still, the first week of school was anything but normal after tornado and flash flood warnings rocked campus, causing several classes to go online temporarily. However, despite the weather, masks, and daily testing, hopes were high for a strong

Fromreturn. the reopening of Murray-Dodge, Coffee Club, and the Garden Theatre to the first bonfire since 2018 and the Street opening its doors to all undergrads for the first time in 18 months, Princeton seemed like it was finally returning to its pre-pandemic groove, welcoming the Class of 2024 with open arms.

More than just looking back, Princeton was taking many strides forward: the Uni -

‘A perfect storm’: Unruly crowds disrupt A$AP Ferg’s Lawnparties performance, with alleged student injury

DEC

FEATURES

With warm popcorn and James Bond, a Princeton institution reopens after pandemic closure PAGE 13

versity’s inaugural DEI report was released in November of 2021 and campus – from transit to Nassau Hall – became a more accessible place.

Just when it was starting to seem like the pandemic was a thing of the past, Omicron hit. The end-of-semester uptick in COVID-19 cases was so significant that the University moved exams remote and encouraged students to leave campus as soon as they could, even canceling sports events over the break.

Although students continued to feel the weight of COVID-19 with grab-and-go meals at the beginning of the spring semester, Spring Break saw the mask mandate lifted and required testing frequency decreased. The Class of 2024 was back again, ready for their first semi-normal end to a Princeton year.

The Spring 2022 semester showed that class was engaged with the international issues of the day. Princeton students and faculty joined in protest of the war in Ukraine. The following month, a a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) referendum was proposed — and voted on — calling the University to halt its use of Caterpillar machinery in its construction projects. As the Class of 2024 prepares to graduate, echoes of the same conversation reverberate in the campus discourse today.

Students flow with Flo Milli at spring Lawnparties

FEB

SPORTS

Charlie Volker ’19 finishes 10th in four-man bobsled at Winter Olympics

FEB

OPINION

We can preserve in-person learning without sacrificing immunocompromised students’ education PAGE 15

APR

PROSPECT

East Pyne courtyard film set for ‘Oppenheimer’ creates campus chaos

APR NEWS

PAGE 14

FEB NEWS

Princeton students, faculty, and community demonstrate in support of Ukraine amid Russian invasion

SPORTS

Women’s basketball ousts Kentucky for second March Madness win in program history

MAR NEWS

Preliminary results show Caterpillar referendum passes on USG ballot

USG debates language of referendum regarding Princeton’s Caterpillar machinery use

‘A perfect storm’: Unruly crowds disrupt A$AP Ferg’s Lawnparties performance, with alleged student injury

By Drew Somerville & Evelyn Doskoch | October 3, 2021

Crowded, dangerous conditions disrupted Lawnparties on Sunday, causing delays to headliner A$AP Ferg’s performance and injury to at least one student attendee.

Students gathered in the backyard of Quadrangle Club well in advance of A$AP Ferg’s performance, where student opener Naaji Hylton ’22, known professionally as J. Paris, began his act at 3 p.m. By the time Paris finished, a large crowd had gathered throughout the venue — and within minutes, security guards and other staff members began to plead with students to back away from the stage, where student attendees were being pushed against the barrier.

“You’re going to hurt someone,” a member of the security team said. “This is going to be a dangerous situation.”

By 3:40 p.m., the same individual reported a student injury in the crowd.

“We have a young woman at the front who is bleeding now,” he said. “You’re hurting people. Stop.”

Security team members repeatedly called for students to back up, seemingly unheeded. As students continued to press forward, speakers onstage insisted that A$AP Ferg would not begin performing until the crowd calmed down.

“The show doesn’t start until the security guards tell us that the barrier is in a better position and not going to break,” an official said.

Many seemed to cooperate with the security team’s requests, moving backward when instructed and chanting, “BACK UP!” When one “instigator” was removed from the venue by security, cheers erupted from the student body.

After repeated attempts by security to control the crowd were unsuccessful, Social Committee member and Class of 2024 Social Chair Lauren Fahlberg ’24 went on stage with similar pleas.

“For the love of God, stop talking!” Fahlberg shouted, visibly frustrated.

A representative of the Department of Public Safety (PSAFE) joined Fahlberg, announcing that A$AP Ferg would not perform at all unless the crowd in front of the stage dispersed within five minutes.

“We have spent so long planning this,” Fahlberg said repeatedly, referring to the Social Committee. “A$AP Ferg is doing a huge favor by coming to visit us.”

Lawnparties, which occurred in-per-

son for the first time since fall 2019, faced controversy even before the day began. On Tuesday, Sept. 28, the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Social Committee announced that the original performer, LANY, would no longer perform due to reports of predatory behavior.

A$AP Ferg, announced on Friday by the USG Social Committee as LANY’s replacement, garnered a positive reaction from students, with one calling A$AP Ferg a “better choice” and another deeming him “the type of artist I was looking for.”

The Social Committee has not publicly stated how A$AP Ferg was compensated, or whether the contract with LANY was terminated. Still, at one point in the performance, he gave some insight into his last-minute availability.

“I am so glad that I was able to come here and do this shit last-minute,” A$AP Ferg said. “Only because I live a fucking hour away.”

xemptyz

When the start of Ferg’s act prompted students to gather again near the front of the stage, some in the crowd became frustrated at their peers’ disregard for staff instructions.

“Why is your first instinct to all crowd again?” Josiah Gouker ’22 yelled at students moving toward the stage. “That is the opposite of what we need to be doing. Just stay where you are; you can hear it wherever you are.”

Gouker is an Opinion columnist and Satire contributor for the ‘Prince.’

A$AP Ferg also dealt with uncooperative students and overcrowding, having to stop his performance mid-song and address the audience. He claimed that the show could be canceled entirely, under certain circumstances.

“They’re saying that it’s over because they don’t want anybody to get hurt,” he told the crowd. “Damn, I want to perform.”

After confirmation from the show organizers that the show could continue if the crowd moved away from the stage,

A$AP Ferg urged the crowd to comply.

“Can y’all move all the way back? Turn around and walk to the back,” he said.

A$AP Ferg began to freestyle using the words ‘walk to the back,’ leading to — for the first time — a substantive movement of the crowd. The concert resumed, with A$AP Ferg noting feeling “proud” of the crowd for finally listening.

At one point in the resumed concert, a student was lifted by peers and crowdsurfed.

A$AP Ferg’s show was interrupted for a second time, again due to crowding concerns, at around 4:20 p.m., after which point the show continued without serious interruption.

The Social Committee held a giveaway on their Instagram page for one student to meet A$AP Ferg after the show. Rishi Gorrepati ’25, who won the giveaway, told The Daily Princetonian in a message that he did not get to meet A$AP Ferg.

“Apparently, he left early,” Gorrepati wrote.

Aside from the headliner act at Quad, Lawnparties performances took place in six of the 11 eating clubs on Prospect Avenue. Performers at Tower Club, Tiger Inn, Colonial Club, Ivy Club, and Terrace Club included The Wldlfe, LZRD, smallpools, DJ Kazuo Nakamura, and Ruby the Hatchet.

xemptyz

USG Social Chair William Gu ’23 reflected on the day in a message to the ‘Prince’.

“Hopefully, today’s Lawnparties provided underclassmen an introduction to one of Princeton’s greatest traditions, as well as upperclassmen a reminder that Princeton is back and better than ever!” he wrote.

Gu did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the crowd control problems during A$AP Ferg’s performance.

Jack Amen ’25, who watched the Lawnparties headliner act from a raised section of the Quad backyard, told the ‘Prince’ that he escaped the dangerous conditions and was generally amused by the crowd’s behavior.

“It was such a perfect storm of absurdism,” he wrote. “My friends and I were checking Twitter a lot because a bunch of [Princeton] people were live-tweeting their reactions in real-time.”

Amen added that “word spread through the crowd” about the dangerous situation near the stage, and said he was “disappointed” in the students who caused it.

“It definitely shouldn’t have gotten to that point,” he wrote. “It really serves to reinforce ... how partying here recently is more about desperation than it is about having fun.”

MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

The crowded backyard of Quadrangle Club during headliner A$AP Ferg’s performance.

With warm popcorn and James Bond, a Princeton institution reopens after pandemic closure

By Isabel Kingston | December 5, 2021

Today, the Garden Theatre is known as a community gem, a town cultural hub, and an oasis for the weary Princeton student. The theatre has kept its doors open for the past century thanks to the resolve of community members who kept it afloat through various ups and downs — most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic.

The kick-off event celebrating the Garden’s 100th anniversary was scheduled for March 12, 2020. In the final days of planning, the event was postponed due to the pandemic. In the weeks that followed, it became clear that the Garden would have to close indefinitely, like so many other businesses at the time. The projectors were turned off, the doors were locked, and any hopes of holding a birthday party for the theatre were extinguished.

Thanks to the ongoing partnership between the University and the Garden, it did not face real jeopardy of closing permanently due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, its temporary shuttering was a loss to the community with which it has engaged for so many years.

At the time of the Garden’s opening in 1920, it was known as “the runty one, the offshoot,” said Chris Collier, the current executive director.

Built in the side garden of the house where the Art Museum Store now stands, the Garden was originally intended to be a performance space for Princeton Triangle Club. The club never adopted the Garden as its home, however. Instead, as the century progressed, the Garden began showing specialized and independent films.

“I think it would shock the majority of people who knew the Garden back in the day … that it would be the only one of three theaters still standing,” Collier said. After all, the fate of the theatre has been thrown into question on multiple occasions.

Thirty years ago, the Garden was in dire need of a facelift.

“The University was thinking of giving up on the theatre,” said Pam Hersh, a long standing supporter of the Garden and former Director of Community and State Government Affairs for the University.

The University had purchased the property in 1993, but it was struggling to find a management company to take over the upkeep. Hersh credits former Princeton Borough Mayor Marvin Reed with spearheading the charge to save the Garden. Through his determined negotiations, that same year the University contracted with the Theater Management Corporation, a

small company that transformed the Garden from what Hersh termed a “decrepit mess” to the charming establishment that it is today.

Although these new management efforts led to promising renovations, it eventually became clear that making a profit on a two-screen movie theater was practically out of the question.

In 2014, management of the theater was taken over by Renew Theaters, the non-profit at the helm of its operations today. The nonprofit’s tax exempt status was vital to the Garden’s ability to survive the pandemic and continue to serve the community.

The USG Movies Committee held free weekly showings for students on Friday and Saturday evenings at the Garden before the pandemic. During the pandemic, the Committee screened films on Canvas. On Oct. 8, USG Movies had its first in-person screening since the start of the pandemic with the new James Bond film “No Time To Die.”

“It’s really great to be partnering directly with the student government to show students that the theater is there to offer programs that are free for all students,” Collier said.

“I think the best part of USG movies is that it creates a place for a film community — even for casual movie-goers! — on a campus that can otherwise feel scattered,” said Melina Huang ’23, one of the student leaders of the program.

“Another big part of the program is supporting a wonderful local theater that’s done so much to cultivate a community for the greater Princeton area, and it’s been a great experience so far to be a part of that,” Huang continued.

The students who attended the USG movie events shared Huang’s enthusiasm.

“I really love the Princeton USG program and am so happy that it’s finally back after a year of Covid and not being able to go to the movie theater,” said Emily Schoeman ’23 after seeing the new Wes Anderson film, “The French Dispatch.”

“It can be a great alternative to going out on the weekends,” she continued. “It’s something you can do with your friends where you’re getting off campus but it’s still right nearby, and it’s affordable.”

Barely a five minute walk from the main gates, the Garden has been an ideal place of retreat for many. Students needing a break from the mania of papers and problem sets can find comfort in the plush seats, the scent of warm popcorn, and the soft glow of the screen.

The Garden has often collaborated directly with Princeton professors, inviting them to pick a movie, give an introduction prior to the

screening, and lead a discussion afterwards. These screenings were held in a virtual format during the pandemic and were popular among community members.

When a neuroscience professor chose “Eter nal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and then proceeded to talk about how erasing someone’s memory is not, in fact, a thing of science fic tion, “it was pretty mind-blowing to the people there,” Collier shared.

The Garden also collaborates with outside programs such as Deep Focus. Deep Focus is a similar discussion-based series that, according to its website, offers four different events, all related to the same theme and all “led by ex pert speakers, ranging from professors, to film critics, to members of the industry.” The Garden is currently hosting events pertaining to Asian American identity: on September 20, English and American Studies professor Anne Cheng ’85 led a discussion on Henry Koster’s “Flower Drum Song” and, on October 25, Associate Pro fessor of English and African American Studies Kinohi Nishikawa led a discussion on Justin Chon’s “Gook” and “Blue Bayou.”

The next discussion is slated for December 20, when Stephen Chung, an Associate Profes sor in East Asian Studies and Chair of the Uni versity’s Committee for Film Studies, will lead a conversation on Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari.”

The Garden’s imprint on the communi ty is deeply rooted and far-reaching.

One of the most loyal champi ons of the theater was Phyllis Marchand, former Princeton Township mayor.

Over the years, she took on countless proj ects to improve the Garden and sustain its link with the Uni versity, and, accord ing to Hersh, she was on the planning com mittee of the 100th anni versary party.

Hersh smiled through the phone when talking about Phyllis, who passed away in March, and her legacy.

“She was a passionate moviegoer,” Hersh said “I don’t think she ever missed a movie there.”

“Every week she would call me up and say, ‘Hey, something’s showing at the Garden, you want to go see it?’”

Princeton students, faculty, and community demonstrate in support of Ukraine amid Russian invasion

On Friday, Feb. 25, a group of more than 100 Princeton undergraduates, graduate students, professors, and community members gathered in front of Nassau Hall to show their support of Ukraine amid the ongoing invasion by Russian troops. The event lasted for over an hour, with no University intervention.

The informal demonstration was organized chiefly by Professor Ekaterina Pravilova of the Department of History, who also serves as the acting director for the Program in Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies.

Pravilova spoke first from the steps of Nassau Hall. “I’m a historian. I study wars,” she told the gathering crowd. “I usually do not engage in public politics, but I have to — we have to do it now.”

She led the crowd in a chant of “no to war,” first in Russian, and then, with some assistance from Ukrainian students, in Ukrainian.

“This is what Russians are doing now in Moscow and St. Petersburg: they are saying no to war,” she added.

Protestors donned blue and yellow — the colors of the Ukrainian national flag — and held up signs with a wide-range of messages expressing support of Ukraine, including ones written in Russian and Ukrainian.

Multiple community members shared their own personal connections to the conflict.

Marta Baziuk ’24 shared with the crowd that while she attends school in the U.S., her family is in Ukraine. Her uncle lives close to Kyiv, “where the Russian soldiers entered and started shoot-

ing at civilians.”

“And I just want to say that our army isn’t staying silent, they are fighting against the Russians. Ukraine is fighting! We will not, we will not give up! Say no to war,” she said.

Pravilova comforted Baziuk publicly at the protest, telling her and the crowd that “this is a war not against Ukraine only, but against the Russian people as well.”

“We are crying with you,” Pravilova said. “It’s unbearable. I keep saying, ‘Can you forgive us?’”

Alisa Sopova GS, a Ukrainian Ph.D. candidate in the anthropology department, spoke next and shared that she has been keeping up with friends and relatives in her home country via a WhatsApp group. She noted that although it was her friend’s birthday, rather than spending the day preparing celebratory drinks, she was getting ready to defend herself.

“My best friend [is] actually making Molotov cocktails in her kitchen right now,” she told the crowd.

Professor Mark R. Beissinger, Henry W. Putnam Professor of Politics and an expert on post-Soviet states, came forward and asked for a moment of silence for “all the people who are dying in Ukraine right now, both Ukrainians and Russians.”

After the moment passed, Beissinger gave a brief background of Russia’s recent history with Ukraine, and then provided an assessment of the future of the conflict.

“Now, I don’t know what is going to stop Russia? There’s not much at this point in time, since the West decided it wasn’t going to in-

tervene militarily,” he said. “They’ve used sanctions. But sanctions, ultimately, will not stop Russia in Ukraine. We have to try to deal with this as best we can and learn the lessons in some ways of what we’ve done.”

“In some ways, it’s not just a Ukrainian story, but it is a global story,” he continued. “It is a global story that’s unfolding before our eyes, one that unfortunately is costing a lot of people’s lives.”

Sasha, a Ukrainian high school student studying at the Lawrenceville School, encouraged people to donate to military and humanitarian causes.

“I’ve heard a lot of speakers saying that they don’t know what to do, or they feel helpless,” he said.  “That’s definitely a feeling I share. But there are things you can do.”

Céleste Pagniello, a Canadian graduate student, invited people with knowledge of Russian or Ukrainian to speak with her about signing up to translate asylum documents.

“We are going to have so many refugees throughout Europe, and they’re going to need help,” she said.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian after the demonstration, Pravilova reiterated her support for Ukraine. “I’m Russian, I’m from St. Petersburg, and I feel a deep responsibility and guilt,” she said. “It’s just this feeling of helplessness. And the only thing we can do is just bring people together and show solidarity with the Ukrainians.”

“I wish I could be in Moscow on the streets,” she added. “To really show to the government, to the state — although it would be much riskier and dangerous.”

Hope Perry | February 26, 2022

MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Community members gather outside Nassau Hall on Friday, Feb. 25. One holds a sign reading “Free Ukraine.”

MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

History professor Ekaterina Pravilova, one of the demonstration’s organizers, holds up a sign with the Ukrainian flag.

East Pyne courtyard film set for ‘Oppenheimer’ creates campus chaos

By Hope Perry | April 14, 2022

The quiet majesty of East Pyne was shattered on Thursday, April 14, as news spread across campus that Academy Award-nominated director Christopher Nolan was on campus shooting his upcoming film “Oppenheimer.” Hundreds of people crowded around the courtyard, some on the ground in the hot sun and others pressed against windows, jostling one another for the chance to glimpse a celebrity.

On one side, crowds formed around caution tape that extended from the courtyard’s eastern entrance all the way down Firestone Plaza to the University Chapel. On the other side, near Nassau Hall, a smaller group of students jockeyed for a view of the film set.

“Dude, I’m so missing class for this,” one student yelled to his friends. “It’s Christopher fucking Nolan!”

Uniformed Public Safety (PSAFE) officers manned orange barricades blocking the entrance to the courtyard as students swarmed towards the building.

Paige Morton ’25, who scored a video with Matt Damon, said in an interview that “he was really nice and really willing to take pictures with students, which I thought was really cool.”

Rumors swirled that Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr. were on campus, but that wasn’t true, according to crewmembers speaking to the crowd. One crewmember said Downey Jr. had left town after previous days of filming.

The film is based on the 2005 book “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

Dr. Michael Gordin, a professor of the history of science at the University, speculated that the scene filmed in East Pyne likely was set “after late-1942, when the Manhattan Project officially began and Oppenheimer had his post [with the Manhattan Project].” Gordin further theorized that the scene in Princeton may be related to Oppenheimer’s recruitment of other

dow areas, mentioning that people might be visible in the shot if they crowded too close. Across the courtyard, a crowd of people on the third-floor men’s restroom nearly leaned out the window; a crewmember yelled at them to close it.

Professor Daniela Mairhofer of the Classics Department has an office with windows that look directly over the courtyard. When asked if she had received any prior warning or instructions from the crew, she said she hadn’t. “Not beforehand,” she said, “but when they started filming, a crew member came to my office and told me to turn off the lights … I am sitting and working now in the dark, all in the line of duty for a (hopefully) good movie.”

Mairhofer invited us to her office to watch the filming up close, where the ‘Prince’ team was able to snap a few photos.

It seemed like everyone on campus had an opinion.

“I think it was a very unique experience to watch

Princeton seeks only to recover any costs to the University that are incurred by the production.”

The University Office of Communications did not respond to a specific question about whether PSAFE officers were additionally compensated or supported for their role in enforcing the barriers and filming perimeter.

After filming for over an hour at East Pyne, some of the cast and crew took a break in Whig Hall and then moved to the University Chapel to continue production.

Mujtuba Yousufi ’24 was able to score a picture with Christopher Nolan in the chapel, and told the ‘Prince’ how he made it happen.

Nolan has been nominated twice for best picture, twice for best screenplay, and once for best director in the Academy Awards, and has directed hits like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” and “Interstellar.”

Yousufi said that he went into the chapel to pray,

DIVEST PRINCETON HISTORY

JUNIOR YEAR 2022-2023

The Class of 2024’s junior year was one of vast expansion, bringing visible results of postCOVID-19 campus construction projects. The University opened two new residential colleges: Yeh College and New College West. Though their official opening was later than usual, and displaced many students during the delay, the modern buildings signaled a transition in campus architecture and provided a sense of completion to at least one of many construction projects.

Perhaps the biggest headline of the year was when the University announced that it would divest from all publicly funded fossil fuel companies and dissociate from most fossil fuel companies. The news came following years of student activism led by Divest Princeton.

The Class of 2024 welcomed a new class, the Class of 2026, onto campus, the University’s largest undergraduate class yet. The University also held onto its streak at the top of collegiate rankings; U.S.

News ranked Princeton No. 1 for the twelfth year in a row. As far as other commemorations go, the Class of 2024’s junior year was the tenth year of service for Christopher Eisgruber ’83 as University President and half a century since the first co-ed undergraduate class graduated from Princeton in 1973.

In other fiscal news,, some of Princeton’s most revolutionary measures were enacted at during the Class of 2024’s junior year. The University eliminated the student contribution to tuition, covering the entire cost of tuition and fees for families making up to $100K. Also, the USG announced five new restaurants that would accept “Pay with Points,” a campaign spearheaded by Stephen Daniels ‘24 who was elected USG president in December of 2022. Now, the program is accepted by 16 establishments in town, increasing engagement between Princetonians and the town.

Along with expanding campus grounds and undergraduate

financial aid, the University announced academic changes too, introducing minors in place of certificates and majors instead of concentrations. The Class of 2024 will be the last class of “concentrators” and the last without the minor option. Along with new minors and the certificate phase-out, the Artificial Intelligence boom prompted Princeton to weigh AI in learning. The University declined to ban ChatGPT but released faculty guidance on use.

Along with University expansion, the Spring of 2023 brought a remarkable March Madness run for both the men’s and women’s basketball teams. After rising to national stardom with unexpected back-to-back wins, the men’s streak ended in the Sweet Sixteen after a loss to Creighton. The women lost in the second round and their dance ended there. The reaction from the student body was electric and everyone, including the Class of 2024, rode on the high of the monumental success of Princeton basketball’s March Madness run.

Princeton to eliminate student contribution, cover entire cost for families making up to $100K

By Drew Somerville | September 8, 2022

Beginning in Fall 2023, most families making up to $100,000 annually will be eligible to receive financial aid covering the entirety of the expenses to attend Princeton. The University announced the expansion of their financial aid program on Sept. 8, adding that the student contribution requirement of financial aid packages will be eliminated.

Previously, families making up to $65,000 were eligible to receive this amount of aid, but the new expansion is expected to allow over 25% of undergraduates to attend Princeton free of cost.

The expansion also acknowledged that many families making more than $100,000 will receive additional aid, “including those at higher income levels with multiple children in college.”

“A majority of the additional scholarship funding will benefit families earning less than $150,000,” the University’s announcement reads.

According to a graphic posted with the announcement, families making between $150,000 and $300,000 will receive between $11,000 and $15,500 more in aid.

The student contribution will also be eliminated for all students, which was previously set at $3,500. The allocation for the contribution is also being expanded to $4,050 “to provide more flexibility for students to cover course books and other miscellaneous expenses.”

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Dean of Admission Karen Richardson ’93 emphasized that the contribution “should not be a barrier for students to participate in other activities,” including study abroad, extra- and co-curriculars.

“Hopefully by eliminating the need to have that student contribution will allow students to think more broadly about how they might engage in their time at Princeton,” she said.

The expansion “will make it possible for the students with the highest financial need to bring two guests (typically family members) to campus for first year move-in and for senior year Commencement,” as part of “other enhancements” to the financial aid program, the announcement reads.

In a video address accompanying the announcement, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 emphasized that this expansion will help to “ensure that talented students from all backgrounds” have access

to a Princeton education.

Eisgruber thanked the generosity of “alumni and friends” of the University for making the expansion possible.

According to Princeton Alumni Weekly (PAW), the 2021–22 giving cycle was the most generous in Princeton’s history, with $81.8 million received from alumni.

Richardson told the ‘Prince’ that “tremendous returns from the endowment” are also responsible for this expansion. She pointed out that the University has made other changes in policies in recent history to “make a Princeton education accessible to more students,” including “the graduate stipend major increase” and “increasing the size of the [undergraduate] student body.”

Richardson said that she expects the process of applying for aid to become “more transparent” due to the Financial Aid Estimator, which provides “readily available information” about aid packages.

Dean of the College Jill Dolan emphasized the importance of this expansion for the future of the University in the announcement.

“Princeton’s generous financial aid program has transformed the socioeconomic diversity of our undergraduate student population, allowing more students from across backgrounds to learn from one another’s life experiences,” Dolan said.

New College West’s Coffee Club: new location, same great taste

By Isabella Dail | November

Princeton’s quintessential, student-run coffee shop has finally moved into the residential colleges.

The New College West (NCW) shop had its grand opening on Oct. 30, marking the second location for the café. Overlooking the lush green of Poe Field, Coffee Club’s newest location is housed within NCW’s Addy Hall. The modern location is a stark contrast to Coffee Club’s original location in the basement of Campus Club on Prospect Avenue.

The NCW café occupies a cozy corner within the sleek building. Soft ceiling lamps illuminate the dark floors and wood-paneled walls. An assortment of cushy chairs in different colors and patterns accompany the small tables, which are perfect for a laptop and a steaming cup of coffee. A grand piano separates the open seating arrangement from the lounge, while large win-

13,

2022

dows allow for natural light and prime views.

As I approached the counter, I was invited by a balloon display that spelled out “celebrate” and a chalkboard of drink options. The lineup includes the same well-known drinks from the Campus Club location. Overwhelmed by the number of choices, I requested the advice of three friendly baristas, who recommended the new fall drink: the honey cardamom latte. By the time I arrived at 3:30 p.m., most of the snacks, which Coffee Club buys from The Gingered Peach, a local bakery, were long gone. I selected a brownie, a classic option.

The honey cardamom latte was the embodiment of a fall drink. The honey balanced spice with sweetness, and the use of cardamom gave the drink earthy and herbal notes, pairing beautifully with the slight bitterness of the coffee. The har-

mony of the different flavor groups added depth and uniqueness to the drink, elevating it beyond a traditional latte. As someone who enjoys especially strong coffee, the drink was a little milky for me, and the ground cardamom added a slight grittiness that occasionally caught in my throat. However, given the perfect fall feeling of well-balanced flavors, I would still highly recommend the latte, especially during this time of year.

The brownie was a delightful spin on a classic dessert and paired wonderfully with the latte. It had a dense, fudgy texture inside, while the edges had a crisp, flaky quality. It had a deeply chocolatey flavor, complemented by a nutty undertone. Melted chocolate chips added to the overall richness and textural diversity of the treat. The brownie was sweet, but not overwhelmingly sugary. Instead, it was a perfect af-

ternoon snack before a late night of studying.

The next day, I returned to NCW’s Coffee Club at a significantly earlier time. The line was a bit longer, filled with tired students eager for a morning pick-me-up. However, the pastry selection was also far more expansive, and only a few of the most popular items were missing. I whipped out my punch card, ordered a chocolate chip banana muffin and a vanilla iced latte, and enjoyed a late breakfast.

The iced vanilla latte is a classic cold drink that Coffee Club does exceedingly well. The drink had subtle tones of vanilla that enriched but didn’t overpower the drink. There was also a slight sweetness that balanced the vanilla without being too sugary. The drink was on the milkier side, but the espresso shot added a deep coffee flavor and provided a welcome energy boost. Even on a

crisp fall day, I deeply enjoyed the iced latte.

The chocolate chip banana muffin was a great breakfast item, especially on the go. The large chunks of chocolate added a velvety texture and rich chocolate flavor. The muffin itself was dense and sticky from the banana, providing a nice contrast to the chocolate mixed throughout. The muffin top was a crisp cover to the moist, soft muffin underneath. The muffin had a strong banana flavor, so I would especially recommend this item for all the banana lovers on campus.

NCW’s Coffee Club is a fantastic addition to Princeton’s coffee scene. It has a warm atmosphere, delicious drinks, and a great variety of pastries — although they very quickly sell out. Head over to NCW to “celebrate” Coffee Club and be sure to grab a honey cardamom latte while you’re there.

Eisgruber won’t sacrifice academic rigor for mental health. Students aren’t getting either.

By Rohit Narayanan | November 20, 2022

“Ithink high aspiration environments are consistent with mental health,” University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 told The Daily Princetonian last week. “I don’t see any evidence that academic laxness or academic mediocrity would somehow be better from the standpoint of mental health.” This seems like a major gaffe by a university president. But the truth is, Eisgruber stands by every word in that sentence. It’s a philosophy he’s articulated many times.

Eisgruber has a vision for Princeton, which he once described as an “intense [place] where researchers and students are colliding with other people of talent and passion and imagination.” To him, that includes extremely difficult academics. How could an opt-in paradise be inconsistent with mental health, he might wonder? Eisgruber seems to feel the term “mental health” is being abused because students just want less work. But what he doesn’t recognize is the real driving force behind the mental health crisis — a culture of competition rather than growth, which is the very problem getting between him and his utopia. What makes academic rigor so important to Eisgruber? We have to remember his history. Eisgruber was a physics major at Princeton before he discovered a passion for constitutional law after taking a sophomore year class. Eisgruber’s entire life was built on his choice to take that class, from clerking at the Supreme Court to having his dream job: being yelled at 24/7 as Princeton’s president. Is it any wonder he considers academically rigorous classes to be the highest manifestation of Princeton’s greatness?

If Eisgruber views tough classes as simply opportunities to master new subjects and find your life path, then of course he

doesn’t blame academics for the mental health crisis. After all, Eisgruber may think, Princeton students are relatively secure in terms of future prospects, at least compared to most people our age, and so they should make use of the opportunity to try lots of things, without facing very many consequences. The real threat to the mental health of a Princeton student is the possibility of “academic mediocrity.” How much worse would Eisgruber’s life be if he didn’t master the hard class that put him on the path to being the victim of constant mockery as Princeton’s president? So, Eisgruber says, high aspiration environments are “helpful to mental health.”

The problem with this logic isn’t that Princeton students don’t sympathize with the fear of academic mediocrity. It’s that we feel it deeply. Academic mediocrity has two meanings. To Eisgruber, it just means not reaching your individual potential out of laziness — something we can avoid. But once we place academic mediocrity as the enemy, it takes on its second meaning for students: not keeping up with everyone around you. And at a school specifically optimized to pit us against the most competitive people there are, not keeping up turns into a constant fear. When we pin our sense of self on avoiding academic mediocrity, that sense of self can easily go away when we inevitably fail.

Is a school where the classes are hard harmful to mental health? Not necessarily. Is a school where students are eager to take hard classes harmful to mental health? Again, not necessarily. But is a school where classes are hard and students seek to do as much as possible to compete with other students harmful to mental health? Yes, of course. And Princeton clearly falls in that third camp. The problem isn’t the high aspirations per se — it’s the

high aspiration environment. Why is Princeton internally competitive? The better question is, how can it not be? Princeton’s admissions process is optimized to select very competitive students — in other words, students who are not particularly used to failure. No one here feels secure because it’s an uncomfortable feeling: no matter how rosy the future looks, we always strive for more, and we see everyone around us doing the same. The default for an elite school is to be competitive; it would take tangible effort to make it a space of low-stress exploration and engagement. And here at Princeton, we’ve done nothing to build that dream.

Maybe some amount of pressure is necessary to push students to work hard on academics, Eisgruber may argue, which is how they will grow into the deeply scarred University president they could be. But in reality, students adapt to the pressure by not exploring deeply: they choose the easiest distribution require ments and cram for exams rather than actually engaging with the content. Classes that can help us grow when we take them to im prove ourselves can instead hurt us deeply when we overload to get a competitive advantage.

In so many ways, a hypercom petitive atmosphere optimizes this school for exactly what Eis gruber says he doesn’t want Princeton to be. If Princeton stu dents are all going to be granted high-paying, low-value-to-soci ety jobs at McKinsey or Goldman or Meta, then by all means, they should work hard and suffer a little at Princeton to do some penance for the advantages they are about to reap.

But Eisgruber has consistently said he wants Princeton to be better than that: he wants students to consider what they can do for the world. In order to get

there, students have to have the time to take advantage of the resources around them — which means they have to be dissuaded from constantly trying to prove their academic prowess by overloading on courses. Students have to remain confident in their own abilities even as the people around them constantly surpass them in various ways; they have to strive toward their own vision of success, not suffer through an epidemic of deteriorating mental health.

We’re talking about a cultural problem — something that the administration clearly doesn’t know how to fix or even conceptualize. Throughout his interview, Eisgruber relied on construction to demonstrate the actions he was taking in different fields. Need to prioritize STEM knowledge? Rebuild an engineering school! Worried the humanities are being left behind? Build a new humanities complex! This isn’t Minecraft, Eiscontradiction.

Somewhere at Princeton, there’s a student with their cursor hovering over the button to enroll in the class that will change their life. If they take that class, they’ll change their major, go on to reach great academic heights, make some earth-shaking discovery, and then finally be rewarded with the job of president of Princeton and happily spend the rest of their days trying to fit in work between student sit-ins in their office. But then the student looks at the number of pages of reading, remembers the last time they took on a hard class, and then had to suffer a low grade. Or they consider that it might look better for their resume to take two more specialized high-level courses. And they don’t enroll. After selecting their courses, the student breathes a sigh of relief. At least they’ve avoided academic mediocrity.

SPORTS AFTER 27 YEARS: DAVID 59, GOLIATH 55

By Wilson Conn | March 16, 2023

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The parallels are unavoidable and abundant.

A defensive battle. A Pac12 champion. And most notably of all, Mitch Henderson ’98.

27 years after knocking off defending national champion UCLA in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, the head coach of Princeton men’s basketball — who was a sophomore guard on the 1996 Tigers team — is once again a tournament Cinderella. On Thursday afternoon, his 15th-seeded squad (22–8, 10–4 Ivy League) knocked off two-seed Arizona (28–7, 14–6 Pac-12), 59–55, giving the Princeton men their first March Madness victory in a quarter-century.

The Tigers’ last tournament triumph was in 1998, but the 1996 win — the final victory in the three-decade career of legendary Princeton head coach Pete Carril — holds a special significance in connection with Thursday’s upset, and not just because of Henderson’s involvement. Carril passed away last August, and the team has worn his signature bow-tie on their uniform this season in his memory.

“So much of what I say is [Carril’s],” Henderson said after the team won Ivy Madness last weekend. “A lot of this is honoring him.”

At the same

though, Henderson seems intent on carving out his own path, both for himself and the teams he coaches.

“There’s gonna be some comparisons from some of you, I’m sure, to coach Carril,” Henderson told the media after the win Thursday. “But I want to be really clear that this group did this, and that was a really long time ago.”

Indeed, in the nearly three-decades since the famous upset over UCLA, Princeton’s offensive style has changed tremendously. Gone are the days of careful cutting, draining the shot clock, and lulling opposing defenses to sleep. More so than during the Carril years, Henderson’s Tigers rely on their scoring and shotmaking, especially from the three-point line, to carry them to victory.

Yet, vestiges of the Carill era still remain. The offense, which was once run through facilitating big men like Kit Mueller ’91 and Steve Goodrich ‘98, now goes through the capable hands of senior forward Tosan Evbuomwan, who led the Ivy League this season in assists per game (5.2).

It must have been a concerning sight for Henderson, then, to see both his team’s shotmaking and Evbuomwan’s play falter early on against Arizona; the Tigers missed their first five three-point attempts, and the star

“That’s the through-line in the program for us, toughness,” Henderson said after the game. “Things that are tough, that are really hard to do … [we take] pride in those things.”

This tenacity was required for the Tigers right from the tip, especially when facing off against Arizona’s big men, Ąžuolas Tubelis (6’11”) and Oumar Ballo (7’0”). This season, the pair had combined for 34 points and 17.8 rebounds per game, on a team that, like Princeton, led its conference in rebounding. The Tigers’ game plan seemed to be to double-team the pair as often as possible to force them into turnovers or tough shots.

While both Tubelis and Ballo started off hot — scoring Arizona’s first 11 points, and 17 of their first 20 — it was the defensive effort of Evbuomwan, senior forward Keeshawn Kellman, and junior forward Zach Martini, among others, that kept the game from getting out of hand. Despite their massive size disadvantage — Kellman is the Tigers’ tallest player in the rotation at six feet, nine inches — the Tigers managed to emerge from the first half winning the rebounding battle, 21–17.

Martini led the Tigers in rebounding in the first half with five, finishing with seven boards and two steals.

“Zach Martini was unbelievable,” Henderson said. “He was all over the place.”

Martini came through on the offensive end, too, scoring a three-point shot to cut the early Arizona lead before scoring on a classic Princeton backdoor cut that sent the basketball historians (and the older alumni in attendance) into a frenzy.

The Pac-12 champions were no pushovers, though, and bounced back from Martini’s run to take a 31–22 lead. The upstart Tigers matched them, going on an 8–0 run to end the half within one point of the Wildcats.

Junior guard Matt Allocco and senior guard Ryan Langborg each had opportunities to give the Tigers the lead heading into the half, but Allocco’s buzzer-beating layup rimmed out. Even though the Tigers weren’t able to break into the lead before halftime, the mood in the locker room was extremely optimistic.

“‘You’re okay, we’re down one, get the crowd on your side, [and] have some fun,’” Henderson recalls saying to his team at the break. “It wasn’t anything earth-shattering.”

“It was loud in there; every-

body had something to say, you know,” Allocco told members of the media after the game. “‘We’ve got this, stay in the moment; we’re gonna make shots; we’re gonna make big plays.’”

The numbers backed up the Tigers’ confidence, too. As mentioned, they were winning the rebounding battle, and had also managed to record just four first-half turnovers. The Tigers also allowed Arizona to shoot just 30 percent from three and under 45 percent from the field in the first half, while only giving up eight points to players not named Ballo or Tubelis.

“We want to win six games just like Arizona does,” Henderson said, referencing the number of victories required to capture a national championship. “And in order to do that, you’ve got to be tough defensively, because we did not shoot the ball very well tonight.”

“They didn’t get transition baskets, for the most part,” he added. “We weren’t perfect, but they weren’t getting what they’re really good at.”

However, as the second half began, the Tigers’ advantages began to wane. In the first seven minutes of the period, the Tigers turned the ball over six times. Arizona began to speed the pace of the game offensively and built a lead, which was once as large as 12 points.

Trailing and desperately needing a spark offensively, Princeton turned to sophomore guard Blake Peters. Peters, who has shot 37.6 percent from three this season while averaging just over 13 minutes per game, suddenly played a massive role for the Tigers, knocking down two key threes down the stretch to keep Princeton within striking distance.

Outside of Peters — who shot threefor-five from deep — the Tigers continued to struggle to get their shotmaking on track as the half progressed. They would finish having shot just fourfor-25 from deep, and just 40.6 percent from the floor overall.

Once again, though, it was the Tigers’ defense that came through. Kellman, Evbuomwan, and first-year forward Caden Pierce worked hard to defend the Wildcat bigs, coming up with key blocks and rebound after rebound. In the final eight minutes of play, the Tigers gave up just four points — and zero in the last 4:45 — a nearly unfathomable result against a team that averaged over 80 points per game entering Thursday’s contest.

“It’s such a tough group,” Henderson said. “We’re imperfect, but we’re a very tough group.”

As the defense held, the Tigers continued to search for a shot that would put them in the lead. As was the case at the end of the first half, the Tigers struggled to find a way through, with both Langborg and Pierce missing open three-pointers.

“We talk confidently,” Henderson said. “We felt we could win, [and] with four minutes left, [we said] ‘we’re gonna win this game.’”

Langborg finally found the bottom of the net on a foul-line jumper to cut the Arizona lead to one at 55–54, before scoring a layup to give the Tigers their first lead of the game with just over two minutes remaining. The Californian was a hero on the defensive end, too, blocking Arizona guard Courtney Ramey with just 50 seconds remaining.

After Caden Pierce hit a pair of free throws, Arizona had one last chance to tie the game, now trailing by three. At that point, it seemed the Tigers were ready to cash in on a bit of March Madness underdog luck.

“They had three shots at the basket from 21 seconds [left],” Henderson said. “Those usually go in in a game like this ... We got lucky.”

With the win, the Tigers became just the 11th 15-seed to win an NCAA Tournament game, and the third in the last three seasons, following in the footsteps of fellow New-Jerseyans Saint Peter’s, who made it all the way to the Elite Eight as a 15-seed last season. They are the lowest-seeded Ivy League team to ever win a March Madness game.

“To beat a great team like that on this stage is a pretty special feeling, but also, I can’t say I’m surprised,” Allocco said. “This team has been so good all year.”

“On paper, it’s going to look like a big upset,” he continued. “But we believe in each other and we think we’re a really good team. When we’re at our best, I think we can beat anybody in the country.”

The Tigers will now continue their tournament journey against seventh-seeded Missouri (25–9, 11–7 Southeastern) on Saturday. Even with the short turnaround, Henderson is confident the Tigers can keep their run going.

“We played the majority of our games in our league on back-to-backs,” he said. “So the [extra] day of preparation is quite nice.”

“Missouri is really good, [and] we’re playing great,” he added. “It’ll be a fun challenge.”

WILSON CONN / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Junior guard Matt Allocco walks off of the court following the win.

om P and C ir C umstan C e i V

By Gabriel Robare Head Puzzles Editor Emeritus

1 "Please clap" speaker

Feature of Princeton reunions tents

Houston sch.

Olympian Raisman

Little potato snack

17 Ethnic group representing about 18% of the global population

18 Satellite on which Valeri Polyakov set the record for the longest human spaceflight (437 days)

19 Reunions, for some networkers

21 Hit it!

23 Welcome

24 British prime minister Sunak 25 Starters

27 LeBron's squad: Abbr.

28 Life, e.g.

29 "Bonjour, ___ amis!"

31 Those preferring platonic relationships, familiarly 32 Bells and whistles, maybe 41 The Great Class of ___

42 They're on a timeline

43 Jubilation

44 "___ mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" (first words of Dante's "Inferno")

45 Many are Mormon

48 TV channel funded by "viewers like you"

51 "___ Mode" (Travis Scott #1 hit)

55 Basil + garlic + pine nuts + cheese + olive oil

56 Complains, with "on"

58 State whose name derives from the Seneca word for "great river"

59 Welcome the newest set of graduates, say

62 Matterhorn, e.g.

63 Buffalo-to-Princeton dir.

64 Like a big smile

65 Rapper ___ Def

66 Home of Lions and Tigers, but not Bears?: Abbr.

67 Harsh and grating

68 "Gangnam Style" artist

1 ___ Juice

2 Poet who wrote "This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper" 3 "Talking Heads" frontman 4 Sudden-death periods: Abbr. 5 Political funding grps. 6 "Preacher's Daughter" folk artist Cain 7 Site of Hercules' first labor

Heat from above

Oodles

Cartoonist Chast

Unfair assumptions

Claire Keegan novella "Small Things Like ___" 13 2008 platinum album "I am ... ___ Fierce" 14 Word often abbreviated to its last three letters 20 Its official title was "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies" 22 Risk-y events?

Unwritten reminders

Like King Minos

"Sign of the Times" singer Harry

Hindu god of fire

@@@

Company, they say

Private eye, in old slang

"Same!," in internet lingo

Be in debt

Homer's neighbor

Dawn goddess 39 Feature of a dirt road 40 Like the Great Class of 41-Across, for now: Abbr.

45 ___ the ante

46 Poke at 47 Plus

48 "Horses" punk rocker Smith

49 Chicks, say

50 Shopping ___

52 #1

53 Numbers on a British scale, familiarly

54 "My bad!"

56 German "Mr."

57 Figure out if a poem is in iambic pentameter, say

60 "The Cat in the ___"

61 Gender-affirming treatment: Abbr.

SENIOR YEAR 2023-2024

Senior year for the Class of 2024 started off hot — literally. Record-high temperatures that reached 95 degrees affected many students, especially those in upperclass housing without access to air conditioning. The University also instituted a new policy restricting the use of personal electric vehicles on campus, which were banned completely in January. September also saw major movements in the University administration, with Dean of the College Jill Dolan announcing that she would step down at the conclusion of the academic year.

The impact of international events was also felt acutely even within the Orange Bubble. The inclusion of a book in the syllabus of NES 301: The Healing Humanities — Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South about Israeli treatment of Palestinians was condemned by an Israeli government official, the Center for Jewish Life, and a congressman. President Eisgruber shortly thereafter defended as an exercise of academic

freedom. After the start of the Israel-Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, demonstrations from students and community members in support of Palestine were held intermittently. Outside actors attempted to inflame tensions when an outside group sent a truck wrongly accusing Dean of the School of Public and International Affairs Amaney Jamal of antisemitism — the group later publicly withdrew their allegation. On April 25, after protests erupted at Columbia and a number of other universities nationwide, a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” was officially launched at Princeton in McCosh Courtyard. The encampment lasted three weeks, including a temporary occupation of Clio Hall and a change of location to Cannon Green, before quietly dissolving into the night.

A number of academic changes were also announced by the administration. The longstanding policy that students only needed to take one final exam per day was changed to allow a maximum of two exams per day, and a decision was made

to increase passing time between classes starting in Fall 2025.

On the street, a record number of students participated in Bicker, with 80 percent of sophomores taking part in Street Week. Rumors swirled around financial troubles at Cloister Club, with a plea for donations sent to alumni asking them to help keep the club afloat after disappointing yields of members.

In sports, the Men’s and Women’s basketball teams had another phenomenal season, each winning their respective Ivy League regular season championships. Several players in the Class of 2024 will see the continuation of their college years — including star-player Kaitlyn Chen who’s off to University of Connecticut and Matt “Mush” Allocco moving to the University of Notre Dame. The class will be the last with NCAA fifth year eligibility, one of the few remnants the COVID pandemic still had on college life.

AUG NEWS

New restrictions aim to dramatically curtail e-vehicle use across campus

NOV NEWS

Under water, Cloister risks closure and floats sophomore takeover

MAR SPORTS

SHUT UP AND DANCE: Women’s basketball roars past Columbia for fifth-straight Ivy title

The COVID class: 2024 reflects on their time at Princeton PAGE 28

APR NEWS

Clio Hall occupation ends in 13 arrests, sit-in relocates to Cannon Green

‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ launches at Princeton, students arrested PAGE 29

New restrictions aim to dramatically curtail e-vehicle use across campus

By Tess Weinreich | August 19, 2023

The University will be cracking down on the use of personal electric vehicles (PEVs) this academic year. While stopping short of an outright ban, a campus message issued on Friday, Aug. 18 introduced sweeping new restrictions. According to the new policy, PEVs including scooters, bikes, hoverboards, and electric skateboards will be prohibited during “peak hours” of 7:30 a.m. through 4 p.m. on weekdays within a “designated zone.”

The zone encompasses the vast majority of campus, bound North to South by Nassau Street and Faculty Road and East to West by Alexander

ing to the campus message, this tightened policy comes after a “formal review” conducted by the Environmental Safety and Risk Management Committee (ESRM). The University cites student body growth, increased use of PEVs, and reduced accessibility to pathways due to construction as exacerbating factors.

“The ESRM has concluded that the University’s infrastructure cannot safely accommodate the increasing usage of PEVs on campus without applying certain restrictions,” the message reads.

“The Committee recognizes that this could be both disappointing and inconvenient to current users of

this new policy.”

The message also cautions that failure to comply “could result in a full prohibition of PEVs on campus.” Non-compliant vehicles will be impounded, and repeat-offenders may be reported to the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies, the Graduate School, Human Resources, Dean of the Faculty, or other appropriate entities for additional disciplinary actions.

Several peer institutions have also recently tightened PEV policy. The Harvard Crimson and The Daily Pennsylvanian both reported heightened enforcement of restrictions on e-vehicle use on their campuses last spring. Boston College and Fordham College banned PEVs entirely during the 2022-23 academic year.

Princeton follows not only the trend in academia, but also local efforts to control the use of micromobility devices, including bicycles, skateboards, and rollerskates, in town. Last December, Princeton Town Council unanimously passed an amendment to an ordinance prohibiting their use in a zone of downtown Princeton, including on Witherspoon Street, between Nassau Street and Paul Robeson Place, the north side of Nassau Street between Bayard Lane and Maple Street, and Palmer Square.

The resulting increased enforcement of a $50 fine received pushback from students throughout the spring, who claimed they hadn’t been properly informed of the municipal amendment.

The University’s previous policy was adopted in Feb. 2020, and permitted registered devices on all University roads, walks, and pathways with the requirement that riders yield to pedestrians at all times. The revised policy will

change on-campus transportation for many: According to data from the 2023 senior survey, 6.3 percent of respondents reported using a scooter to navigate campus at least some of the time.

Certain groups, such as athletes, who use PEVs at heightened rates to access far-away facilities, may be particularly affected by longer, on-foot commutes. Indeed, an FAQ page on the new policy forebodes disruptions to student life with questions like: “What if I can’t get to class/practice/activities on time?”

According to the webpage, the Committee on Classrooms and Schedule is “exploring the expansion of passing time to 15 or 20 minutes” but notes that “change is not expected during the 2023-24 academic year.”

The campus message provides more information about how the University intends to support students through this adjustment, promising “continuous updating of temporary wayfinding around construction activities,” “piloting an earlier start to late lunch at Frist Food Gallery on weekdays to allow students more time to eat lunch between classes,” “improving TigerTransit routes and frequency, and deploying new technologies such as real-time arrival screens,” and “investing in longer-term projects to create safe, multi-modal corridors across campus.”

When asked last March if the University intended to join the town in further restricting use of vehicles like e-scooters, Director of Transportation and Parking Services Charles Tennyson wrote in a statement to The Daily Princetonian, “We believe there’s less to do about regulation right now, and much more to do about conversation.”

“The University does not wish to surprise students with any new or significant change in policy, institute needless regulations, or limit mobility options for students or the broader University community,” he wrote.

Despite this statement, discussions surrounding the policy change were not made public prior to the announcement on Aug. 18, just one week before its scheduled implementation on Aug. 25, and just over two weeks before classes start on Sep. 5.

Under water, Cloister risks closure and floats sophomore takeover

We are confronting a crisis, and it is not just possible, but likely, that absent significant aid from our alumni, Cloister will close its doors,” reads a email by the Board of Governors of Cloister Inn to Cloister alumni with the subject line “CRUCIAL: SAVE THE INN.” According to the email, with membership struggling to return to pre-pandemic rates, the club has had to use 90 percent of its reserve savings to stay open.

“In order to stay open through next year, we need to raise $250,000 by the end of this school year,” the Board of Governors wrote. Elsewhere, the email refers to “an aggressive fundraising goal by the close of 2023.”

The email raises the specter that absent significant fundraising, Cloister Inn, an eating club founded in 1912, will close.

Newly elected Cloister President Alexandra Wong ’25 denied that the club was at risk of closure in an email to members. Referring to the email to alumni, she wrote, “The email had a tone of urgency for fundraising purposes, aiming for 250K in donations by the end of the year and suggesting closure if we didn’t reach this goal. Cloister will not be closing, regardless of whether or not it meets this goal.”

Cloister has one of the lowest memberships on the street and has struggled with investments in recent years. Cloister’s membership lags far behind other sign-in clubs like Terrace and Charter, both of which have extensive waiting lists.

Clubs have recovered from slumps in the past. For Cloister itself, in 1985, the club almost closed after recruiting only 11 new members during the sign-in period. In 1994, Cloister leadership staged a “takeover” by sophomores in order to revive lackluster membership.

But Cloister’s current financial crisis comes as eating clubs across Prospect Avenue have largely recovered from the pandemic and are preparing for next spring’s new members from the class of 2026, the University’s largest graduating class ever.

Beyond fundraising, the Board of Governors is inviting a “takeover” in which a large number of sophomores are invited to join the club, potentially drastically reshaping the club’s identity and culture. In the inter-

nal email, Wong wrote that current members will not “be pushed out from club culture” as a result of a takeover.

In a statement to The Daily Princetonian, Chair of the Graduate Board of Trustees Jose Pincay-Delgado ’77 wrote, “We had generally steady membership for 25 years dating back to February 1994, but the current down cycle started coming out of the pandemic.”

“We look forward to recruiting a dynamic class this year,” Wong wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ She referred all other comments to the Graduate Board.

Cloister’s financial and membership situation

According to Form 990 tax filings for the fiscal year ending June 2022, Cloister made just over $874,000, compared to Charter’s $1.8 million. Charter also reported a net income loss of just shy of $12,000, while Cloister lost almost $270,000 in 2022.

In 2019, Cloister had a just $34 return on its just over $424,000 investment, or 0.008 percent. Cloister Inn also had the lowest net valuation of the Eating Clubs at $602,212.

According to the email to members, Cloister has 44 members. This makes it one of the smallest eating clubs on the street. The eating clubs that have faced membership struggles in recent years have almost universally been sign-in rather than bicker clubs.

Additionally, Cloister’s 2023 Street Week recruitment process yielded very few new members, according to an email obtained by the ‘Prince.’ Of the 86 spots Cloister gave out to new members in February, including 70 members of the Class of 2025, just 18 were listed as Cloister members in November 2023.

Six members of the Class of 2025 who were not listed on the initial new member list in February are now Cloister members, indicating they likely signed in during the spring or this fall. Cloister continued to accept applications for rolling admissions following the spring sign-in period.

Plans for the ‘takeover’

The Cloister Graduate Board of Trustees and current undergraduate officers are also

“aggressively campaigning to recruit large groups of students to join the Club,” according to the alumni email. They hope that the strategy of a “takeover” would revitalize Cloister in the long run by bringing membership to full capacity with new undergraduate leadership.

Pincay-Delgado added, “We want [interested groups of students] to give us a wish list of proposed improvements to the clubhouse and service that we can fund in part with this year’s alumni donations. Ideas we’re suggesting include upgrading our movie room & hot tub, planning fun off-campus trips, and booking live bands.“

Wong expanded on the idea in the email to members, writing, “it entails a discretionary ‘membership fund’ that potential members can submit proposals on using if a recruitment goal is reached.“

Cloister and other clubs have successfully staged sophomore takeovers in the past. Most recently, in 2019, Charter Club solicited groups of between six and 100 sophomores and juniors to join, asking them for proposals for “a new direction” for Charter. Previously, the club had been known for attracting engineering students. During the “takeover,” they heard suggestions about changes ranging from dining options to social events to financial aid. Charter Club has become increasingly popular over the past few years.

When Cloister almost closed in 1985, the club first installed its hot tub. Two months later, “the new group was thoroughly entrenched, with only one person remaining from the previous year’s membership, and only two who had joined during sign-ins.”

The Club also experienced a very similar situation exactly thirty years ago, when it faced a crisis of membership in the fall of 1993. Cloister leadership partnered with a group of sophomores interested in a “takeover” to plan a future direction for the Club. The eventual wish list of the alumni, otherwise known as “Innmates” of the Class of 1996, included longer meal hours and internet access for the Club.

“The members of the Class of 1996 are now revered among Cloister alumni. They’re the ones that transformed the club for a generation of members,” Pincay-Delgado wrote.

Pincay-Delgado also explained that in 1994, Cloister held another round of officer elections after Street Week so that new members could “immediately be candidates for top officer roles.” Club leadership plans to do the same next spring if membership grows significantly.

Wong wrote to members, on the other hand, the current members would not be pushed out of “informal or formal leadership.”

The email to alumni stressed that a takeover alone won’t be sufficient to save the club given that their dues would not be received by the club until fall 2024. This makes the fundraising goal critical.

“The fundraising is also meant to support the wish list of our new members as they define the next generation of Cloister,” Pincay-Delgado wrote.

The current generation of Cloister is evenly split between the Class of 2024 and 2025, with 20 members from 2024 and 21 members from 2025. Three members are graduate students or associate research scholars.

The club’s aquatic stereotype

The reputation of Cloister has varied over the years. Famous Innmates include Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan ’81, Sirius Satellite Radio co-founder Robert Briskman ’54, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer ’81.

In recent years, the common stereotype of Cloister members is that they are “floaters and boaters” — athletes on water sports like rowing and swimming. The ‘Prince’ cross-referenced the list of Cloister members with the rosters for men’s and women’s swimming and diving, water polo, and rowing teams, and found that just one-third of Cloister’s membership qualify as “floaters and boaters.”

Men’s heavyweight rowing accounts for about 14 percent of Cloister’s membership, while 10 percent were on the men’s swimming and diving team. No Cloister members were on the men’s or women’s water polo teams.

Similarly, over a quarter of men’s heavyweight rowers call Cloister home, the most among any water sport team. A fifth of men’s swimming and diving team members are in Cloister, while about 13 percent of women’s lightweight rowers are members of the club.

No members of women’s swimming and diving or either water polo team are also Cloister members. An important affinity group at the club is “Women of Cloist,” which highlights the gender diversity of the club.

The Board of Governors invoked a history of community at Cloister, while stressing the need for donations to keep it open. They wrote, “we are reminded of the faithful bonds we have all forged at our home away from home, Cloister Inn.”

Sofia Arora | November 27, 2023

The COVID class: 2024 reflects on their time at Princeton

By Hallie Graham | April 16, 2024

As the Class of 2024 prepares to graduate on May 28, a time of celebration brings back memories of what proved to be a formative event in the Class of 2024’s college experience. March 2024 marked the fourth anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Daily Princetonian sat down with five members of the senior class to learn more about the strengths and lessons the Class of 2024 — the ‘COVID’ class —  has brought to Princeton during their four years here.

On Aug. 7, 2020, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 announced in a campus message that during the Fall 2020 semester, “undergraduate education will be fully remote,” a decision that, according to some members of the senior class, would prove to be one of the most formative for their class’s identity.

The Class of 2024’s Princeton experience began over Zoom, with virtual orientation. Stephen Daniels ’24, who also served as USG President for 2022–23, said in an interview with the ‘Prince’ that the Class of 2024 missed out on the “typical orientation experience,” and therefore did not have the opportunity to fully understand “how things work at Princeton.”

Traditionally, orientation takes place a week before fall classes begin, immediately following firstyear move-in. Students spend several days traveling in small groups through the Community Action, Dialogue and Difference in Action, or Outdoor Action programs. After the small group experiences, further programing explains and explores the values of Princeton’s community. Students also meet with their academic advisors, peer academic advisors (PAAs), and other Residential college staff.

While some members of the

Class of 2024 entered the University through a virtual format, others, who were formally members of the Class of 2023, joined after deciding to take gap years.

Keith Zhang ’24, who took a gap year during the 2020–21 school year, experienced an in-person orientation with the Class of 2023.

He recalled being told to leave campus in March 2020

“They told us, ‘Oh instead of packing for one week of spring break, pack as if you are leaving for two, just in case this little thing doesn’t blow over,’“ he told the ‘Prince.’ The night before I was supposed to fly out of here, they were like ‘Nevermind. Pack everything. Get out. You’re not coming back.’”

Sydney Eck ’24, one of these former members of the Class of 2023, was on Novogratz Bridge Year 2019–20 in India when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Originally told Princeton’s shutdown announcement would not affect the program, within 24 hours Eck boarded a plane back to the United States as airports across the world shut down.

Eck is a former head Features editor for the ‘Prince.’

“Bridge Year is really incredible … It was really sad to hear that it wouldn’t be happening for a couple of years,” Eck added.

Eck shared that when they returned for their sophomore year, now as members of the Class of 2024, they “had to reintegrate into a new community.”

These seniors, who paused their times at Princeton, point to their unique identity as the bridge between the pre-COVID Princeton and the post-COVID Princeton.

Zhang identified the difference in campus expansion between when he left in March 2020 and when he returned from his gap year just over a year later.

“Coming in, in 2019 … we al-

ready knew the plans for [New College West] and other projects, but it was really a surprise when I came back and all of those things were already put into action,” he said. “Now, I live in NCW which is mind-blowing because in 2019, that wasn’t there.”

Aside from physical changes to campus, clubs and other student groups dynamics changed in response to the pandemic. Daniels attributed the change of many student groups on campus to the Class of 2024’s willingness to shift after the pandemic.

We had a “hunger for Princeton to be what we wanted it to be,” he noted.

Rohit Narayanan ’24 shared similar sentiments as Daniels and Johnson, also high lighting the Class of

ferent classes, and there are some positions that evidently the Class of ’24 was a little bit more interested in,” he said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’

Narayanan was the 147th Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Prince.’

Groups also made changes to meet evolving COVID-19 safety protocols. Sydney Johnson ’24 told the ’Prince’ that she appreciated the opportunity to make positive changes on the women’s club volleyball team.

“Something that we were doing right when we got back to campus after

ing to tournaments,” she added.

All five seniors agreed on the Class of 2024’s legacy. According to them, their gratitude for being at Princeton, specifically on-campus with the entire student body, is a quality Princeton is losing upon their graduation.

Zhang told the ’Prince’ that the campus will lose “the appreciation of being able to come to school and being able to be provided so many things by one of the most resource-centralized campuses in this world.”

“It’s not that I feel a lot of people take it for granted. It’s just that I think they don’t know what they’re able to utilize and what they’re missing out on,”

2024’s will ingness to lead.

“There have been some really interesting ele ments, I fear, which I think a number of orga nizations have noticed — like a little bit less interest in leadership from the Class of ’25. There are definitely some differences in how the pandemic shaped dif-

COVID

— we were one of the only teams wearing masks and making sure we were staying safe but also go-

Johnson also acknowledged the Class of 2024’s profound gratitude.

“I think we learned not to take anything for granted and to really make the most of every moment rather than looking towards the future and expecting to do things, because we weren’t sure if the future was going to be promised on campus,” she said.

“I think [Princeton is] losing a really resilient, diverse, and adaptive class,”

“[L]earn from the 2024s. Just because the impression you get of Princeton seems fixed — it’s not a permanent thing,” Daniels noted to future graduating classes.

JUSTIN CAI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Students social distancing in Mathey Dining Hall.

‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ launches at Princeton, students arrested

By Annie Rupertus & Miriam Waldvogel | April 25, 2024

About 100 undergraduate and graduate students began a sit-in on McCosh Courtyard early Thursday morning, joining a wave of pro-Palestinian sitins across the country. After student organizers first began to erect tents, Princeton Public Safety (PSAFE) issued its first warning to protesters. At least two student arrests have been made. After the initial arrests, students folded them away.

Students face arrest and being barred from campus if they refuse to stop after a warning, according to a campus-wide message on Wednesday morning from Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun.

“They said it was not possible here, and it is possible,” Aditi Rao GS told protesters in a speech.

McCosh Courtyard lies between the south side of the University chapel and McCosh Hall. The sit-in is not in the immediate sightline of Princeton’s public streets. After the initial tents were taken down, protesters sat down in the courtyard on tarps and blankets. Some began singing and chanting. By noon, approximately 250 protesters were gathered on McCosh Courtyard.

“We’re gonna be here for a while, everybody,”

Patrick Jaojoco GS told protestors. Protesters have set up an art project, a library, and a yoga area in the courtyard.

“We are part of a historic moment in student movements drawing on anti-war student movements in American history,” said Emanuelle Sippy ’25, the president of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives (AJP). “ It’s very easy to valorize this when it’s about South African apartheid or the Vietnam War or Kent State. We need to show up in this present moment.” Sippy noted she was not speaking for AJP.

“We’re gonna be here until the University divests,” Rao said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian.

“They [PSAFE] used such excessive force this morning and it’s really hard to see how the University recovers its image of arresting two students within five minutes of our encampment. Just really unprecedented,” she added.

Six officers encircled one of the arrestees at the time of the arrest, as could be seen in a video taken by the ‘Prince.’ One officer removed the individual’s backpack, while two officers handcuffed them. After handcuffs were placed, the student was pulled away from the courtyard.

The two students, Achinthya Sivalingam GS and Hassan Sayed GS, were arrested within six minutes of the first tents being set up.

“The two graduate students have been immediately barred from campus, pending a disciplinary process,” University spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “No force was used by Public Safety officers when conducting the arrests, which occurred without resistance,” Morrill added.

Student organizers have circulated a document on Instagram calling on alumni and other members of the university to call and email the University to halt disciplinary measures, and said that Sivalingam and Sayed had been evicted from their campus housing and had been given five minutes to collect their belongings.

“The students have shown an inspiring amount of courage, determination and discipline,” Max Weiss, an associate professor of history and member of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), told the ‘Prince.’ “So long as Princeton University and its administration and its president refuse to take action on this question, history will remember that the blood of Palestinians is on their hands.”

“I applaud the Princeton administration for being clear on what the rules are and for enforcing them properly,” said Rabbi Eitan Webb, the co-director of Princeton’s Chabad House. Webb was part of a group of a half dozen counterprotesters, some holding American and Israeli flags, standing off to the side. The group seemed to have dispersed by around 8:30 a.m.

A sheet handed out at the sit-in includes demands for the University to “call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza and condemn

Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.”

The sheet also reiterated existing demands for the University to divest from “companies that profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign, occupation, and apartheid policies,” to refrain from association from Israeli academic institutions and businesses, and to cultivate relationships with Palestinian institutions. It also called for broader transparency on the University’s investments and an end to weapons research funded by the Department of Defense.

The demand sheet also specifically singled out TigerTrek Israel and Birthright Israel trips sponsored by the Center for Jewish Life (CJL), as well as disassociation from the Tikvah Fund, a politically Zionist nonprofit that has funded events on campus in the past.

Encampments also sprung up at Harvard and Brown on Wednesday morning, making Princeton the fifth Ivy League school with pitched tents. Multiple students at Brown faced disciplinary action Wednesday afternoon, but no students at either campus have been arrested so far.

Students at Cornell and George Washington University also set up their own encampments on Thursday morning.

Vice President for Campus Life W. Rochelle Calhoun wrote in an email sent to undergraduate students at 10:08 a.m. on Wednesday morning that “[a]ny individual involved in an encampment, occupation, or other unlawful disruptive conduct who refuses to stop after a warning will be arrested and immediately barred from campus.” The email was sent approximately two hours after an article in The National Review leaked documents regarding plans for an encampment at Princeton.

Calhoun’s email is the first message to the full undergraduate student body threatening potential disciplinary action in response to pro-Palestinian activism, and marks the most explicit proposed action of the University towards student conduct and protest since Oct. 7.

In an opinion piece published by the ‘Prince’ on April 25, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 pointed to “time, place, and manner rules” stating, “[the University] may, and indeed does, prohibit tactics, such as encampments or the occupation of buildings, that interfere with the scholarly and educational mission of the University or that increase safety risks to members of the University community.”

Leading with ‘humor, humility, and humanity’: Dolan reflects on nine years as Dean of the College

anti-intellectual. No one was interested in talking about ideas or plays, it was all about a kind of pre-professional orientation to the business of theater. And I’d never really been interested in that very much,” she

In the second semester of her sophomore year, Dolan made the decision to leave the theater program. Focusing on her true interest in “theater as a kind of craft,” she pursued a bachelor’s degree in communication and began writing for BU’s student paper, The Daily Free Press. It was during this time that she became a theater critic, which she described as “the thread that carried [her] through” her career.

Dolan went on to receive master’s and doctoral degrees in Performance Studies from New York University (NYU). Her dissertation, “The Feminist Spectator as Critic,” became one of the first books published in the field of feminist performance theory and is now required reading in

The title carried over to Dolan’s blog The Feminist Spectator, which

Dolan explained, “I use the metaphor of the feminist stealing the seat of the conventional critic who at that time, was always white, al-

“The idea that a feminist critic would steal the seat and look from a different perspective became a powerful place for me to put myself as a critic and to invite the people reading my work to sort of join me in the seat beside me and think about what changes when you look at theater

Judith Hamera, chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts (LCA) and a professor of dance, described Dolan as “a giant, towering figure in the

“It’s not always clear to students [who interact with her in an administrative capacity] that Dean Dolan was a pioneering figure in queer performance and theater studies. She wrote explicitly as a lesbian feminist critic, when that was not an easy thing to be doing,” Hamera noted. Alisa Solomon, the Director of the Arts and Culture concentration at the Columbia Journalism School, told the ‘Prince’ that Dolan’s work has

We would read Jill Dolan’s scholarship, we would read her blogs, just as inspiration to keep going. I’ve cited ‘Utopia in Performance’ more times than I can even count — and I’m not alone.” “Utopia in Performance,” written by Dolan and published in 2005, reflects on the value of theater in creating a more just world.

“When Jill Dolan speaks,” Hamera added, “people listen.”

Stepping off of the Dinky and into Princeton

With a national reputation as a creator of feminist performance studies, Dolan was high on the shortlist to fill a new, jointly appointed position between the Department of English and the LCA. She joined Princeton’s faculty in 2008, following nine years at the University of Texas at Austin as the Chair in Drama and the head of the Department of Theatre and Dance’s graduate

CALVIN K. GROVER / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN Dean of the College Jill Dolan.

program in performance as a public practice.

Dolan and her partner, Professor of Theater and American Studies Stacy Wolf, accepted positions at Princeton without visiting campus.

“We just took the New Jersey Transit and the Dinky to Princeton, and we got off the train and had no idea actually how to get to campus,” Dolan recalled. “At that point Princeton was not fond of signage. So if you knew where you were going, you knew how to get around. And if you don’t, you didn’t. So we walked all around Springdale golf course before we realized we were heading the wrong way and had to turn around.”

As Dolan and Wolf settled in, they embraced the transition from their previous large public flagship institutions to a closer-knit community.

“[Princeton is] a place that’s small enough that you can have an effect on what happens, but central enough to the conversation about higher education that that effect can spill out outside of the quote unquote, orange bubble.”

Beyond her teaching responsibilities, Dolan went on to serve as Director of the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies (GSS) from 2009 to 2015.

Associate Professor of Theater Brian Herrera — who is a core faculty member in GSS and frequent citer of Dolan’s work — highlighted her role in strengthening the program, primarily through initiatives aimed at building connections between undergraduate, graduate, and senior researchers.

“She really enlivened and, with her administrative acumen but also her generous human touch, brought GSS into the era in which it sits now,” Herrera noted.

Donning her dean ‘costume’

Following the announcement of former Dean of the College Valerie Smith’s intention to step down, a fourmonth search for her predecessor ensued, culminating in Dolan’s selection.

In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ University lecturer and former chair of the LCA Michael Cadden — who had been part of the effort to “woo” Dolan to Princeton — expressed that seeing her rise to the position was bittersweet, since she would be stepping back from the LCA. However, he concluded that it was beneficial to advancing the arts.

“Just to have someone like Jill … someone sort of from our neck of the woods and our kind of disciplines as the Dean of the College was a matter of pride. It felt like, ‘Oh, we’re being fully invited now to the table that is Princeton University.’”

Reflecting on his favorite memories of Dolan, Herrera shared that he enjoyed watching her wardrobe of jeans, sneakers, and fleeces change alongside her title.

“I was like, I wonder what’s going to happen in terms of the costume when she now has to be a dean and has to wear more orange and has to wear blazers and hard shoes,” said Herrera. “One of my favorite things is just watching her find a way to look exactly like Jill Dolan … [and] maintain her own sense of personal comfort and style in a role as prominent and as public facing as the dean,” he continued.

Despite wearing this dean “costume,” Dolan has attempted to remain relatable and accessible to students.

“One of the things that’s always so interesting about her is she doesn’t stand behind the podium unless the protocol of the event [is that she] has to. She typically will step in front of the desk, sometimes sit on the desk like this sort of join the circle on the floor like she will not stand on ceremony unless the protocol of the circumstances obliges it in some way,” Herrera said.

Though Dolan has not taught a course in the LCA in recent years due to the demands of her position, her presence as a feminist spectator has continued. Herrera admired her continued place in the University community as a dedicated audience member.

“She is a theater scholar and comes to all the shows as part of the mainstream life of the Lewis Center,” said Herrera. “I also know that she attends a lot of…women’s basketball and a couple other women’s sports, so she’s been in the stands or in the seats always, and that has not stopped since she’s been Dean.”

Dolan emphasized the importance of attending these events.“I think it would be a real shame if the person in this position felt that students were an abstraction.”

‘The pandemic memos’: Navigating COVID-19

Arguably, the greatest challenge Dolan faced during her tenure as Dean of the College was the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Dean of the College is responsible for guiding “all aspects of Princeton’s undergraduate academic program,” according to the office’s website.

From the beginning to the end of the pandemic, she was tasked with steering the University through an unprecedented moment.

One such decision and resulting pandemic-era policy called for students to report fellow students for COVID-19 policy violations.

When asked about how this policy could potentially foster a negative culture among students, Dolan answered, “One could ask that about the Honor Code as well … Rather than seeing it as turning one another in, it was trying to hold everyone to the same set of values about keeping one another safe. I think that’s really what it was meant to do rather than surveillance.”

“She isn’t just Dean of the College, which is a demanding job. She has been the Dean of the College through COVID. Everything shifted in a moment. And then everything had to shift back. That’s a heroic thing to manage being a Dean,” said Hamera. “That is climbing Everest on a cold day with a very heavy backpack.”

Navigating this climb meant a very demanding schedule. “I was online all day every day trying to figure out how we were going to keep Princeton going with all of my colleagues in the Office of the Dean of the College and in the President’s Cabinet and the President,” Dolan recalled.

Although decisions were the product of group deliberation, Dolan was the messenger of difficult news to the University community. Many students may remember her as the signature on these emails — a role she is well aware of.

“I tried with those emails, again, to approach everyone I was writing to as a human being who was all in this terrible situation together … I do not plan to publish those as a book, but I guess they’ll go down in the history of the institution as the pandemic memos,” she said.

In these memos, Wolf sees a reflection of Dolan’s character and skill as a writer.

“One of the things that I’ve been so impressed with watching her on the big stage as Dean as someone who’s known her for 35 years is how the public face she presents is who she is. And every single memo that she sends out, she writes those memos,” Wolf said. “It’s so important to her that everything that she does is her true self. Which I mean, I just admire that so much. I think it’s very hard for someone in a visible job like hers to kind of keep their soul,” Wolf explained.

Despite the challenges of this period, Wolf recalled several ways in which the pandemic provided outlets for joy in their personal lives.

“She didn’t have to get dressed up in her costume, her dean costume, [and] she could cook. I think there was a lot that she enjoyed about those days on the private side. There was definitely a bifurcation between what she was having to do in her job, which was very, very difficult and exhausting.”

At home, Dolan adopted a miniature schnauzer, honed her skills in the kitchen every night — often

whipping up her signature miso salmon — and found community online through Friday night Shabbat services.

Looking ahead, the experience of leading through a remote era has also spurred new scholarly questions for Dolan.

“For me, there’s a connection between my work as a dean in terms of residential liberal arts education, and the necessity that in theater and the performing arts you have to show up in an audience to experience live performance,” she said.

“I’m really interested in thinking about what the live presence means.”

‘People care deeply about these issues’: A deanship marked by activism and free speech

Dolan’s time as Dean of the College is bookended by two protests: The Black Justice League (BJL) sit-in in November 2015 and the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” that began on April 25 and concluded on Wednesday.

During the 2015 BJL sit-in, protesters sat in the Nassau Hall office of President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 for 33 hours until he agreed to sign a revised list of demands, including the creation of affinity spaces for Black students and the removal of the Woodrow Wilson name from the former residential college and what is now the School of Public and International Affairs. Following the sit-in, Dean Dolan wrote in a column for the ‘Prince,’ “Hearing student protesters shout down President Eisgruber shocked and embarrassed me. But in other moments, last week gave me hope that our community might in fact do better.”

When asked about this comment over eight years later, Dolan said, “It was an abrupt curtailment of the conversation that I kind of regretted because I didn’t think we were necessarily done.”

“While I think a place like Princeton, of necessity, privileges discourse that’s cordial and serious and respectful, we have to know how to manage heightened emotions because people care deeply about these issues. And one of the things I always try to encourage in myself is allowing my emotions to come through while maintaining a kind of ability to talk to someone through them,” she reflected.

In her final weeks as Dean of the College, Dolan similarly witnessed student protests on campus through the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.”

The ‘Prince’ interviewed Dolan prior to the protest’s occupation of Clio Hall and relocation from McCosh Courtyard to Cannon Green.

“It feels to me too, that the historical moment is very different. And obviously what’s happening here is part of something that’s very large and very unwieldy across the country right now,” Dolan said, while referencing the tradition of campus protests.

Dolan also discussed the University’s emphasis on free speech and the University’s commitment to the expression of “even the most offensive speech.” Here, she said she agrees with Eisgruber’s approach, whom she referred to as “our guide post.”

“That has meant a lot to me in my role as Dean, that the way we negotiate these deeply controversial issues is not by taking away anyone’s right to speak in their classroom for faculty, the academic freedom issues, and not taking away the right of students to argue back with faculty, or if they feel discriminated against, to lodge those complaints … I would not be proud of a campus where things were shut down,” Dolan noted.

According to Cadden, this emphasis on a “plain spoken” exchange of ideas “is just part of [Dolan’s] everyday self,” with roots in her expression as a theater scholar.

“She wants to be clear. She wants other people to be clear. She will let you know when, as a result of

expressing ideas clearly, we find ourselves in disagreement, and then we work through that. She’s also very dialogic in the way that she approaches the world and human relationships,” Cadden continued.

‘There’s always more to do’

“What I’m most proud of, in my time as Dean, are all the ways the student population has changed since I got here,” Dolan said, citing changes in socioeconomic and geographic diversity. Undergraduate admission and financial aid falls under the purview of her office.

“When I came to Princeton, and I think it’s still a little bit true, there’s such a stereotype of what Princeton is that I think is based on what it was in the 1950s and 60s. So when people come, they walk around and think, ‘I didn’t expect to see these kinds of students on campus.’”

When Dolan took her role as Dean, 59 percent of the graduating class received financial aid, and 17.5 percent came from low-income backgrounds. That same year, 42 percent of domestic undergraduates were people of color.

In the Class of 2027, the penultimate class admitted during Dolan’s tenure, 66 percent of students in the class qualify for financial aid and 22 percent are eligible for Pell Grants. Most notably, the undergraduate population is now majority non-white.

“There’s so much more I could do,” Dolan said when asked if she had any regrets in leaving her role. “And yet at the same time, there’s always more to do.”

Beyond her more tangible accomplishments, Dolan said she would like to be remembered for the ethos she has brought to her leadership.

“I would like to be remembered as someone who led with, as I like to say, humor, humility, and humanity,” said Dolan.

Herrera observed that Dolan’s leadership style is infused with perspectives from her career as a theater critic.

“There’s a principle in theater criticism and performance criticism, where you ask, ‘What is the show trying to do?’ and you assess the show based on its goals and its attempts and what it’s aiming to communicate,” he said. “I always see her deploying those same skills like, ‘Okay, where are you coming from?’ ‘What are you bringing to this?’ ‘What’s your goal here?’ And ‘how might I meet you, as somebody with my own opinions and my own perspectives, but somebody who’s not going to overlay an aesthetic or other kind of judgment on what you’re doing?’”

Hamera echoed, “the reason I think she’s been such a successful Dean [is because the] same intellectual and values commitments, and her same warmth and intellectual and social generosity are absolutely in play.”

‘To the future, then’ Dolan shared her plans to relax after the end of her time as Dean. “The idea of having a summer where I have no expectations for myself and just trying to rest is what I’m looking forward to for a few months,” she said.

A previous University press release announced that Dolan would take a two-year sabbatical for research and writing, then retire from the faculty.

The future for Dolan remains open-ended. “Then in the fall, I’’m going to figure out what I want my next project to be. Will I do a blog again? Will I write a book? What do I want to see and experience?”

Throughout her tenure, Princeton has influenced Dean Dolan just as Dean Dolan has influenced the culture of Princeton.

“I’’m sure the new Dean of the College will be awesome but it’s going to be a culture change,” concluded Herrera. “Jill is such a specific personality.”

The Class of 2024, by the numbers: Our annual senior survey

By The Daily Princetonian Staff

Welcome to The Daily Princetonian’s third annual senior survey. Our team has spent weeks diligently analyzing responses and over 225 graphs, seeking to tell the story of the Great Class of 2024.

Our survey was conducted from March 4 to April 2, 2024. The Data team emailed a Google Form to all members of the Class of 2024 — a total of 1,310 people. 539 students responded, comprising 41.1 percent of the class.

GRADUATE COLLEGE RECAP

The journey of the graduate Class of 2024 has been one of advocacy and achievement. Amid unionization efforts, students faced a complex landscape while continuing with their scholarly endeavors and their relationship with the wider campus community.

The graduate student union vote failed 391–652 earlier this month, meaning that graduate students will not be unionized with United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America. However, one of the most prominent developments in recent years is the increase in campaign efforts by the Princeton Graduate Students United (PGSU). In January 2022, the University announced a 25 percent increase in graduate stipend rates — the largest oneyear increase in support. Later, a successful rally in February 2023 demanding fair wages and affordable housing saw widespread support, with more than half of the graduate student body signing union cards and a message of support from the Graduate Student

JAN 26, 2022

University announces largest one-year increase in graduate student stipend rates

Government (GSG). The University ultimately announced a 5 percent increase in graduate student stipend..

Other advocacy efforts cover aspects of graduate life from administrative representation, health and safety, and academic support. Since the unveiling of plans for the Frist Health Center, graduate students have expressed a need for a graduate student center to alleviate the current decentralization of grad-oriented spaces. Most recently, graduate students also gained seats in the subcommittees of the Faculty Committee for the Graduate School.

The graduate student body has also been closing the divide between graduate and undergraduate student cultures. A ‘Prince’ article in 2022 reflected the challenges of graduate social life, which mostly consisted of small-scale gatherings or outings to New York and Philadelphia amidst the lack of opportunities to join the undergraduate events and organizations. However, under the partnerships between Office of Campus Engagement

FEB 25, 2023

Majority of graduate students have signed union cards nine days after rally

(OCE) and GSG leaders and Graduate School administrators, the 2024 Wintersession saw a 30 percent increase in graduate student participation: the free meal-plan over the twoweek period and the freedom to both lead and participate in sessions fostered interactive and interdisciplinary conversations between graduates and undergraduates.

Having fared through the numerous challenges throughout the years, the graduate class is set to embark on new adventures in the next stages of their lives, equipped with their diligent initiative to fight for fairness and their unfaltering dedication to their academic endeavors.

APR 13, 2023

Amid unionization uncertainty, Princeton Graduate Students United took on broader activism

MAY 15, 2023

Graduate student union vote fails, 391–652

UNIONIZATION TIMELINE

APR 28, 2020

Graduate student union demands universal funding and enrollment-status extensions

FEB 22, 2023

As grad student union builds, Graduate Student Government votes to release message of support

MAR 10, 2023

Graduate School dean talks unionization, cites existing engagement with students

APR 15, 2023

Graduate students file for union election, marking last Ivy to do so

Lisa Lonie, the musician behind ‘the largest sound on campus that nobody knows about’

By Helena Richardson | May 10, 2024

Any Forbes frequenter knows its sound, but few know its story. Crowning the Cleveland Tower of the Princeton Graduate School is the campus carillon, a keyboard-based percussion instrument that commands twenty tons of bronze bells.

Each Sunday, University Carillonneur Lisa Lonie sets aside her fear of heights and climbs 137 spiraling stairs up to a confined console room. There, she employs all four limbs to play a repertoire that ranges from Elizabethan-era melodies to Miyazaki soundtracks.

In talking with Lonie and other members of her carillon community, one thing is clear: “bell fever” is real, and it’s contagious.

Lonie is doing her part to help its spread. As Princeton’s carillonneur, she performs on campus every Sunday, teaches lessons, and organizes the University’s summer carillon concert series.

Princeton is just part of the picture for Lonie. She also arranges music for the carillon, serves on several sub-committees of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, instructs for the North American Carillon School, and heads the carillons of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia and the St. Thomas Church in Whitemarsh.

These musical endeavors all come on top of her day job as assistant chief of staff at Haverford College.

“I don’t know anybody busier than Lisa Lonie,” former University Carollineur Robin Austin told The Daily Princetonian.

In addition to juggling a tight schedule — a standard Sunday for Lonie starts with a morning church performance before taking the Pennsylvania Turnpike north to Princeton, performing there at 1 p.m., then teaching — Lonie must also navigate the distinct challenges posed by the carillons themselves. She explained that every instrument is unique in its number of bells, arrangement of keys, and overall sound. These differences require adaptability.

“Every time you sit on a carillon, you have to compensate,” said Lonie. “It keeps you on your toes.” When she plays at Princeton after performing at one of her churches, she starts with “Old Nassau” and then another familiar song to give herself time to adjust.

Lonie’s locations also have different demands programmatically. She jokes that “the back of [her] car looks like a music library,” with a pile of sheet music for each instrument she plays. Beyond the logistical matter of which songs can be played on Holy Trinity’s 25 bells versus Princeton’s 67, there’s the matter of matching the setting. She might play music from “Howl’s Moving Castle” or “Game of Thrones” at Princeton but not at her churches, and vice versa for hymns. Lonie said she aims for her Princeton repertoire to include songs the student body will recognize.

This succeeded with Madeline McDonald ’26, who described hearing a carillon rendition of a Beatles song while eating in the Forbes backyard one day. “I kind of wasn’t expecting to recognize any pieces,” she said. As a Beatles fan, she was struck.

That day was the start of a long-lasting passion for McDonald. After noticing a human figure in the skyfilled gap of the carillon’s silhouette and realizing that the

bells were not automated as she had originally assumed, she found Lonie’s contact information online and reached out.

McDonald went on to profile Lonie for her journalism class and make a short film called “The Bellmaster” for her documentary class. She received a Director’s Choice Award at the Thomas Edison Film Festival and a Jury’s Choice Award at the New Jersey Young Filmmakers competition. Since then, McDonald has been developing the concept for a feature film about the carillon’s history, with a dedicated moodboard that fills up the better part of her dorm wall.

“I’ve become kind of bell crazy,” she said. “I need to tell this story.”

Lonie’s musical exploration extends beyond 60’s rock — and she has embraced collaboration. “The carillon is a percussive instrument, and it plays well in the musical sandbox with other instruments,” Lonie explained.

She has brought other musicians specializing in guitar, mandolin, brass, oboe, and vocals into the tower to perform with her, where she streams a video feed online. She has also worked with Ph.D. composition students and Princeton Laptop Orchestra to produce electroacoustical music, in which electronic tracks are layered over Lonie’s music and projected through 900-watt speakers.

“The electroacoustical music is really exciting for me, because it’s taking this instrument which is grounded in medieval Europe and … smashing it into today,” Lonie said.

Her effort to widen the carillon’s horizons has also taken on a multicultural dimension, with the goal of making the “very public instrument more diverse and more equitable.” Lonie’s “Music that Reminds You of Home” series encourages students to send in songs from their respective countries, which she then arranges and performs on the carillon. The initiative has added songs from China, Singapore, Taiwan, and more to Lonie’s repertoire.

The carillon’s ability to “cut across all lines” — and to send its sound out for a quarter or half mile in all directions — is part of what makes it “democratic,” Lonie noted. “You don’t need a ticket … you just come with your lawn chair or your blanket.”

Its wide reach and accessibility made the carillon concert experience and ideal cultural outing during COVID-19, said Lonie. She expressed gratitude that the Princeton carillon continued hosting performances during the pandemic.

It was during the pandemic that Rutgers Professor of Material Sciences and Engineering Dunbar Birnie first listened to one of Lonie’s concerts. He has since attended her Princeton performances rain or shine, where he often runs into other regulars he’s now able to identify merely by their jackets or cars.

Birnie described the performances as a “meditative time.”

To that end, two years ago, Lonie began a habit of finishing her Princeton performances with a “What a Wonderful World.” The song serves both as a signal of her conclusion and as a “way of communicating that it is a wonderful world … [and that] everything’s going to be okay.”

“There’s something about — even if you’re just stroll-

ing around or sitting on that picnic blanket — the breeze on your face, the sun on your back, and hearing the carillon,” Austin said. “I think it appeals … [to] something deep within us.”

By his estimate, “Princeton University has one of the most beautiful carillons in the world. That’s not just because I was affiliated with it.”

“I mean, conservatively, one of the top 10 instruments in the world. [In] my opinion, one of the top three or four,” he continued. “I can’t emphasize that enough. The location, the tower — because the entire tower is an antiphonal chamber … it’s got everything going for it.”

Princeton chemistry Ph.D. candidate James Cox described the instrument as “majestic.” Though Cox came to Princeton without any knowledge of the school’s carillon or how to play it, his appreciation for the instrument prompted him to start taking lessons with Lonie, which he has continued over the course of his five years on campus.

Like other students, Cox started in the practice room in the graduate college basement, which features a mock carillon fitted with tone bars rather than bells. He now plays regularly at Princeton and various other locations, including in his home state of Minnesota.

For Cox, part of the “irresistible appeal” of the instrument is its history. The Princeton carillon’s past resounds in its musical and physical contours. The Renaissance tunes in Lonie’s repertoire, the archive of sheet music and University Carillonneurs displayed on the console room’s yellow walls, and the collection of past summer concert series posters filling the practice room all testify to the carillonneur’s participation in a deeply rooted legacy.

Lonie pointed out that Princeton icons like Einstein and Oppenheimer would have heard the same carillon as listeners today.

The Princeton carillon’s origin is particularly storied.

According to Lonie, urban legend has it that the Class of 1892 had paid for the bells and sent them on their way from England to Princeton as a gift in 1926, in honor of their 35th Reunion — all before telling the University’s Board of Trustees what they had done. The first Princeton carillonneur, Arthur Bigelow, added 14 bells of his own design some years later and made plans to re-scale the treble register, but the instrument fell into disrepair after his passing in 1967.

Austin and a committee of devotees worked to raise funds for renovations in the early 1990s, and Austin was appointed carillonneur in 1993. Upon his departure in 2012, Lonie was hired, and she’s been pushing the envelope since.

The stakes are high. Lonie noted that there’s no way to prevent a wrong note from reaching its half-mileaway audience once it’s been played. And because that audience can’t typically see her, McDonald commented, the people who benefit from Lonie’s performances “don’t [always] know where to direct their gratitude.” Lonie calls her music “the largest sound on campus that nobody knows about.”

“I love what I do. I just love what I do,” Lonie said. She shared the hope for “anybody in the community and at the University … [to] hear the instrument [and] take it with you [as a] part of your experience at Princeton.”

“I think it’s a really beautiful, humble, and generous thing for her to spend so many years up in the tower — and also passing on this craft to future generations of bell players,” commented McDonald. “She really, really cares about the students.”

“Often we say among those who play the carillon [that] it chooses us,” noted Austin.

Between Birnie’s commitment as a listener, McDonald’s passion as a documentarian, Cox’s fascination as a learner, and Lonie’s own dedication to the instrument, it seems safe to say that she was indeed chosen.

HELENA RICHARDSON / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Lisa Lonie plays the campus carrilon.

Farewell

By Sydney Johnson Class of 2024 President

This weekend of commemoration prepares us to finally step beyond FitzRandolph Gate. To commemorate is both to celebrate, and, crucially, to remember. We continue to cherish the memory of those lost during our time here—especially Misrach Ewunetie, Class of 2024. Misrach, this is also your moment. You are truly missed.

The Class of 2024’s experience defies words and categorization. Words like “unprecedented” — notably, the People’s Choice 2020 Word of the Year — are frequently discussed, but it’s difficult to distill our years of resilience into a single phrase. In this farewell letter, I instead find myself relying on music to reflect on our time at Princeton. As timeless compilations of words that travel from ear to ear, songs embody our past, present, and future experiences: from Ridin’ Solo in Jason Derulo’s kitchen to Senior StepSing. Here’s to the past four years.

Year 1: Ridin’ Solo w/ Jason Derulo (2020-21)

Scattered across the world, we began our college journeys solo, finding community through the Internet. From introducing ourselves on Facebook to living on GroupMe, many of us turned to virtual apps in lieu of physical congregation. Zoom became the unexpected pillar of our first-year. It taught us to triple check our message recipients, dress half our bodies in class-casual, and mute ourselves when returning from breakout rooms. It also provided the platform for us to gather in hundreds: for games of Among Us, PowerPoint Nights, performances like Jason Derulo’s “Talk Dirty To Me Princeton”, and our 2024 virtual talent show “New Prospects.” Those on-campus in the spring were the first to visit First College’s courtyard pre-construction, meet their personalized friend matches, and gather on the mythical Poe Field. The year ended on a hopeful note: with group walks, outdoor events, and Tigers-in-Towns becoming the norm.

Year 2: New Level, Like That B**** w/ A$AP Ferg & Flo Milli (2021-22)

With a year under our belts and a bit more confidence, we faced changes to campus norms as a unified class. Finally crossing through FitzRandolph Gate, we received a true introduction to the Princeton community. The first day of in-person classes came and so did our first (and last) year of Late Meal, normal Lawnparties, extracurriculars, and varsity athletics. We wrote letters to our senior selves and identified other ’24s with ease via

white crewnecks, totes, and Pre-Rade shirts. The spring brought divergence, with declaration and varying residential/dining options putting us on different paths. Yet, we still gathered together for a reimagined Prom in Prospect House, Sophomore Sunrise on Poe Field, and a sunny, first, Frist Lawnparties with Flo Milli.

Year 3: Interlude and No Hands w/ Hippo Campus and Waka Flocka Flame (2022-23)

While transitioning to upperclass life, many ’24s stepped up to become peer mentors, serving as (A)RCAs, club leaders, and pillars of their respective communities. Members of the Class of 2024 started to inspire new traditions. Gabby Veciana’s 2024 beige crewnecks reminded us all that there are other colors besides black and orange. Stephen Daniels’s long-term efforts in USG came to fruition with the implementation of the Pay with Points System: a dream of ours and now a cornerstone for future Tigers. As we continued pursuing our interests in classes and independent work, our athletes excelled on the national stage, with amazing runs for varsity basketball during March Madness, water polo, fencing, and more.

Year 4: Our Time for Pomp & Circumstance w/ Lil Tecca and Loud Luxury (2023-24)

Here we are, at the end of our final year as undergraduates. With Lil Tecca and Weatherboy for Lawnparties, and Senior StepSing on the horizon, music still reigns supreme. SZA may have blessed us with her vocals in Richardson, but nothing compared to the passionate performances we put on at Ivy Inn. In addition to sharing our love for karaoke, we treated ourselves at Terhune Orchards, jumped for joy on our last last day of classes, packed two rooms for bingo, and successfully wrote books. While we reflect upon our last moments on campus — as students, athletes, performers, activists, artists, leaders, and more — I want to take a moment to remember that there was a time in which the reality of our college experience was uncertain, and we had no idea the future would bring all that it did. We have truly done so much in such little time, and it is an honor to say farewell to a time well spent. As Princetonians, we say “see you later” rather than goodbye. It’s almost certain our paths will cross on-campus, or where we least expect it. Until then, hold onto past memories and know that you always have a home in the Great Class of 2024.

BROOKE MCCARTHY / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN