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Friday February 18, 2022 vol. CXLVI no. 4
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Divest Princeton takes legal action against U.
The PROSPECT
U. AFFAIRS
Candace Do / The Daily Princetonian Students lead a chant during the Divest Princeton sit-in in front of Nassau Hall on Sept. 24. The goal of the sit-in was to call for urgent and complete divestment from the fossil fuel industry.
By Paige Cromley
Staff News Writer
On Wednesday, Feb. 16, Divest Princeton filed a legal complaint to the New Jersey Attorney General against Princeton University. On the same day, organizations at Yale, Stanford, and Vanderbilt Universities, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology filed similar complaints in their respective states. The complaint alleges that the Princeton University Board of Trustees has violated New Jersey law by continuing to invest in fossil fuels. It claims that the Trustees have “failed to consider the charitable purposes of the institution and the purposes of the
institutional fund by financially supporting the degradation of the climate, widespread damage to ecological and human health, and massive injuries to environmental and social equity.” It also states that “continued investment in fossil fuels by the Trustees violates the fiduciary duties spelled out in the New Jersey Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (NJUPMIFA) and in New Jersey common law.” The Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act (UPMIFA) is a uniform state law enacted in 49 states and identifies “factors that a charity must consider in making management and investment decisions.”
Divest Princeton was assisted in formulating the legal complaint by the Climate Defense Project. This group of lawyers also helped student organization Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard file a legal complaint to the Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey’s office in March 2021. Both Harvard and Cornell, the latter of which filed a complaint in 2019, used UPMIFA as the basis for their filings to their respective state Attorney Generals. UPMIFA requires that those who manage a charity’s investments make their investments with certain standards of loyalty and care. The complaint filed by Divest Princeton accuses the Trustees of violating these duties. See DIVEST page 2
Navigating doubts, hopes, hormone replacement therapy at Princeton Anonymous
Content Warning: The following essay contains mentions of transphobia. When the intake nurse at University Health Services (UHS) asked my reason for coming in, my heart raced. The person who checked me in that day had referred to me by my legal name — one which I had asked the University to stop using in reference to me at the end of the previous semester (pro tip: changing your name on TigerHub doesn’t change your name in the UHS system). I expected
the worst when I blurted out, “Oh, I just had some questions. Um, about gender-affirming care.” She smiled. “Ah, like a consult?” When I nodded in reply, she took the data and vitals regularly obtained by intake nurses: temperature, blood pressure, any regular medications I was on, etc. When she left the room, I exhaled shakily and held my forehead in my hands. As I waited to be seen by the next practitioner, I thought back through the journey which led me to that room. Around a year prior, I See THERAPY page 12
STUDENT LIFE
Five to a quad, shared bathrooms, movie nights: A glimpse into COVID-19 isolation housing By Janny Eng
News Contributor
On Friday Jan. 21, Ashley To ’22 tested positive for COVID-19 and was moved to the 1967 Hall isolation dorm. There, contrary to her expectations, she was met with three other roommates in a quad. By the time she left, a fifth student was isolating in their common room. To was one of 224 undergrad-
uates and 72 graduate students who were required to isolate in the weeks of Jan. 21 and Jan. 28, according to the University’s COVID-19 dashboard. COVID-19 risk status on campus is currently “Moderate to High,” which the University defines as a positivity rate between 0.11–0.5 percent. As of last week, the positivity rate was 0.32 percent. Not all students who test posi-
tive are sent to isolation dorms. From Jan. 22–28, 166 students were required to isolate, with half spending time in “designated isolation spaces” and the rest “isolating elsewhere on campus, such as in their dorm rooms or campus apartments,” Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss wrote in an email comment to The Daily Princetonian. In addition to COVID-19 isolation dorms, the University re-
serves several houses each year “for public health emergencies,” according to Hotchkiss. “The number of undergraduate and graduate students in isolation due to COVID-19 changes often, as new cases are identified and as students complete their isolation,” Hotchkiss wrote. Students who have tested positive for COVID-19 or have COVID19-like symptoms will be required to isolate for a minimum of five
days. Students who have their own sleeping space may be asked to isolate in their own room, otherwise they will be relocated to specially designated housing for the duration of their isolation. Kendall Jeong ’25 reported that she had to relocate and isolate in a room with three other people. “I thought I’d be in complete isolation, but I have to say that having a roommate has been reSee ISOLATION page 2
A look back on Street Week
T H I S W E E K I N F E AT U R E S | PAG E 1 1
Sophomore participation rate highest in a decade By Izzy Jacobson
Staff News Writer
‘Worthy of taking up space’: Jennifer Lee ’23 founds nonprofit to support Asian Americans with disabilities After Jennifer Lee ’23 was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, she found that her Asian American identity often wasn’t addressed or represented within peer support communities for the disease. In July 2021, along with a coalition of disabled Asian Americans and nondisabled allies from around the country, Lee founded the Asian Americans with Disabilities Initiative (AADI), a nonprofit run by and for people like her who identify as both Asian American and disabled.
This Week on Campus
ACADEMICS
The release of eating club placements to all participating sophomores and juniors on Feb. 4 marked the close of a Street Week characterized by a unique hybrid format and some of the most competitive numbers of the last decade. Over 1070 sophomores engaged in this year’s Street
Week, according to a report from the Interclub Council (ICC). This number marks a 12 percent increase from 2021, and the highest participation rate in the past decade. For the fourth consecutive year, the ICC reported that 100 percent of sophomores who participated in Street Week were placed into a club. Eighty-three percent of sophomores were placed into their first or second choice clubs.
The ICC also disclosed that 71 percent of sophomores chose to bicker two selective clubs — a five percent decrease from last year. Of sophomores who bickered a selective club, 66.7 percent were admitted, as opposed to 72 percent in 2021. The Interclub Council’s data did not disclose the number of Bickerees for individual clubs. Those numSee STREET page 3
ARTS
| The Collective and Democratic Right of All Peoples to Freely Determine Their Political Status — Feb. 18, 10 a.m., Zoom
| Theater Intime Presents: A Doll’s House — Feb. 18, 19, 20 @ 8 p.m., Hamilton–Murray Theater
A discussion with Daniel Turp, Professor Emeritus at the
A Doll’s House is the story of how a woman finds her voice and takes agency over her own life. This reimagining of Ibsen’s classic play takes place in a literal doll’s house.
Faculty of Law at Université de Montréal, and President of the Research Institute on Self-Determination of Peoples and National Independence (IRAI).
SPORTS
|
Women’s Basketball vs. Brown — Feb. 18, 7 p.m., Jadwin Gymnasium The Princeton women’s basketball team (9-0) takes on Brown (1-9).
The Daily Princetonian
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Friday February 18, 2022
ON CAMPUS
Highest single day COVID-19 spike reverts TI to grab-and-go dining, halts social calendar By Andrew Somerville Head News Editor
Eighty-four undergraduate students tested positive for COVID-19 on Feb. 14, according to the University dashboard, marking the highest single-day spike among undergraduate students this academic year. Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss told The Daily Princetonian that the positive cases might be tied to certain eating clubs or athletic teams. “Preliminary contact tracing information has identified connections [among cases] involving eating clubs and athletic teams, but other connections are being investigated,” he wrote in an email to the ‘Prince.’ This spike comes following large gatherings hosted by several eating clubs aimed at welcoming new members following Street Week
and Bicker. Several sources within their respective clubs confirmed to the ‘Prince’ that Cap & Gown and Tiger Inn (TI) were among those clubs that held events meant to initiate new members. These sources have been granted anonymity due to club policies regarding speaking to reporters. According to Tower Club President and member of the Interclub Council (ICC) AJ Lonski ’23, “[t]he ICC agreed to have pickups on February 18th, working in conjunction with the university.” A message seen by the ‘Prince’ from a TI group chat asked members to like the message if they had tested positive. As of 10:44 PM on Feb. 15, the message had received 79 likes. (TI members told the ‘Prince’ that they have not received an email on case counts from club leadership.) TI President Jake Rodgers
’22 said in an email to the ‘Prince’ that there is currently an “inner-club outbreak” at TI, but did not clarify any numbers. Rodgers also claimed in the email that clubs were told by Graduate Interclub Council (GICC) leadership that they had been granted permission by senior University administrators to host “Sign-In” events, similar to initiation, “after a required training.” Rodgers said that a representative from TI was present at the training, which he said took place on Feb. 11. Since the dashboard update on Monday, Rodgers said that TI has made changes to dining and social policy, “revert[ing] to the grab and go system for dining, and cancel[ing] all social activities for the near future.” In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Rodgers stressed the club’s commitment to abiding by University guidelines on
COVID-19. “After we noticed an uptick in Covid cases from members of sports teams late last week, we made sweeping changes to halt the spread of COVID-19 throughout our membership, and the rest of campus,” wrote Rodgers. “The Tiger Inn has and continues to only host events that fall within University guidelines,” he added. In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Cap & Gown President Kate Liu ’23 explained that the club has “not hosted any events that were not in compliance with University guidance.” “Cap & Gown takes very seriously our responsibility to keep our club and greater Princeton community safe, and we have continued to comply with University protocols relating to COVID-19,” Liu wrote. “We cooperate closely with our University partners in order to ensure that we are in lockstep with
them and continue to carry out both the letter and the spirit of University protocols.” An email, later obtained by the ‘Prince,’ was sent to Cap & Gown members on Feb. 14 explaining that four members of the club tested positive and were in the clubhouse throughout the weekend. Editor’s Note: This piece was last updaed on Feb. 15. On Feb. 16, the University reported there were 104 positive cases among undergraduate students on Feb. 15. Please visit our website for up to date COVID coverage, and check covid.princeton.edu for daily COVID-19 statistics. Andrew Somerville is a Head News Editor who has covered USG, University and COVID-related affairs. He can be reached at jas19@princeton.edu or on Twitter @andr3wsom.
Jeong: I thought I’d be in complete MIT, Yale, Stanford, and isolation but I have to say having a Vanderbilt divest groups roommate has been really helpful for me file similar lawsuits ISOLATION Continued from page 1
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ally helpful for me, not just for my mental health, but interacting with people and keeping my spirits up,” Jeong said. To said she had a similar experience isolating with roommates. “When you are sick and you are alone, you tend to think a lot, so I feel like having roommates in that case also distracts you,” To said. To lived in a quad with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a common room. Two roommates were in each room and one stayed in a bed in the common room. To said she was initially “shook” that people were sharing quads, as she thought that “it would be one person per quad.” Despite her initial surprise, To also reported a positive experience with her roommates during her COVID isolation. “We would have movie nights in the common room at night, and we did them maybe for two movies. During lunch when we get our meals, we would just play card games,” To said. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who had a decent experience with my roommates,” To elaborated. “I’m a senior, and I was roomed with juniors, a sophomore, and a freshman. I think if it wasn’t for COVID, I would have never met these people before, so I thought that was kind of interesting.” Whereas Jeong and To were required to relocate to other isolation buildings, Emma Davis ’22 was able to isolate in her own room at the beginning of the semester. “I believe it was January 26th, I had submitted a test, and I didn’t hear until the 27th at like 6 P.M. It had been well over 24 hours before I heard back from them [about my results],” Davis said.
Both Davis and To report being contacted by a contact tracer and asked to describe their interactions in the days leading up to their positive COVID result. Davis expressed surprise at how she was not required to tell close contacts that she had COVID-19. “They actually told us that you weren’t required to tell the people that you have COVID,” Davis said. “There’s five or six of us girls that all use the downstairs bathroom on a normal basis,” Davis added, “I wasn’t required to tell the people on my hall that I shared a bathroom with that I had COVID.” “Anyone could come in and use that bathroom, and that was the bathroom that I used as well,” Davis said. Students who are isolating on campus use a different building for meal pick-up. According to Jeong, there is a separate room for isolating students to pick up their meals in the isolation building. Both Jeong and To report going to a separate room connected with Wu Hall to pick up their meals. “Lunch is available from 11:30– 12:30, and then dinner is available from 4:30–5:30 for pickup. When you get your dinner package, it also comes with a breakfast,” Jeong said. “The meals are prepackaged and labeled with each person’s name. Dietary restrictions are also accommodated.” While Jeong and To went to a separate room in the Wu Hall for meal pick-up, Davis reports a different meal pick-up experience at Forbes. “What I was really surprised about was that when you walk into Forbes, there’s like the foyer, and right behind the foyer, there’s that little room. People were eating food in there. Here I am, walking in with COVID, I have my KN95 mask on, and there’s people un-
masked, eating food in the room that I am going to pick up my food from,” Davis explained. “The food was in a bag, it was already packaged, but people were in the same room as me, unmasked, eating food,” she added. When going to the Wu side’s Private Dining Room for meal pickup, To said that she and her roommates entered the room through an outside entrance that was only for people with COVID. “Campus Dining has set-up multiple meal pick-up locations throughout campus. Students are provided a continental breakfast, lunch and hot dinner daily while in isolation,” Hotchkiss stated. Both Jeong and To report receiving kits from the University filled with supplies, including tissues, a trash bag, a thermometer, some Tylenol, and other relevant items, but Davis didn’t have access to the same resources. “I didn’t get any of that, because I was staying in my room. I had a teammate, she went to isolation, and she told me that she got medicine, water, and I didn’t get any of that. Whatever food I got was whatever food came in that bag, and nothing else,” Davis said. “I wouldn’t say there was any resources if I needed water. They were just assuming that you were fine,” she added. Many professors have offered online options for their classes to adapt to the ongoing COVID-19 situation. “A lot of [my professors] were able to provide Zoom options, if they hadn’t already. For my writing seminar, I was provided with audio and visual recording[s],” Jeong said. Janny Eng is a news contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at je3398@princeton.edu.
COURTESY OF ZORA ARUM ’22
A view of the hallway from an isolation dorm.
DIVEST
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Specifically, it states they have violated the duty of care, or the duty to “act in good faith, with the care an ordinarily prudent person would exercise,” by investing in “financially risky and volatile fossil fuel stocks” and by “refusing to abide by their previous commitments to socially responsible investing.” It alleges that the duty of loyalty to the community has been violated by “funding activity that directly imperils the lives and prospects of young people and that poses a physical threat to Princeton property, thus failing to act in the best interests of the institution.” Further, it states, the Trustees have been “indulging conflicts of interest with the fossil fuel industry, maintaining personal, professional, and financial ties to oil, gas, and coal companies even as these companies harm Princeton.” “Almost one third of Princeton Board of Trustees members maintain significant financial ties to the fossil fuel industry that are publicly known,” the complaint notes. Some of these individual ties are then explicitly listed. For example, the complaint writes that Amy Alving ’88, an Alumni Trustee until 2023, is the director of “DXC Technology Company, a supplier to the oil and gas industry,” and Blair Effron ’84, currently a Charter Trustee of the University, is the son of the “former president of familyowned Effron Oil, a fossil fuel distribution company.” Alving and Effron did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The legal complaint asks that the New Jersey Attorney General investigate these alleged violations and “take action to ensure that the investment activity of the Board no longer harms the Princeton community, the State, or the public.” Hannah Reynolds ’22, co-coordinator of Divest Princeton, noted that both Cornell and Harvard Universities divested within months after the filings, though in both cases their Board of Trustees voted to divest without any action by the states. Reynolds is a senior opinion columnist for The Daily Princetonian. Reynolds said that Princeton student activists felt legal action was the only path forward. “The reason we’re filing this complaint is because we feel that all of our options have been exhausted,” she said. The Board of Trustees announced last spring that the University would divest from some segments of the fossil fuel industry. A “Faculty Panel on Dissociation and Metrics Principles and Standards” was formed to discuss
how best to address the issue of this divestment, but student activists have been frustrated at the lack of progress being made, as well as the limited scope of dissociation on the table for discussions. “We’ve seen continued stalling by the University throughout the past two years since we first filed the proposal for divestment. We hope that this causes the administration to think seriously about transparency and timelines in the divestment process,” Reynolds said. The coordination between five major universities, all filing their complaints on the same day, is intended to increase the pressure on every one of them. “We’ve all been struggling with similar stalling and inaction by our universities; the hope is that partnering creates an even bigger splash,” she added. Working as a coalition has also widened the goals of organizations like Divest Princeton. Reynolds emphasized that “the work we’re doing at Divest Princeton isn’t just about us and our university anymore, but rather about divestment more broadly across institutions.” Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss declined to comment and referred the ‘Prince’ to previous statements from the University on fossil fuel dissociation. “Princeton will set a target date by which to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the University’s endowment portfolio, including intermediate goals to measure progress,” Office of Communications Staff Writer Denise Valenti explained in a statement on May 27, 2021. The University’s website on the fossil fuel dissociation process explains that a faculty panel of experts will advise an “administrative committee,” which will in turn propose “actionable criteria for dissociation and a process for implementing them” to the Board of Trustees. “The administrative committee aims to complete its work by the end of this academic year,” the website adds. Divest Princeton has a rally planned outside Nassau Hall in the near future, where they will read out loud the legal complaint. They will also set up a new Eyes on Eisgruber exhibition today, almost a year after the last exhibition. Editor’s Note: This story is up to date as of Feb. 16 at 11 p. m. It continues to be updated online and we urge our readers to visit our website for the latest version. Paige Cromley is a sophomore who writes for news, features, and The Prospect for the ‘Prince’. She can be reached at pcromley@princeton.edu.
The Daily Princetonian
Friday February 18, 2022
Charter offered spots to 110 new members, but was ranked by 950 sophomores STREET
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bers have been provided to The Daily Princetonian at the discretion of each club’s leadership or through individual members, who were granted anonymity since some clubs’ rules prohibit members from speaking to reporters about internal club matters. The ‘Prince’ obtained numbers for two sign-in clubs, Charter Club and Terrace F. Club. Charter offered spots to 110 new members, and was ranked by 950 sophomores. While the ‘Prince’ does not have access to Charter signin data from 2021, in 2020, the club admitted 125 sophomores and two juniors. Terrace Club admitted 128 people during their sign-in period, the highest number of students in the last six years. During the lead up to Street Week, Terrace faced criticism from University community members for using Amharic script in a promotional email. The Princeton Ethiopian and Eritrean Students Association (PEESA) issued a public statement in response to the email, criticizing Terrace for cultural appropriation. “The isolation of Amharic, spoken by 50+ million people, to be used for aesthetic purposes completely strips away the dignity of the language and of the people who speak it,” they wrote in a Jan. 28 email. Later the same day, Terrace apologized publicly for the mistake. “Used in ignorance and for superficial aesthetic value, we quickly realized the extremely offensive implications of the message, and would like to apologize deeply for our mistake,” the Terrace Officers wrote in an email to residential college listservs. “I definitely think there’s a lot of potential in terms of what [DEI initiatives] Terrace has,” Mick Vilariño ’22, Terrace Diversity Equity and Inclusion Chair, said reflecting on the incident. “But there’s a lot more that could be done.” PEESA officer Kaleb Areda ’24 told the ‘Prince’ that the group appreciated Terrace’s apology. “In the future, it is important for people to be more aware of the languages and images we send out to the public,” Areda said.
In terms of selective clubs, Cap and Gown Club had the most bickerees of all the selective clubs this year with over 372 students. According to Cap Bicker Chair Aryaman Khandelwal ’22, 113 new members were admitted, marking a 7.2 percent drop in acceptance rate from last spring. Tower Club also experienced a drop in acceptance of 4.2 percent from last year’s 52.9 percent. One student with access to the numbers, speaking anonymously, told the ‘Prince’ that the club welcomed 133 new members: 13 juniors, and 120 sophomores. Tiger Inn (TI) president Jake Rodgers ’22 said the club considered 240 students this year. This is a significant increase from the 168 who bickered last spring, amid an exclusively online Street Week. TI ultimately admitted 86 students, yielding an acceptance rate of approximately 35 percent. One student with knowledge of the situation told the ‘Prince’ that TI was overwhelmed by the number of potential new members, conducting interviews and deliberations until nearly 6:45 a.m. on at least one occasion. Ivy Club accepted 73 of their 280 bickerees, one student with access to the information said. Like its peer clubs, Ivy’s acceptance rate also went down, from 34.1 percent last spring to 26 percent this year. Cannon Dial Elm hosted 160 bickerees this year, and accepted 81 as new members, according to documents obtained by the ‘Prince.’ At approximately 51 percent, Cannon’s acceptance rate went down nearly four percent from last spring. As for sign-in clubs, the ICC reported that 14 groups, totaling at 46 students, took advantage of Street Week’s “Group Sign-In” feature. The ‘Prince’ could not obtain any information on sign-in numbers from Cloister Inn, Quadrangle Club, or Colonial Club, or bicker statistics from Cottage Club, the 6th selective eating club. Multiple requests for comment to the clubs’ student leaders were declined or unanswered. Izzy Jacobson is a news staff writer and features contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at ijacobson@princeton.edu.
THE MINI CROSSWORD By Sarah Gemmell Assistant Puzzles Editor
MINI #1
ACROSS 1 6 7 8 9
Home to Shrek Protagonist in the Sound of Music There are 3 in a molecule of 2-Down Cancel, as a debt Small bit DOWN
1 Clever 2 Reinvigorate a plant 3 Giveaway that someone is making brownies in the kitchen 4 Copy 5 Ctrl-V
See page 7 for more
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BEYOND THE BUBBLE
Q&A with Shirley Tilghman, former U. President and 2022 Beadle Award winner
By Mahya Fazel-Zarandi Staff News Writer
Former Princeton University president and Professor of Molecular Biology and Public Affairs Emerita Shirley Tilghman was selected on Jan. 24 by the Genetics Society of America to receive the 2022 George W. Beadle Award. The award, established in 1999 and named in honor of American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate George Wells Beadle, is given annually to scientists who have made “outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers.” Tilghman is the first University affiliate to be honored with the award. According to a statement by the Genetics Society of America, she is receiving the award for her “outstanding contributions to the community of genetics researchers,” specifically in her role on the National Advisory Council for the Human Genome Project Initiative, which successfully mapped and sequenced the entire human genome. The organization also recognized Tilghman’s “pioneering contributions” to mammalian imprinting, the phenomenon referring to the expression of a gene depending upon the sex of the parent who passed it on. Tilghman sat down with The Daily Princetonian to discuss her thoughts on the award, her genetic research , and the influence of the University on her career. This interview has been edited for clarity and concision. The Daily Princetonian: Congratulations on winning the George W. Beadle Award. To start off, how do you feel about winning this award and what is its significance for you? Shirley Tilghman: For me, the most important significance is that I was nominated by two of the people who have trained in my laboratory, and that makes it really meaningful. One of them, Marisa Bartolomei, is a professor at [the University of] Penn[sylvania] now and the other one, Tamara Caspary, is a professor at Emory [University]. And they were both wonderful members of my lab in the 1990s. I think the other thing that I really appreciate is that the award came in recognition of public service — you’re a Princetonian so you know how important public service is — and the award I think more than anything else was recognizing the work I’ve done to try and make the scientific enterprise as welcoming as possible to all comers and make it one where you can really have a very happy and productive career. DP: You’re one of the most prominent geneticists in the country right now. What role do you think Princeton has played in your success as a scientist today? ST: Princeton has played an absolutely critical role in my success. You know, it gave me a home where I had the most extraordinary colleagues in the faculty. And I have this incredible privilege of training such amazing students. The environment, the aspiring to excellence, which is what I’ve always loved about Princeton, that it tries to do just an unlimited number of things, but it tries to do them as well as possible. I felt that very
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SAMEER A. KHAN / FOTOBUDDY VIA OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
Former University President Shirley Tilghman. keenly when I arrived here, and I felt immensely supported by the University at every turn. In fact, I’m not sure I’d be having this conversation with you about an award had I not come to Princeton in 1986. DP: So you’ve made contributions to biology and you’ve made contributions to the University community when you were the president. In your own opinion, what contribution have you made that is the most meaningful to you? ST: You know, the 12 years I spent as president were just simply extraordinary years, where I was able to focus on improving Princeton and its standing in the world then and most importantly, the quality of the research and teaching that it does. That was a huge privilege to have that responsibility for 12 years and certainly is the highlight of my career. But I would say until I took that job, I thought I had the best job in the world. I thought being a scientist at Princeton University — you know, how could anyone ever want to do anything other than that? I adored science and I adored doing it at Princeton. So it’s impossible for me to rank them, they’re unrankable. DP: What about your service to the field of genetics? ST: I do believe that I made a really important contribution to the design of the Human Genome Project. Of all the aspects of the project [...], it is the inclusion of model organisms as an integral part of the project [that I’m associated most with]. So basically, using the genomes of everything from simple bacteria all the way through to mice, which I worked on, to learn how to sequence well enough, and fast and cheap enough that we could actually then do the human genome in the space of three or four years. But instead of beginning with the human where we didn’t have a clue what we were doing, learning how to do this well and cheaply and fast by sequencing all these model organisms — I think [that] was the contribution to the whole project that people associate with me. The other public service that I feel passionate about is the work that I’ve done over 30 years in trying to promote the careers of young scientists, and to ensure that the scientific enterprise is functioning
in a way that makes it possible for young people who love science as much as I do, to have a clear path to becoming a scientist through their training and through their early careers. And I’ve done a huge amount of work on this issue over the years, and I care about it deeply. DP: Do you have any advice for undergraduate students who have an interest in science and in biology and genetics specifically? ST: Yeah, I think my advice would be to try and get your hands dirty as early as possible. There are many, many studies that show that the earlier you can actually get into a laboratory — not a teaching laboratory, I’m talking about a research laboratory — and find out what it is like to do science, the more likely it is that you will be bitten by the bug, which is what happened to me when I was an undergraduate. I worked in faculty research labs, published papers, and at that point, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. So getting early experience because unfortunately, what happens in too much of science education — though happily, not so much at Princeton — but in many places, is that science education becomes a process of memorizing facts and doing problem sets. And as important as those two things are, they are not what being a scientist is all about. You know, being a scientist is doing it. So I really believe in the apprentice model. DP: What do you envision as the future of your career as a scientist? ST: Since I left Nassau Hall, which was in 2013, I’ve been working to take advantage of the knowledge that I gained in both of my roles as scientist and as president to help other organizations. So I’m on a number of nonprofit boards. Some are universities, some are science organizations like the Simons Foundation. Through that kind of public service, I want to ensure that the support of science and the support of good higher education is accessible and as cost-effective as possible for the students. That’s how I’ve been spending my time. Mahya Fazel-Zarandi is a staff writer for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached by email at mahyaf@princeton.edu or on Twitter @MahyaFazel.
HEADLINE FROM HISTORY PROFESSORS CAUTIOUSLY PRAISE CLINTON PROGRAM FEB. 18, 1993
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The Daily Princetonian
Friday February 18, 2022
DATA INVESTIGATION
After a year of low enrollment, Princeton sees a spike in competition for seats in classes After an academic year with unusually low undergraduate enrollment at Princeton amid the COVID-19 pandemic, students faced a course registration cycle starkly more competitive than the previous year. The heightened academic selectivity brought an array of challenges for students, especially for those concentrating in or pursuing certificates in popular departments and programs. The spring 2022 semester had the highest percentage of class spots taken in recent years, dating back to spring 2019. Over 73 percent of total spots offered were taken this semester, compared to 71 percent last semester, while previous semesters hovering in the mid-tohigh 60s. The spring semester increase from the fall may in part be attributed to the fact that some students will drop classes before the academic year concludes. “A lot of courses were filled up very quickly,” said Christian Potter ’22, a Peer Academic Advisor and School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) concentrator, in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “So I have to go through course lists with my zees and try to find things that were available, a lot of scroll-
enables students to monitor in-demand courses and receive notifications when spots become available. TigerSnatch shared anonymized data logs for this semester’s add/drop period with the ‘Prince.’ At the end of the add/ drop period, visual arts (VIS) boasted the most TigerSnatch notification subscriptions, with 210 notifications across 14 classes. SPIA was second, with 182 subscriptions across 13 classes, and COS was third, with 175 subscriptions across 13 classes. A student using the service may request notifications for multiple classes. When considering classes listed by multiple departments, commonly referred to as “cross-listed” courses, the ‘Prince’ categorized the course by the first listed department. David Walker, the director of undergraduate studies in the COS department, noted that enrollments in the program “seem to get higher and higher.” In an email to the ‘Prince,’ Deputy University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss explained why courses sometimes struggle with capacity. “We do our best to fulfill Princeton student needs, but there can be a tension between class size and our ability to deliver the material effectively,” he wrote. “This
graduate students over the last couple of years — for example, sociology — and it’s those graduate students that typically serve as preceptors.” Marion Young ’00, the executive director of the Lewis Arts Center, attributed the spike in interest in VIS courses to last year’s remote learning. “Doing visual arts remotely doesn’t always sound like the most, you know, fun plan,” she said. “So our sense is that there’s some pent-up kind of interest that might have been more spread out over the last three years. We’ll know more over the next year or two, if that trend continues.” Jeffrey Whetstone, the director of the Visual Arts Program, said that
ing through and me saying ‘no, actually, I was gonna recommend that one, but can’t.’” Potter said that as a PAA, he struggled to find effective ways to help his first-year advisees. “The strategy was always then to pivot and try to find other classes that would work as sort of substitutes,” he said. “The other thing is, you know, most of these classes tended to be courses that were courses that fulfill some of these core requirements. That meant that a lot of seniors and juniors were trying to enroll in them first. And they wouldn’t leave those courses.” The three most popular concentrations — computer science (COS), economics (ECO), and SPIA — have attracted additional student interest this semester. Both COS and SPIA experienced a significant spike this semester, filling 77 percent and 89 percent of spots, respectively. To assess an additional element of course enrollment, the ‘Prince’ reached out to TigerSnatch, a student-run application that
academic year is much more the norm than either of the past two. It’s also not possible to have a full picture of course enrollments until after the April 1 deadline for students to drop a springterm course.” “For most courses, the listed capacity is based on historical enrollment and the size of the requested room,” Hotchkiss continued. “The listed capacity is not generally a hard cap on enrollment. (The exception is seminars, which are limited in size to ensure an appropriate academic experience.)” Paul Lipton, the SPIA associate dean for undergraduate education, further articulated potential explanations for this semester’s enrollment increase. “One of the reasons is that SPIA is one of the largest majors at the University,” he said. “The other issue that we’re having, and I suspect some of these other departments are having too, is finding preceptors to staff the precepts has gotten difficult. Part of the reason is that many programs reduced or stopped taking
the popularity of the department is becoming a “burden.” “We only get a certain amount of funding for the faculty, and the growth of interest from Princeton’s student body in visual arts and the other departments around the Lewis Center has outpaced our capability to serve them,” he said. The most popular lecture subscriptions on TigerSnatch were SPI 330: Population, Society, and Public Policy; COS 495: Special Topics in Computer Science: Web3: Blockchains, Cryptocurrencies, and Decentralization; and COS 484: Natural Language Processing. The classes attracted 59, 36, and 35 subscriptions, respectively. The professor of SPI 330, Arun Hendi, was “honored” that his class held this standing and hopes this means that more people are getting interested in the class’s topic. “It was first come, first serve,” he said. “Once enrollment started, it filled up the next morning. And I started getting emails from students im-
By Charlie Roth
Assistant Data Editor
mediately about getting added to the waitlist, and I would forward their emails to the SPIA Undergraduate Office, and the very helpful people in that office keep an electronic waitlist that would allow students to enroll … I think that I got probably 50-plus emails.” All three of these classes are options to fulfill departmental requirements in their respective concentrations. Lipton theorized that SPI 330 was especially popular this semester in part because of faculty leave schedules. As course registration takes place by seniority, this issue disproportionately affects underclass students. “It could be more difficult for someone to get into a set of required courses like SPIA 330, which was very quickly filled up because that is typically one of several different required core courses in a given semester for SPIA students,” Lipton said. “SPIA 330 happened to be the only one that was offered this semester because of faculty leave schedules.” He noted, however, there may be some hope for those persistent enough to get off course waitlists. “Though we have 12 courses with waitlists, with five courses, we were able to get ultimately whoever wanted to get in, in.” Still, the difference from last year was stark: Lipton said that SPIA only had four courses with waitlists last semester. And many students in other departments saw no luck with their waitlists. Arlette Cojab ’24 said she was not able to get into the creative writing (CWR) courses she needed, and now faces a significantly more difficult path to getting a creative writing certificate. The Lewis Center for the Arts website states that “[c]andidates for the certificate normally take two 200-level courses in creative writing by the end of sophomore year,” a standard Cojab could not achieve. “I had applied to CWR 222, got waitlisted, and even though you’re allowed to apply for a spot in CWR 202 and 204 during add-drop, any spot would go within minutes and it was impossible to get one,” she explained. “I needed my second CWR course to apply for a certificate, but now I have to leave that behind, I guess.” Students held 51 subscriptions to various sections of CWR 202 and 31
to CWR 204. While one user may subscribe to multiple sections of one course, Young says that applications for these two courses were “much higher than the last five-year average.” Chloe Smith-Frank ’23 also told the ‘Prince’ she felt frustrated by the process of trying to get into classes in the psychology department. “Seniors have [time] to pick classes, and then it closes, and then juniors the next day, and then sophomores, etc. And then you have to wait like three weeks for the regular add/drop to open. I think things would be a lot less stressful if they kept course enrollment open,” she said. Jeremy Chizewer ‘22 argued that many students in the COS department face the same struggles. “Despite having many options for fulfilling requirements, there are several classes that a large share of COS desire, and several that very few students take. As a result, students often face the difficult choice between progressing toward their degree, and waiting for the best classes,” he said. “While a likely conclusion is to remove enrollment limits, this only leads to overcrowded and understaffed classes, which is worse for students and professors. A better solution would be to expand the offerings and improve the quality of less popular courses, to distribute students more evenly. This enrollment difficulty comes just before the opening of New College East and New College West, which will increase the student body population by 10 percent. Both Lipton and Young acknowledged that the expansion of the student body will amplify these pre-existing challenges around course registration. “The question of growth of the student body is if we just take this year, is it an anomaly year?” Young asked. “Or is it a sign of something that, then, needs to be advocacy for more classes and more opportunities? But I don’t think it’s a case we can make until we see that increase in interest sustained, particularly in a post-pandemic world.” Charlie Roth is a Staff News Writer and Assistant Data Editor for the ‘Prince’, focusing on local town coverage. He can be reached at charlieroth@princeton.edu or @imcharlieroth on Twitter or Instagram.
The Daily Princetonian
Friday February 18, 2022
page 5
OBITUARY
Robin Herman ’73, trailblazer from the ‘Prince’ to the Times, dies at 70
COURTESY OF PAUL HORVITZ
Herman was the first woman to become a regular reporter for the ‘Prince.’ She is pictured here at Madison Square Garden.
By Allan Shen
Senior News Writer
Pioneering journalist Robin C. Herman ’73, who worked to dismantle gender barriers in sports journalism at The Daily Princetonian, The New York Times, and other publications, died on Tuesday, Feb. 1. She was 70. Herman died at her home in Waltham, Mass. after a long battle with ovarian cancer, according to her husband Paul Horvitz. A journalist for most of her career, Herman was the first woman to become a regular reporter for the ‘Prince’ during her time at the paper in 1970, according to her colleagues. She was also the first woman to become a sportswriter for The New York Times. She became well-known as one of the first two female journalists to gain access to the athletes’ locker rooms in the National Hockey League (NHL) in 1975 and continued to have a prolific career in journalism while gaining ground for women in sports writing. Herman was born in New York City on Nov. 24, 1951. Her father, Sidney, owned a hat factory and taught business law at the New York Institute of Technology. Her mother, Mildred, was a graduate of Brooklyn College and a sculptor. Herman grew up in Port Washington on Long Island and attended Paul D. Schreiber High School, where she wrote and edited for the Schreiber Times and sang in the varsity choir, in addition to numerous other activities, according to Herman’s records in the Princeton University Archives. Even though she listed her prospective program of study as biology and wrote that she sought to become a biologist on her application to the University, Herman’s affinity for journalism was apparent even before she arrived on campus. “My greatest interest is the Schreiber Times, our newspaper,” she wrote in her personal
statement. “Because I have such a great responsibility to keep the students of the school informed of events, I feel the power I have whenever I decide to delete or cut a particular article, write an editorial or lay out the front page.” Among the first class of women to enter Princeton as undergraduate students, Herman arrived at the University in the fall of 1969 amid tumultuous times. The 1969–1970 academic year was marked by the tremendous changes brought to campus by the shift to co-education and the campus-wide boycott of classes in opposition to the Vietnam War. While at the University, Herman joined the ‘Prince’ and became the paper’s first regular female staffer. At the time, all new staffers were given an assignment on news and sports by convention, but Herman was only assigned to news writing at the beginning. “It struck me as inequitable,” Herman recalled in a 2013 interview with Princeton Alumni Weekly. “It was a reflex, really.” Eventually, Herman pursued sports writing in addition to her news coverage, reporting on rugby, men’s squash, men’s tennis, and football. Her news reporting often featured the early days of Princeton’s first class of undergraduate women as they assimilated into a campus surrounded by thousands of male students. A story written by Herman for a special issue in 1970 described the challenges of dating amid a 20:1 gender ratio and women picking up habits from their male peers. Herman worked as an Assistant News Editor and an Associate News Editor for the ‘Prince’ until she was named Sports Editor in the middle of her junior year. She served in that capacity for much of 1972 until she became a Managing Editor, the second highest position on the editorial masthead, due to a shakeup in the board. Annalyn Swan ’73 and Diana Savit ’73, who were the second
COURTESY OF PAUL HORVITZ
Herman in The New York Times newsroom.
and third women to join the ‘Prince’ and who became Editorin-Chief and Senior Editor, respectively, recalled Herman’s character and drive. “She was extremely bright, determined, and really spunky,” Swan said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “If she didn’t get to where she wanted to go, she was going to die trying.” Swan recalled that Herman successfully organized a picnic within the English department over the objections of the department chair. “She had excellent instincts and had a really good feel for sizing up a situation and making it work,” Savit said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “I think she knew, in a way that a lot of us didn’t, that [asking for a sports beat] was going to open doors for her even if she had to push them open herself.” Savit also recalled that even though she, unlike Herman, did not actively seek out a sports assignment as a new staffer, she was required to cover sports in addition to news because of Herman’s precedent. A member of Tower Club, Herman graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. in English from Princeton in 1973 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Her 99-page-long senior thesis, which she dedicated “to my friend, Annalyn Swan,” is titled “Three Godey’s Lady’s Book Authors and a Convention.” The thesis examined the literary works of three prominent 19th-century American women — Eliza Leslie, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Herman joined The New York Times just six days after she graduated from Princeton. She began her tenure as “copy girl” but quickly became the first fullfledged female sportswriter at the Times. She briefly covered tennis, yachting, and horse racing before she was assigned to cover the New York Islanders of the NHL in 1974. It was there that Herman was regularly denied entry to the athletes’ locker rooms. At the time, professional sports leagues generally did not allow female reporters to enter the locker rooms of male players. Herman spoke to players who agreed to interviews outside in the hallway, making it more difficult for her to record the immediate post-game thoughts and perspectives of players. Herman’s moment of fame came in January of 1975, when the 28th NHL All-Star game took place at the Montreal Forum in Montreal, Canada. Herman and local radio reporter Marcelle St. Cyr were allowed into the locker rooms by the coaches, but in attempting to write a story about
COURTESY OF PAUL HORVITZ
Herman and her husband Paul Horvitz shortly after their engagement, with New York Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Sr. (left) and Times executive editor A. M. Rosenthal (right).
the game and the athletes, the two women themselves became the subject of a headline. Herman moved to cover the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden in 1976; the locker rooms there were open to female reporters that year with the support of head coach and general manager John Ferguson as well as Rangers players themselves. Lawrie Mifflin, who worked with Herman while covering the Rangers for The Daily News, recollected how the two female reporters had each others’ backs. “In the entire country, there were perhaps 10 to 12 women who were covering professional sports, and here were two of us, assigned to the same team,” Mifflin explained in an interview with the ‘Prince.’ “It was so fortunate because we had each other for support; we had each other for strategizing about how to persuade more teams to let us do our jobs properly. It was very unusual; [usually] all the women were on their own.” A photo of Herman interviewing a hockey player in the locker room for the Times can be found on the eastern wall of Café Vivian in Frist Campus Center. Herman moved to the metropolitan desk in 1979 and left the Times in 1983. She wrote about health and science as a freelance journalist for The Washington Post and The International Herald Tribune, and authored a book in 1990 titled “Fusion: The Search for Endless Energy.” Herman became a reporter for the health section of the Post in 1991 before returning to freelance writing in 1995. She joined the Harvard School of Public Health (now the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health) as assistant dean for communications in 1999 and retired in 2012. Herman met her husband and fellow journalist Paul Fisher Horvitz in 1979 while the latter was
editing a national news story she had written. They privately wrote each other messages through the Times computer system using the aliases “Boris” and “Natasha.” The two were engaged in 1980 and married in 1981. In the June 10, 1999 issue of The International Herald Tribune, they each had a story published on the front page. Herman reported on the chemical pollutant dioxin while Horvitz wrote about the Kosovo War peace negotiations. The couple adopted their daughter, Eva, from Paraguay in 1987, and their son Zachary was born in Paris in 1990. In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Horvitz spoke of Herman’s devotion as a supportive mother to her children. “Robin wanted to be a mother and knew she needed to fulfill that role,” Horvitz said. “Both of our children had learning disabilities and subsequently developed mental illnesses. Robin was determined not to give up; she was a truly devoted mother under extremely difficult circumstances.” In a Princeton Alumni Weekly article she wrote in 2015, Herman reflected on her experiences as a mother in supporting her children through mental illnesses. In 2014, she organized a panel during Princeton Reunions titled “Parenting Young Adult Children With Mental Illness.” Herman is survived by her husband, Paul Horvitz; their children, Eva and Zachary; two grandsons; and her sister, Summer Pramer. Allan Shen is a Senior News Writer who often covers research and obituaries. He can be reached at fuluns@princeton.edu, or on Twitter at @fulunallanshen. He previously served as an Associate News Editor.
The Daily Princetonian
page 6
T his Week in Photos
Friday February 18, 2022
By Candace Do
Head Photo Editor
Angel Kuo
Associate Photo Editor
Zoe Berman
Staff Photographer
Ian Fridman
Contributing Photographer
Andrew Somerville
Head News Editor
Students make a human train on Thursday’s ice skating event at Hobey Baker Rink.
Students enjoy the sun and warm weather while studying outside Frist Campus Center.
Students work in the Carl Icahn Laboratory as mist settles on a snow-covered Poe Field.
After enjoying a few days of sun, students were once again sledding down the hills of Princeton’s campus.
Students gather under an umbrella to stay dry during Sunday’s snowfall.
The Daily Princetonian
Friday February 18, 2022
Hurricane
page 7
By Ana Pranger Senior Constructor
ACROSS 1 Domenikos Theotokópoulos’s paintings, casually 7 Youngest March sister 10 Make less clear, in a way 14 Overhaul, like a show 15 When repeated, mid2010s dance move 16 Graph type 17 Come out 18 Biblical spot with no room 19 Chooses (for) 20 *Chicago nickname that might refer to weather or bloviating politicians 22 Savvy 23 ___ good example (is a role model) 24 Dirty race? 25 N.Y.S.E. debut 28 Parisian possessive 29 Put a ring on it 30 Oolong and rooibos 32 Get out 34 Youngest Obama sister 36 The center of the storm forming this puzzle 37 Alternative to greyscale 41 Keep down 44 Go off 45 Peruses 48 Definite article, in Dover 50 A BSE major 51 See again 52 Fragrance 54 Rideshares
55 *Something opened to release emotion 59 Six years, for a senator 60 West Wing actor Lowe 61 Writer and actress Mindy 62 Tall, in Toledo 63 Australian bird with an eponymous war 64 Did, back in the day 65 Exam for future JDs 66 URL ender 67 Basic exam?
DOWN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 21 22 24 25
Blossomed Do followers, in a scale All tied up Proxes, for example “PLZ I AM SO IN” Ghost Rita Moreno and Ariana Debose role Lotsa Tokyo dough *Appliance found in many a hotel bathroom Largest of the Aeolian islands Not right at all Try again, like one would with a lost email Distributors ~vibes~ Big mouth Word often punctuated incorrectly
MINI #2
ACROSS
1 Mario: Luigi as ___: Waluigi 6 First two words in Star Wars’ intro 7 Majestic in nature 8 Grape: Raisin as Plum: ___ 9 Knight’s horse
DOWN
1 Distorts in shape 2 Warning sign 3 ___ One: A Star Wars Story 4 Silly 5 Stared down
26 Cause of insomnia for one princess 27 Trips ‘24s never got to go on 29 Super conductor? 31 *Slip preventer and drip collector 33 “Science Guy” Bill 35 Church recesses 38 Jim’s lady 39 Barefoot Contessa Garten 40 Consumed 42 Enemy Cuddle buddy, maybe 43 Agitated 45 What it is out here, according to Olivia Rodrigo 46 Acts like a teenager or freedom fighter 47 Mafia code of silence 49 Punctuation frequently
The Minis MINI #3
ACROSS
1 What 5-Across ate in a math joke 5 Number of Res Colleges as of Fall 2022 6 Group of three 7 Current Govenor of Wisconsin 8 Sticky situation 1 Audacity
DOWN
2 Princeton, Harvard, and Yale, for instance 3 Approaches 4 The anode and cathode, in a battery 5 Plant stalk
52 53 55 56 57 58 60
found in Emily Dickinson’s poems “The Wall” or “Off The Wall” Classic Phineas and Ferb song Worry that everything’s happening without you, for short Helper Explosives Goldberg and Webber feat Letter accompanying an application, for short
By Sarah Gemmell Assistant Puzzles Editor
Scan to check your answers and try more of our puzzles online!
Friday February 18, 2022
Opinion
page 8
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
A Peer Academic Advisor’s case for University-endorsed free time Johnatan Reiss
Guest Contributor
A
s a Peer Academic Advisor (PAA), I’ve noticed that dealing with Princeton’s workload is one of the hardest adjustments first-year students have to make after arriving on campus. The work, my students would tell me, was not necessarily exceedingly hard — there was just too much of it. In one meeting, a student and I tried to create a schedule in which they would finish all their assignments. Even with minimal sleep and very few breaks, we calculated a week’s worth of assignments would take a week and a half to complete. Even if we fit everything in, there would be absolutely no room for free time — time for the student to recharge and pursue their own projects. As a PAA, how could I advise them to manage their time if there simply wasn’t enough of it? You may know the feeling. Time is one of the scarcest resources on campus. The fact that Princeton students are excessively busy has been documented for years, and it’s no secret to the University administration. Administrators, faculty, and our own peers offer workshops on tackling procrastination, urge us to dedicate time to our mental health, and encourage us to take walks. College deans repeatedly discourage us from pulling all-nighters or skipping meals when the semester is at its peak. But if the time required to complete assignments exceeds the time frame allotted to them, it can’t be solved by savvy time management strategies. It is a result of a systemic devaluation of students’
free time. It doesn’t have to be this way. And it shouldn’t. There are obvious downsides to such an environment. First, a perpetual time crunch is not conducive to the kind of deep, meaningful learning that is purported to be the hallmark of the University’s education. Time scarcity has been shown to decrease a person’s attention span and ability to focus. A constant time crunch produces a cognitive burden, just like other types of scarcity. Instead of making the most of the fantastic classes Princeton has to offer, students may choose to skim instead of read and skip lectures rather than savor them. The University has the infrastructure to provide us with food and shelter so that we can focus on our studies; providing some free time is equally important. Time scarcity — the feeling of being hounded by unfinished tasks and “not having enough time” — has been shown to have adverse effects on overall well-being, creativity, performance, and relationships. On the other hand, ample research has documented the positive effects of free, discretionary time on mental and physical wellbeing. That’s not even to mention the fact that many of us will graduate only to move onto a highly taxing work environment, with 60-hour weeks and endemic burnout. It’s not unreasonable to ask that the University budget some free time for us while we can experience it. Yes, time management is a critical skill and a valuable lesson to take from college. But it should not be learned through emotional distress or lack of sleep. To
be able to manage our time, we first have to have enough of it. This is not a request for leniency; it is a request for the University to allow us to f lourish. Think of all we could be doing if we had one extra hour a week or just the headspace to be at ease. Princeton is home to incredible talent and energy. The initiatives to launch, projects to pursue, and connections to make are endless — but only if people here have the time to engage with their genuine interests and rest. Even if people didn’t choose to spend their free time “productively,” the University would still benefit from having more focused, more engaged students. Making this a reality is not an overly ambitious goal. Small, relatively cost-free changes to course requirements could make a big difference. It could be required that each class drop one or two assignments from their syllabi, or at least make some assignments optional — not as a way to account for students’ extenuating circumstances, as many classes do now, but as part of a policy that recognizes the importance of students’ discretionary time to their learning. The cumulative effect would be meaningful. A more systemic approach to endorsing free time may include requiring professors to designate a week or two of the semester as a low-workload week. The University could pursue this goal in a variety of ways. But they have to make students’ free time a priority. Johnatan Reiss is a junior concentrating in politics from Israel. He can be reached at johnatan@ princeton.edu.
vol. cxlvi
editor-in-chief Marie-Rose Sheinerman ’23 business manager Benjamin Cai ’24
BOARD OF TRUSTEES president Thomas E. Weber ’89 vice president Craig Bloom ’88 second 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 John G. Horan ’74 Rick Klein ’98 James T. MacGregor ’66 Julianne Escobedo Shepherd Abigail Williams ’14 Tyler Woulfe ’07 trustees ex officio Marie-Rose Sheinerman ’23 Benjamin Cai ’24
146TH MANAGING BOARD managing editors Omar Farah ’23 Tanvi Nibhanupudi ’23 Caitlin Limestahl ’23 Zachariah Wirtschafter Sippy ’23 Strategic initiative directors Accessibility Education Isabel Rodrigues ’23 Evelyn Doskoch ’23 José Pablo Fernández García ’23 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Mollika Jai Singh ’24 Melat Bekele ’24
Financial Stipend Program Rooya Rahin ’23
Sections listed in alphabetical order. newsletter editors head audience editor Kareena Bhakta ’24 Isabel Rodrigues ’23 Amy Ciceu ’24 associate audience Aditi Desai ’24 editor head opinion editor Sai Rachumalla ’24 Genrietta Churbanova ’24 head cartoon editors columnist editor Inci Karaaslan ’24 Kristal Grant ’24 Ambri Ma ’24 community editor associate cartoon editor Rohit A. Narayanan ’24 Ariana Borromeo ’24 associate opinion editors head copy editors Won-Jae Chang ’24 Alexandra Hong ’23 Mollika Jai Singh ’24 Nathalie Verlinde ’24 head photo editor associate copy editors Candace Do ’24 Catie Parker ’23 associate photo editor Cecilia Zubler ’23 Angel Kuo ’24 head web design editors Isabel Richardson ’24 Anika Maskara ’23 head podcast editor Brian Tieu ’23 Hope Perry ’24 associate web design associate podcast editors editor Jack Anderson ’24 Ananya Grover ’24 Eden Teshome ’25 head graphics editors Ashley Chung ’23 Noreen Hosny ’25 instagram design editor Rowen Gesue ’24 print design editor Juliana Wojtenko ’23 special issues editor Evelyn Doskoch ’23 head data editor Sam Kagan ’24 head features editors Alex Gjaja ’23 Rachel Sturley ’23 associate features editor Sydney Eck ’24 head news editors Katherine Dailey ’24 Andrew Somerville ’24 associate news editors Kalena Blake ’24 Anika Buch ’24 Miguel Gracia-Zhang ’23 Sandeep Mangat ’24
head prospect editors José Pablo Fernández García ’23 Aster Zhang ’24 associate prospect editors Molly Cutler ’23 Cathleen Weng ’24 head puzzles editors Gabriel Robare ’24 Owen Travis ’24 associate puzzles editors Juliet Corless ’24 Joah Macosko ’25 Cole Vandenberg ’24 head satire editor Claire Silberman ’23 associate satire editors Spencer Bauman ’25 Daniel Viorica ’25 head sports editors Wilson Conn ’25 Julia Nguyen ’24 associate sports editor Ben Burns ’23 Elizabeth Evanko ’23 associate video editors Daniel Drake ’24 Marko Petrovic ’24
146TH BUSINESS BOARD assistant business manager Shirley Ren ’24 business directors David Akpokiere ’24 Samantha Lee ’24 Ananya Parashar ’24 Gloria Wang ’24 project managers Anika Agarwal ’25
John Cardwell ’25 Jack Curtin ’25 Diya Dalia ’24 Jonathan Lee ’24 Juliana Li ’24 Emma Limor ’25 Justin Ong ’23 Xabier Sardina ’24 business associate Jasmine Zhang ’24
146TH TECHNOLOGY BOARD chief technology officer Pranav Avva ’24 lead software engineers Roma Bhattacharjee ’25 Joanna Tang ’24
software engineers Eugenie Choi ’24 Giao Vu Dinh ’24 Daniel Hu ’25 Dwaipayan Saha ’24 Kohei Sanno ’25
THIS PRINT ISSUE WAS DESIGNED BY Dimitar Chakarov ’24 Ariana Di Landro ’25 Mark Dodici ’22 MARK DODICI / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Empty desks in Frist Campus Center.
Noreen Hosny ’25 Brooke McCarthy ’25 Juliana Wojtenko ’23
AND COPIED BY
Tiffany Cao ’24 and Jason Luo ’25
Friday February 18, 2022
Opinion
page 9
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
Why Divest Princeton filed a legal complaint Hannah Reynolds senior columnist
I
t has been about nine years since fossil fuel divestment was first brought to the table at Princeton. Since then, nearly 1,500 institutions have divested or made plans to divest a whopping total of $39 trillion from the fossil fuel industry. All the while, the University continues to deliberate over whether companies like ExxonMobil, BP and Shell are egregious enough polluters for Princeton to end its existing research partnerships with them. Nearly a decade of students, alumni, faculty, and staff growing increasingly more passionate about the issue of divestment has passed, and yet the University has yet to fully divest and dissociate from the fossil fuel industry. Divest Princeton submitted its most recent proposal for fossil fuel divestment almost exactly two years ago. Since then, the University has implemented countless bureaucratic obstacles and impromptu committees for divestment, which effec-
tively stall any real change to the current investments of the endowment and research partnerships. For instance, the University has created a new faculty panel and a new administrative committee to review the Board of Trustee’s decision from last May, which advocated for just partial divestment from select sectors of the fossil fuel industry. Throughout the twoyear-long review process, University administration has continuously avoided transparency about the divestment proposal review process and has yet to commit to any clear timelines around final decisions and actions on divestment. The University’s lack of serious and timely action in the face of such an overarching existential threat makes activists like myself impatient. The over 3,000 Princetonians who have signed in support of divestment have been left waiting while our school continues to invest in and partner with an industry actively imperiling our futures. Divest Princeton has called time and time again for the University to act in
the service of humanity and end its ties to the harmful fossil fuel industry. And time after time, Princeton fails to act. After nine years of fossil fuel divestment movements and two years since the latest divestment proposal was introduced to the Resources Committee, we are done waiting for Princeton to lead. This is why today, Divest Princeton has raised the stakes and filed a legal complaint with the Attorney General of New Jersey alleging that the University has violated its duty as a nonprofit by investing in an industry that is causing harm to its community and students. This follows the precedent set by the Harvard and Cornell University divestment campaigns, with both universities having since divested. We hope that by demonstrating just how serious we are about fossil fuel divestment, the University will finally take the threat of climate change seriously and end its ties with the fossil fuel industry for good. In addition to our complaint, four other university
divestment campaigns (Yale, Stanford, and Vanderbilt Universities, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) also filed complaints against their universities. Divest Princeton is honored to be a part of this historic moment in the divestment movement with these other brilliant organizers, and we hope that this complaint can mark a turning point in our own campaign. We thank you for your continued support as we advocate for the sustainable and equitable investment of our endowment
and seek to hold Princeton accountable. Today, we take our future into our own hands, with the hope that our advocacy will finally result in visible, tangible change toward mitigating the existential climate crisis at hand. We will not rest until Princeton divests. Hannah Reynolds is a senior in the anthropology department from the Finger Lakes, N.Y. She is also the co-coordinator of Divest Princeton. Hannah can be reached at hannahr@princeton. edu.
KRISTAL GRANT / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
The sham of meritocracy in Princeton admissions Rohit A. Narayanan
Community Opinion Editor
P
rinceton’s admissions system is under increasing scrutiny. As other colleges eliminate their legacy preferences, some think Princeton should do the same. The SAT, long the cornerstone of college admissions, is being abandoned to eliminate socioeconomic disparities in admissions. Breaking down the remnants of a self-serving system for the elite is a noble goal, but nobody seems to be questioning the fundamental principle behind college admissions: meritocracy. We’re getting better and better at sorting high schoolers into colleges by merit and accepting the fact that the all-consuming nature of college admissions is inevitable. But if we created such a ridiculous system in any other context, we’d immediately recognize its absurdity. To prove it, let’s take a trip to an alternate reality. Princeton suddenly has an idea: instead of randomly assigning first-year students to one of the six (soon to be eight) residential colleges, why not let students choose which residential college they prefer? Prospective students who have a fondness for Nassau Street might choose a room in Rockefeller or Mathey Colleges. Aficionados of the Forbes dining hall might decide that living in Forbes is worth the walk. Students who like air conditioning and Soviet revival architecture might choose one of the new colleges. But considering that the luxury of the rooms and their durability against dragon attacks
are top priorities for many students, Whitman College is likely to have more applications than the others: likely more than they have room for. The Whitman College staff wonders what to do. Should they just accept students randomly? “No, no, no!” someone says, “We have to find the students who are a good fit for Whitman. Let’s have them write essays about why they want to be in Whitman.” This idea achieves broad acclaim. So now, students coming to Princeton spend their summers refining their Whitman admission essays. And the Whitman College staff sit on the floor, sorting through hundreds of applications. “This is hopeless!” someone cries out. “Everyone has the same story about how they’ve dreamed of living in Whitman since the womb. There has to be some way to tell them apart! What we need is more data — an aptitude test and letters of recommendation. Let’s have them submit their high school transcripts. Then it’ll be clear who should be a part of Whitman College.” So students now spend their summers balancing studying for the Whitman Aptitude Test (WAT), coaxing their friends to write letters of recommendation attesting to their natural sociability, and writing ever-more dramatic tales of how their life is really an epic quest that ends in Whitman College. And the Whitman staff once more look at the applications. “So, do you know which ones are a good fit for Whitman?” the college head asks the newly appointed admissions officer. Of course not, the admissions officer thinks, I’m an administrator, not a mystic.
What on earth does a good fit for Whitman even mean? It’s a college, not an airline seat! But instead of saying any of that, the admissions officer hands over the applications with the top WAT scores, which is really the only thing he knows how to sort. “These people are a perfect fit for Whitman,” he declares, as if he could say anything else without eliminating his own position. The Princeton School and State Report’s once-lighthearted residential college ranking is influencing more and more students’ decisions on which residential colleges to apply to, which is driving admission rates at the top residential colleges to subterranean levels. The other residential colleges feel the pressure to become more selective. “We were fourth last year! Fourth!” the Rocky College Head explodes, “We need to seem more selective. More essays! More weird requirements!” We now move to a conference room at a top company, where the CEO chomps on a cigar and demands to hear what factors known at hiring time correlate with job performance. “Well, sir,” whimpers a data scientist vastly overqualified for her position, “among our Princeton employees, grades were a good indicator of job performance — but there also seems to be a strong correlation to what residential college they were in.” “That’s fantastic!” the CEO cries, surreptitiously firing half the recruitment staff. “Why do I need to bother identifying the most qualified applicants when Princeton already sorted them by merit their freshman year?” Students now spend years in a furious rat race to make their
Whitman application stand out and thus punch their ticket to career success. Somewhere, a student protests to their parents: “I don’t want to apply to Whitman! Everyone gets the same degree, it’s just a residential college. I have always wanted to live in the architectural manifestation of a cardboard box, which is why New College East is for me!” “Stop setting such low standards,” their parents scoff. “If you can get into Whitman, you have to go.” A scandal erupts as it turns out Whitman has been allocating a certain number of spots to students who went to the same high school as past Whitmanites, which of course favors the wealthy from private schools that send many students to Princeton. “It’s a tiebreaker used only in the rarest of circumstances,” the College Head lies, as if the staff could make heads or tails of the uniformly perfect applications without the use of that tie-breaker. Outside, students protest, demanding an end to the privilege. “All we want is to be judged on merit,” they chant. But as right as they may be about the unfair tiebreaker, they’re missing the point. The whole system is a sham — a game of arbitrary sorting over a totally meaningless prize. Sorting by merit to pick a residential college has no value. If you were hiring a brain surgeon, you would sort the candidates by merit. But why do the smartest students have to live next to each other? What does that have to do with fit? It was a great idea to have students choose between Rocky and Forbes, but are the superfi-
cial differences between the two colleges worth the years of stress the application creates? Are the differences between Princeton and Georgetown and Washington University at St. Louis important enough to justify the same system? This experiment must be judged a failure. The benefits are not worth the costs. And the same goes for college admissions. Princeton could eliminate its admissions department and form an admissions collective with other private colleges of similar size, expense, and offerings. Students would apply once to the collective and the larger team would form multiple college classes, then randomly match each class with one of the colleges in the collective — eliminating the hierarchy between selective colleges. The collective would not include all colleges: it may not be prudent to have students randomly placed between a large state school and a small liberal arts college. But where the differences are largely superficial, a collective could better manage admissions rate deflation and dampen the absurdity of college sorting. Princeton assigns residential colleges randomly for a reason. If only it could apply that same wisdom to the much more destructive system of college admissions that it helps perpetuate. Rohit A. Narayanan is a sophomore concentrating in electrical and computer engineering from McLean, Va. He is the Community Opinion Editor at the ‘Prince.’ You can ratio him on Twitter @Rohit_ Narayanan or spam his email at rohitan@princeton.edu.
Help beat the Special Improvement District Ordinance John Kuhn Bleimaier Guest Contributor
F
or half a century, 18-year-olds have had the right to vote in the United States. The political voice of young people is important. Most students at Princeton University can vote in federal, state and local elections. Some may choose to vote in the jurisdictions in which they grew up. But others may decide to vote in Princeton, N.J., the town where they spend most of their time in their college years, under normal circumstances. Voting in the mu-
nicipality of Princeton holds one unique enticement for the University community: if most Princeton students decided to vote in this community, their combined voice could be significant, if not decisive. That influence could be put to good use right now. Princeton student voters should encourage their elected representatives to vote against the Special Improvement District (SID) ordinance, which will be introduced before the town council on Feb. 28. The State of New Jersey permits municipalities to create Special Improvement Districts in order
to revitalize commercial centers dealing with diminishing commerce. Princeton has the most vibrant commercial center in this state, and is certainly not in need of redevelopment or urban renewal. To adopt the SID ordinance here would be a misuse of the state statute in the interest of a handful of developers and restaurateurs. Even if it works as intended, the SID will increase local traffic, exacerbate parking problems, and increase air and noise pollution in the town. It may very well be struck down by the courts — after the expenditure of substantial funds.
The SID ordinance seeks to create a new local bureaucracy, with new offices and new employees, in the guise of an independent organization, a la the Port Authority in New York City. The local authority’s task will be to serve the economic interest of a small special interest group. We are told that only commercial property owners will be forced to pay the bill. But historically, we should realize that every new bureaucracy, no matter how well intentioned or planned, ultimately increases the burden on all citizens. This proposed authority ostensibly has a sunset date. However,
as Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman taught us, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” As the owner of commercial and residential property in Princeton, it is my considered opinion that the Special Improvement District (SID) ordinance is not in the best interest of student voters, or the public at large. John Kuhn Bleimaier is a farmer, essayist, poet, rally driver and lawyer (nobody is perfect). He is the author of more than 100 articles on jurisprudence, history & classic cars.
Satire
Friday February 18, 2022
page 10
{www.dailyprincetonian.com }
Devastating: Precept crush not actually that hot Zachary Shevin
Contributing Writer
The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional. Students in a 10 a.m. microeconomics precept were left “shocked and appalled” last Friday after discovering their 6’2” classmate was actually not that hot without a mask on. For the first several weeks of the semester, Mann Splainer ’23 commanded the attention of his entire 12-student discussion section. Drawn in by Splainer’s nice eyes, flowy hair, and deep vocal register, students attend-
ed the ECO 301 precept at a rate never-before-seen within the economics department. A few students were not entirely discreet about their attraction, referring multiple times to their “demand for whatever he was supplying” and making several remarks about Splainer’s “liquid assets.” However, the class’s illusion was shattered during their last precept. Pulling down his face covering to take a quick sip of water from his Princeton Varsity Club HydroFlask, Splainer revealed a patchy goatee, an oversized handlebar mustache, a tattoo of cartoon character “Pickle Rick” on his cheek, and
a cinematically accurate replica of the “One Ring to rule them all” pierced between his septum. “I was literally about to ask him to grab a meal,” one student in the precept told The Daily PrintsAnything. “But after yesterday’s precept, I never want to see him actively eating or drinking again.” As of publication, seven of the precept’s 12 students have switched into the 11 a.m. offering. Zachary Shevin is a senior struggling to concentrate in the economics department. He previously served as a Managing Editor at the ‘Prince’ and can be reached at zshevin@princeton.edu.
MAX PIXEL / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
Beneath his mask, turns out the hottest kid in your precept isn’t as drop-dead gorgeous as you thought.
8 ways to ask your crush out on Valentine’s Day Spencer Bauman and David Cabrera
Associate Satire Editor and Contributing Writer
The following content is purely satirical and entirely fictional. With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, students on campus are hoping to spend it with that special someone. Unfortunately for many, however, finding that special someone can be a difficult task. We at The Daily PrintsAnything have compiled a list of the eight most effective ways to ask out your crush. Discussion post on Canvas. Nothing says “I love you” quite like proclaiming your affection in front of your entire class. Because each stu-
dent in the class is required to reply to three other posts, you’ll get at least three responses. GroupMe DM. Gone are the days of asking out one’s love interest in-person. This unconventional method of asking for a date has been increasingly popular among first-years, due to the easy access to fellow zees’ direct messages. Tip: Don’t accidentally hit up your RCA. Traffic sign on Washington Road. We hear these things are easily hackable. Google Docs. This method is perfect for professing love to that crush with a mysterious lack of social media presence. Share a Google Doc with them (make sure to select “Notify
people”) and hope they receive the email with the document link. Hoagie Mail email. Show your crush that you care enough to go through the trouble of crafting a carefully worded email and boldly sending it to the entire undergraduate population. T ige r C on fe ssion s# Post. Arguably the best medium for modern professions of love, this allows you to ask out your crush completely anonymously, thus effectively maximizing the awkwardness between you and the person who rejected you. Math office hours. This is an especially effective method, due to the intimacy and collaborative environment inherent to office
Cartoon
hours. Be sure to start off with a course-related pick up line, such as “I know we’re supposed to solve for x, but I’m glad I found ‘u’ instead.” A Daily PrintsA nything article. Alex Wright-Patton ’24, will you go out with me? If so, please respond to my Canvas discussion post.
Spencer Bauman is an associate satire editor. He can be reached at sbauman@princeton.edu. David Cabrera is a contributing writer. He can be reached at dc7598@princeton.edu.
SPENCER BAUMAN / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
A student uses a Canvas discussion post to ask out their crush on Valentine’s Day.
Black History Month By Sierra Stern, Staff Cartoonist
Candy Hearts
By Elizabeth Medina, Staff Cartoonist
Friday February 18, 2022
Features
page 11
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
‘Worthy of taking up space’
COURTESY OF JENNIFER LEE ’23
The Princeton student members of the Asian Americans with Disabilities Initiative (AADI). From left to right: Yukiko Chevray ’24, Stephanie Tang ’24, Jennifer Lee ’23, Jiyoun Roh ’24, and Alina Chen ’24. Not pictured: Emmy Song ’24.
Jennifer Lee ’23 founds nonprofit to support Asian Americans with disabilities a By Naomi Hess
Senior News Writer
I
n June 2020, after months of doctors appointments and medical testing, Jennifer Lee ’23 was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. Although she had many of the typical symptoms of the condition, Lee said her doctors at first hesitated to consider Crohn’s because of its rarity among Asian Americans. “Since the beginning of my journey with chronic illness,” Lee said, “I began to see how my Asian American identity was influencing not only how I perceived my illness and my body, but how even medical professionals were perceiving disability and diagnosis processes.” After her diagnosis, Lee sought out communities like the Crohn’s and Colitis Young Adults Network and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation’s National Council of College Leaders. But even in groups with other disabled young adults, Lee felt like her Asian American identity set her apart from her peers. “I quickly found that I didn’t see people who looked like myself, and so for the longest time, I thought that I was the only person who felt this way, that I didn’t have anyone else to talk to about the specific cultural stigmas around disability, what it was like to be of two marginalized identities — to be both Asian American and disabled,” she said. Although Lee may have felt alone, she is one of over 1.3 million Americans who identify as both Asian American and disabled. After meeting other people who shared her identities during the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) internship program in summer 2021, Lee decided to form a group dedicated to this intersection. In July 2021, along with a coalition of disabled Asian Americans and nondisabled allies from around the country, Lee founded the Asian Americans with Disabilities Initiative (AADI), a nonprofit run by and for people like her who identify as both Asian American and disabled. Lee now serves as executive director of AADI and manages an executive team of around 20–25 people at any given time. “The overarching mission of AADI is to amplify disabled Asian American voices and to provide the next generation of disabled Asian Americans with the tools, resources, and infrastructure to thrive in a world that has not historically always welcomed them,” Lee said. In its short existence, AADI has already made great strides toward accomplishing its mission of increasing the visibility of the disabled and Asian American community and providing resources on how to live in a world not built to accommodate either group. AADI began with what Lee calls a “threepronged vision.” She hoped to publish a resource guide for disabled Asian Americans, host speaker panels and events with people involved in Asian American and disability advocacy, and form a community of disabled and Asian-American peers.
On all three fronts, AADI has made tangible progress. On Jan. 10, after months of preparation, AADI launched their resource guide, an 80page document described on the AADI website as a guide “to combat ableism within the disabled Asian American community through first person testimonials, comprehensive peer-reviewed research, and briefs from AADI events.” AADI’s research committee compiled collections of academic research, lessons on allyship, and profiles of Asian American and disabled activists for inclusion in the guide. AADI received support from the TigerWell Initiative and Service Focus as they developed the guide. “We had recognized that in the field of academia, there is very little research that has been done on the intersection of disability and Asian American identity, and the reason why that’s so important is because this kind of research directly informs and feeds into what policy looks like,” Lee said about the importance of the section on academic research. The audience for the research guide, and AADI as a whole, encompasses a wide range of stakeholders, according to Megan Liang, a program manager at San Diego State University and AADI’s director of external relations. As an Asian American amputee, Liang became involved with AADI after seeing them highlighted on social media. “Whether you are a disabled Asian American, an ally, a social worker, or you only identify as disabled or you only identify as Asian American, you’re able to take away a new perspective on how this community handles things and the issues that they may face,” Liang said. “And even if it’s a small impact of change, I’m just happy that we’re able to make it.” AADI has hosted two speaker events so far. The first speaker panel was on Aug. 13, 2021, featuring Lydia X.Z. Brown, Miso Kwak, and Mia Ives-Rublee, three disabled Asian American activists. The event was virtual, and included American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters and captioning services. Over 50 people attended the event, according to Lee. “This panel kind of served as the starting point,” Lee said. “[The panelists talked] about the intersection of these two identities themselves, any difficulties that our speakers might have encountered while navigating the space, as well as advice they had for other younger, disabled Asian Americans who are watching.” More recently, on Jan. 29, AADI held another virtual panel focused on the intersection of art, disability, and being Asian American. Comedian Steve Lee, poet Topaz Winters ’23, and dancer Marisa Hamamoto spoke at the event. “I was on the panel with several other artists who are Asian American and disabled, so we talked a lot about how our Asian American identities fit in with our work in disability advocacy, as well as our arts work,” Winters said.
“The three streams of my identity — of being an artist, being a disabled person and being Asian — they’re not really streams that cross very often in my advocacy work or in my artistic work,” they added. “It was really special for me to be amongst a group of people who very much understood what that was like and the unique challenges but also the unique joys of existing in these three beautiful spaces, and just expanding definitions of what those spaces can be.” The final goal of forming a community of disabled Asian American peers has been accomplished, so far, in a largely virtual setting. Most of the people involved in AADI have never met in person. “It’s a matter of just highlighting the community, and for me, part of what AADI does is it shows that disabled Asian Americans and our experiences are worthy of taking up space,” Lee said. “I knew the second that I found AADI, I’d found a specific kind of community that I wouldn’t be able to find if I hadn’t otherwise sought it out,” Liang said. “My hope is that we’re able to host more community-based events in the future because I do understand how empowering it is to be amongst folks who have shared living experiences.” In the months to come, AADI plans to continue its outreach efforts and spread its mission of accessibility and inclusion for the Asian American and disabled community. Jiyoun Roh ’24 serves as AADI’s director of outreach and is tasked with managing the organization’s social media. Roh’s brother has cerebral palsy, and she became interested in disability justice after noticing how his disability led to a lack of inclusion for him in the Asian American community. “We want accessibility to be more than just a disability community,” Roh said. “We want it in further AAPI organizations.” “We are getting a lot of collaborations with a lot of other organizations and in conjunction with them, we want to build our own community because a community is made better by the people in it,” she continued. Lee hopes that the conversations started during the COVID-19 pandemic about racial justice and chronic illness continue in the future. “I think in this COVID-19 pandemic era, we are faced with an extraordinary opportunity to redefine how we understand the disabled experience and how we understand the Asian American experience,” Lee said. She looks forward to expanding the advocacy work AADI has carried out in the six months since its founding. “The more work we do in the disability, Asian American, and nonprofit space, the more our team is realizing that there are many definitions of success in terms of what our mission can achieve,” Lee said. Naomi Hess is an news editor emerita who focuses on university policy and alumni affairs. She can be reached at nihess@princeton.edu or on Twitter at @NaomiHess17.
the PROSPECT. The Daily Princetonian
page 12
Friday February 18, 2022
ARTS & CULTURE
‘Transitioning has led me to love myself in ways I never thought I could’ THERAPY Continued from page 1
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“came out” to friends as nonbinary on a small social media account. Though the message was framed in a celebratory lens, I cried a bit while writing it. I would keep crying throughout the coming months, as I changed the pronouns I used (twice) and asked my professors to refer to me by a different name. I was not ashamed of who I was. Still, I was worried about how coming out would affect the way others perceived me. I was raised in an environment where being openly nonbinary was considered unprofessional. I spent several long, lonely nights awake wondering if my peers, employers, and professors would doubt my competency on the basis of my gender expression. I felt like I had to deal with socially transitioning largely on my own because the COVID-19 pandemic kept me at a distance from large parts of my support network. Changing the pronouns on Zoom, Slack, and Canvas, that I once proudly displayed as a sign of allyship, to ones that acknowledged my transition brought on bullets of sweat. I didn’t know when it was appropriate to correct those who knew of my social transition when they referred to me with gendered terms I didn’t identify with. No one gave me a roadmap to living authentically, and without one, I felt like I was flying blind, susceptible to so many mistakes along the way. I wanted so badly to find joy in my social transition. And at times, I did. One day, after a haircut that felt life-changing, I looked in the mirror and felt comfortable with my appearance for maybe the first time. I couldn’t stop smiling. But at other times, I felt the same way I had felt for much of my life: alien to the way others perceived me. Being referred to with gendered terms that didn’t match my identity took on a new level of pain after having finally admitted to others how I felt inside. Growing up facing expectations around the gender others wanted me to be brought with it panic and anguish — the awfulness of puberty making me look different from my sibling and cousins, the deep discomfort around wearing gendered clothing that I found so hard to explain to my parents. This panic and anguish found new avenues through which to plague me. One moment, I felt joy in expressing who I was. The next, I felt frustrated and confused. It wasn’t until the summer after I had come out that I was able to settle into my gender expression and learn to navigate the social situations that came with it. I made the conscious choice to be “out” to my employers and the people I was interacting with. There were moments of embarrassment — awkwardness of trying to insert my pronouns into introductions, a plethora of misgenderings, etc. But they were learning experiences in how to navigate my gender expression in the “real world,” outside
ABBY DE RIEL / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
of college. I learned patience, graciousness, and honestly, how not to be bothered. My gender identity is a special part of who I am, but at the end of the day, just one small (and beautiful) part. I learned when it mattered to me to call attention to my gender identity and when it did not. In essence, I learned how to be myself and how to be happy being myself. And then, I really was happier than I had ever been: more confident, more sure of myself, and a whole lot less awkward. The following fall semester, I found a level of support that I could have only dreamed of previously through actively entering affinity spaces and spending time with an affirming network. The Gender + Sexuality Resource Center’s Gender Group gave me mentors who had been in my shoes and friends who were going through the same challenges. My eating club’s affinity group chat gave me a sense of belonging and no-judgmentcamaraderie that I had feared I would no longer have easy access to. A graduate student mentor of mine generously lent a ridiculously sympathetic ear to me when I first asked her about the prospect of medically transitioning. I had spent years fantasizing about it. From middle school onward, I would spend hours watching Youtube videos of people who had gone through the process and shared their stories. But I was afraid. The support network that I gained enabled me to finally make the appointment I had spent so long considering. I went into it with so much anxiety. I wasn’t out to my parents, a situation which makes insurance complicated. And I grew up in a religious environment that was generally both anti-gay and anti-trans. (A therapist in high school once told me to consider whether regularly attending church would cure me of my LGBTQ+ feelings.) I had heard more horror narratives of trying to medically transition than positive ones. When the UHS practitioner finally came into the room where I had been waiting and asked me why I had come in, I started crying. I thought I was about to have to jump through hoops to get the care I wanted — to be diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” or to carefully recount my lifelong struggle with gender. I was afraid I hadn’t been out for long enough to be considered valid or stable, or that a comment would be made about whether my identity was some sort of bandwagoning fad. I hadn’t always had amazing experiences with UHS concerning my regular health problems, and my expectations were low. None of my fears came to light. I was met with only sympathy, kindness, and a professionalism that I didn’t expect to be granted as a trans person. UHS practices an “informed consent” model of gender-affirming care, which basically means that a practitioner will carefully explain to you the effects of hormone therapy, and if you still want to go through with it, they’ll help you embark upon the process. After spending a generous amount of time ex-
plaining to me what it’s like to be on Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in a friendly manner, my practitioner ordered blood work for me, and after everything came back in order, sent the necessary prescriptions to the local CVS. I found the prescription remarkably affordable without insurance. And I found it insanely relieving that my practitioner had both extensive clinical experience with patients on HRT and personal experience with the process. All my nervous questions were answered with gentleness. When I filled the prescription, I came back into UHS, and the same practitioner I initially saw coached me on how to self-administer the prescribed hormones through injection. I shook a bit from nerves, but I was allowed to take all the time I needed. It wasn’t scary, and it didn’t hurt. At the time of writing this, I’m a few months on HRT, and I’m the happiest I have ever been with my body. I’ve found that HRT has not confined me to express myself as the gender often associated with the “opposite” of the one I was assigned at birth, but instead has freed me to feel my best no matter what clothing I’m wearing. Physical changes are slow — I purposefully started on a low dose to make sure of this — but welcome. “Second puberty” is awkward at times, but thanks to the advice and support of friends (cis and trans alike), it’s never felt embarrassing. I look in the mirror, and I see myself. That’s a privilege everyone should enjoy. It’s not that I never have doubts or anxieties. The nice thing is that medical transition can be stopped at any time. Many changes aren’t as permanent as one might think. Stopping medical transition is not a sign of defeat or not being “trans enough.” Everybody should have the right to explore their gender identity and their options for gender expression. Medical transition is just one option. I’m writing all of this to say that you are the one who gets to write your story. Socially and medically transitioning can be scary. It has been for me. But it’s not as intimidating as you might think, and it’s not impossible. Transitioning has led me to love myself in ways I never thought I could. Being trans at Princeton — where student groups still invite transphobic speakers and prominent professors are openly anti-trans — is not always easy. But the easy thing, I’ve been told, is not equal to the right thing. We are so much more powerful when we live openly as ourselves. The person you are inside — just like the person I am inside — is gorgeous, vibrant, and deserving of love. Do right by the person inside you. It’s our job to love those who live authentically as their authentic selves, and I hope we all do it well. Here’s to doing so, together. Editor’s Note: The ‘Prince’ granted the author of this essay anonymity due to privacy and safety concerns. Graphic by José Pablo Fernández García.
Friday February 18, 2022
The Daily Princetonian
page 13
The four songs that got me through my worst heartbreak By Claire Shin | Assistant Prospect Editor
This Valentine’s Day, I’m going to kill the mood by talking about heartbreak. It’s difficult to be open about it. It’s not just the minuscule yet terrifying chance that my ex will magically gain the knowledge that I am on the ‘Prince,’ look up “Claire Shin, The Daily Princetonian,” scroll through the search results, and see this article; it’s also hard to relive such moments without dredging up repressed memories, plus the added worry that I sound whiny to other people. To add insult to injury, alongside the terrible heartache of being forced to part with someone you love dearly, there’s no time to catch a breath, especially as a Princeton student. In a life filled with tests, projects, events to attend, and people to meet, we must practically sprint 24/7 to keep up. But then, what happens to the feelings and the pain? We have no choice but to find our own ways to cope. My outlet was music — knowing that I wasn’t alone inspired me to keep going, and it also empowered me to share my own very personal story. I think I’m ready to tell it now, through the lens of the four songs that stick out to me as the hallmarks of one of the toughest periods in my life. “Jocelyn Flores” — XXXTentacion My ex went off to camp for a few weeks and, in a move that’s in the gray zone between “losing feelings” and straight-up cheating, pursued a girl that he decided within three weeks was more worthwhile than our almost year-and-a-half long relationship. I felt like an idiot — this was happening without my knowledge, and while he was spending time with someone else, I was writing several-page long letters worrying and asking him if he was okay due to his lack of response to my communications. It came as a complete shock to me when he told me the truth. In the weeks that followed, XXXTentacion’s voice was what played in the background while I bawled my eyes out. His popularity increased after his death — a somewhat bittersweet trend among artists — and recently, “Jocelyn Flores,” inspired by a friend of X who had the same name and committed suicide, has blown up on TikTok. Though the words are so personal and raw that I almost feel guilty listening to them, I often also feel in awe of the courage X displayed in making those feelings public. I guess I’m doing the same thing here. Emo rap, to me, has a unique feeling of intimacy to it that makes it so much sadder than any catchy ballad could be. And at first, I kind of just wanted to be sad — I wanted to lie in the fetal position on my bed, spend more time asleep than awake, and swim in my misery. This song is perfect for that.
“happier” — Olivia Rodrigo As much as I say I hate my ex, there’s still a pathetic part of me that hopes he actively thinks about me sometimes. In fact, I blocked him on every social media platform except for Instagram in the hopes that one day he’d see one of my posts on his feed and marvel at how well I’m doing now. “happier,” my favorite song from Olivia Rodrigo’s hit debut album “Sour,” — and the most underrated, in my opinion — is about just that. It’s the process of beginning to move on but still wanting to be thought about, acknowledged, by someone you loved in the past. You know they don’t love you anymore, but they meant so much to you that you can’t help but feel that way. It’s the part of heartbreak where you think about whom they left you for, and you hope that at least you’re thought about
CLAIRE SHIN / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN
in some way because you gave them your all. For whatever reason, it just wasn’t enough. Whew. Thank you, Olivia, for this masterpiece. “Another Love” — Tom Odell At a certain point, halfway between depression and acceptance, I stopped thinking, “I don’t want to be with anyone else,” and started thinking, “What will happen when I do find someone new?” The thought depressed me — not because I still wanted to be with my ex, but because I felt as though I’d depleted all my time and effort on him. I didn’t want to do it all over again: back in the talking stage, asking someone bullshit questions like their favorite color, spending hours on trains and hundreds of dollars’ worth of train tickets to see them, getting my heart broken all over again. I’d done it once and exhausted my love. I was tired. This is what Tom Odell deals with in “Another Love,” where he mournfully confesses to a potential new lover that as much as he loves them, he’s simply too emotionally exhausted to give them a
relationship they deserve. Its lyrics are straightforward but incredibly piercing: “And if somebody hurts you, I wanna fight / But my hand’s been broken, one too many times.” The way he phrases it, he almost paints himself as a soldier who is too tired to go on. The final verse features a dramatic, passionate choral verse of “ohs” — and I’m a huge fan of harmony — that shakes you to your very soul and suddenly dissipates, leaving you with only Odell’s voice and an ending just as somber and minimalistic as the beginning. A worthwhile listen. “Happier Than Ever” — Billie Eilish Thank goodness the queens Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish released heartbreak-related albums in the same summer that I experienced my own. “Happier Than Ever” is anger in a nutshell. It starts out with the melancholy “typical Billie Eilish” sound and then explodes into the much more memorable second half, a rock-punk tirade featuring loud drums, bass, and heavy electric guitar. The shape of the music reminds me of an atom bomb: no matter how calm we are on the outside, once we exhaust ourselves emotionally, it’s only a matter of time before a chain reaction occurs and we explode. I listened to “Happier Than Ever” when I felt myself getting over my ex but still felt incredibly outraged by the manner in which he left and the scars he gave me that I have yet to heal from. The song has the uncanny ability to make me want to dance, though it absolutely doesn’t feel like a dance song; it got me out of bed and back to jumping to music. I think it was the beginning of my restoration. So yes, heartbreak is hard to talk about, but thankfully, musicians like Olivia Rodrigo, XXXTentacion, Billie Eilish, and Tom Odell have the courage to speak on it in ways that heal those who are suffering. And from the individual’s perspective, there’s something empowering about making your suffering public — what used to be a source of shame is now a piece of art. For many of us who’ve been betrayed by loved ones, it’s hard not to feel a bit excluded at this time of the year, but that’s what this music is for; it brings us comfort to see that someone else has survived the struggles we’re going through right now. And trust that it always gets better; if I can pull through, so can you. Take all the time you need to heal. You are seen and heard. Claire Shin is an Assistant Editor for The Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at claireshin@princeton. edu, on Instagram at @claireshin86, or on TikTok also at @claireshin86.
‘Recitatif ’ reviewed: ‘A brief and brilliant experiment’ By Gabriel Robare | Senior Writer
“Recitatif,” Toni Morrison’s rare short story rereleased as a stand-alone book on Feb. 1, is a brief and brilliant literary experiment. The story of the book is short and simple: two girls, Twyla (our narrator) and Roberta, go through their little lives. We see five encounters between them at different times and places: at the orphanage where they grew up, the restaurant where Twyla works, a grocery store, a picket line, and a coffee shop. Recitatif means music that wobbles between song and speech. Each of these episodes is pitched in loftier tones and in more dramatic styles than their ordinary lives. The book, then, is a recitatif of the womens’ lives. But the book is also a puzzle. It is made extremely clear that one of the girls is Black and one is white, but it is never clear which is which. Morrison keeps the language just vague enough to make the reader unsure. Recitatif has a more archaic definition of “the tone or rhythm peculiar to ordinary speech” — Morrison employs a mix of vernaculars for the two girls so that the reader is left to guess at their racial identities. Much of Zadie Smith’s introduction is devoted to this puzzle Morrison crafts. In a volume as slim as this — “Recitatif” is only 41 large-print, double-spaced pages — an introduction needs to do a lot of work. Smith’s, which takes up more than half the book, is a masterwork of literary analysis and written style. “In order to make [“Recitatif”] work,” Smith writes, “you’d need to write in such a way that every phrase precisely straddled the line between characteristically ‘black’ and ‘white’ American speech, and that’s a high-wire act in an eagleeyed country, ever alert to racial codes, adept at categorization, in which most people feel they can spot a black or white speaker with their eyes closed, precisely because of the tone and rhythm ‘peculiar to’ their language.” Thus, “Recitatif” is an experiment on the reader. We are left to guess which girl is white and which is Black. Or, we are left reading the thing claiming we don’t see color, or that the race of the characters doesn’t matter. But the book doesn’t let us ignore race: Twyla and Roberta discuss it, meet at pickets for forced integration, and make clear their class differences. Race screams for our attention. Morrison forces us to guess the race of each character. She thus makes us consciously and intentionally use our racial biases, makes us dredge up the assumptions and categories usually sequestered to our dark subconscious, and displays them front and center. As Smith writes
in the introduction, “Recitatif” is “a puzzle of a story, then — a game. Only, Toni Morrison does not play. When she called ‘Recitatif’ an ‘experiment’ she meant it. The subject of the experiment is the reader.” Morrison runs trials of this experiment throughout the book, from the first line: “My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick.” We learn immediately after this that the girls look different — one is white, one is Black — but we are not told which is which. We are left to try to guess at it from this moment. In Smith’s words, “Well, now, what kind of mother tends to dance all night? A black one or a white one?” Twyla and Roberta are first identified by their mothers and their upbringing — they are immediately defined by a difference that exists between the two girls. Later, Twyla says, “if my dancing mother met her sick mother it might be good for her.” These mothers are defined by their adjectives; this is a book about categorization and its consequences. This further complicates our guessing game: Does Twyla mean it would be good for a Black mother to meet a white one, or a white mother to meet a Black one? There are plenty of examples of this — the little ways that the girls are different are small footholds on which we try to guess the race of the characters.“[Roberta] wasn’t good at anything except jacks,” Morrison writes early, “at which she was a killer: pow scoop pow scoop pow scoop.” Jacks, as far as I know, have no racial connection, but “Recitatif” forces us to try and give it one, any foothold to answer its central question. In a later encounter, Twyla spots Roberta across a diner after years of separation: “Her own hair was so big and wild I could hardly see her face. But the eyes. I would know them anywhere.” What could this mean? The answer is up to our biases. Later still, Roberta tells Twyla she has four stepchildren with a widower: What does this tell us? In most cases, nothing. But within “Recitatif,” every minor detail is an article in Morrison’s grand experiment on our quiet biases by which our minds form racial categories. For “Recitatif” to work, Morrison had to make Roberta and Twyla very similar, yet just different enough to draw attention. So, the girls reflect each other throughout the story, like how they swapped beds every night at the orphanage. Near the end of the book, Roberta says to Twyla, “I wonder what made me think you were different.” Twyla says the same thing
right back: “I wonder what made me think you were different.” They are the same — and then I, the reader, have to wonder what made me think they were different. The ethical problem of the book’s plot concerns a third character, Maggie, a mute maid who works in the kitchen at the orphanage. The young girls shared a fascination for her. Late in the book, the women reminisce about the orphanage and disagree as to whether Maggie was Black. Neither can remember for sure: Twyla says, “When I thought about it I actually couldn’t be certain. She wasn’t pitchblack, I know, or I would have remembered that. What I remember was the kiddie hat, the semicircle legs.” The book ends: “Did I tell you, my mother, she never did stop dancing.” “Yes, you told me. And mine, she never got well.” Roberta lifted her hands from the tabletop and covered her face with her palms. When she took them away she really was crying. “Oh shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell happened to Maggie?” Maggie thus represents the confusion between the characters within the book — Twyla says, “Maggie was my dancing mother.” These categories are not created by omniscient authors, but by people choosing what individual characteristics mean. To Roberta, Maggie’s qualities connoted blackness. To Twyla, she couldn’t be sure. In Smith’s words, “‘Recitatif’ reminds me that it is not essentially black or white to be poor, oppressed, lesser than, exploited, ignored. The answer to ‘What the hell happened to Maggie’ is not written in the stars, or in the blood, or forever predetermined by history. Whatever was done to Maggie was done by people. People like Twyla and Roberta. People like you and me.” People, through their biases, create categories. “Recitatif” throws bright light on those biases — grabs them by the nape and tosses them into the arena to be observed. What the hell happened to Maggie? What made me think you were different? Only we, the reader, can answer. Gabriel Robare is a Senior Prospect Writer and literature critic who also often covers productivity and theater. He is also a Head Puzzles Editor and a Staff News Writer. He can be reached at grobare@ princeton.edu or on social @gabrielrobare.
The Daily Princetonian
page 14
Friday February 18, 2022
Princeton Public Library Black History Month event discusses Paul Robeson’s legacy and Black activism
By Katherine Dailey Head News Editor
In an event titled “Black Activism, Then and Now,” hosted by the Princeton Public Library on Tuesday, Feb. 15, panelists discussed the local, national, and international activism of Paul Robeson, a musician, athlete, and prominent activist for racial equality. Robeson was born in the town of Princeton and his legacy of sustained student activism at the University is still salient today. The panel was moderated by Nyle Fort GS ’21, who received his Ph.D. in Religion and Interdisciplinary Humanities with a concentration in African American Studies, and featured Dr. Shana L. Redmond, President-Elect of the American Studies Association and a scholar of English Literature and Race at Columbia University; Meena Jagannath, Director of Global Programs at Movement Law Lab, a social justice legal organization; and Reverend Lukata Mjumbe, Pastor of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church in the town of Princeton as panelists for the event. Robeson’s multifaceted legacy was a key point in the conversation. “ Many people want to just talk about Paul Robeson and the deep baritone Old Man River and that’s so important as a part of what he was,” Mjumbe stated. “But would you have really loved Paul Robeson when he was alive, when he was being burned in effigy up in upstate New York, when he was having his passport seized, when he was thinking that he had been poisoned, when he was given electroshock treatment, when when he was being attacked and vilified before the House Un-American Activities Committee?” Redmond explained the opposition Robeson faced from the U.S. State Department during the second Red Scare of the
1940s and 50s. He was “an enemy of the state, they would not allow him to travel abroad from 1950 to 1958,” she said, after his passport was revoked after he was accused of being a Communist, which eliminated most of his income from his career as a musician. “He was someone who was one of the petitioners and organizers for the 1951 We Charge Genocide petition that went to the United Nations,” she said. “He delivered the formable copy to the U.N. in New York City.” Jagannath connected Robeson’s experiences to what she has seen as a lawyer, especially working with young people in Chicago in the mid-2010s amid the early years of the Black Lives Matter movement. “The U.S. touts its reputation on the world stage as some bastion of human rights,” she said. “And meanwhile it is killing its own people, running tanks through the streets, and holding people arbitrarily off offshore, among many other abuses of its own people.” Mjumbe talked about how Robeson’s life had moved him to take action in his community. “Even before I became a pastor and was inspired by his father,” Mjumbe said of William Robeson, who served as the minister of the Witherspoon Street Presbyterian Church from 1880 to 1901. “Paul Robeson inspired me. Paul Robeson inspired me as an activist, as an organizer, as someone who thought locally, who worked locally but had visions that were global.” Robeson was an active opponent of a number of policies enacted by Woodrow Wilson ’1879 during his time as University president, particularly those excluding students of color from the University. “He demanded that one of Paul’s older brothers be able to enroll at Princ-
“BERLIN: PAUL ROBESON NAMED TO ACADEMY OF THE ARTS” BY STÖHR / CC-BY-SA 3.0
Paul Robeson (center) was honored at the Princeton Public Library Black History Month event this Wednesday.
eton University,” Mjumbe explained. “But the response was that we don’t have colors here at Princeton University.” This legacy of activism continues at Princeton, the panelists remarked. Fort recalled the campus atmosphere when he arrived at the University in 2014 to begin his Ph.D., in the wake of national protests after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Miss. On campus, the Black Justice League, a then newly-formed Black student activist group, had led a series of protests. “I think it is important what you said about Paul Robeson, and that relationship between President Woodrow Wilson because the students were fighting against the naming of the [public policy] school being under Woodrow Wilson, but not always seeing ourselves in the tradition of a Paul Robeson who had already been fighting and resisting these broader structures that go back to the to the very beginning of Princeton history,” he said.
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Redmond also discussed the lack of recognition for Robeson’s name and work in today’s world, telling Fort, “If I had a friend who knew his name, I would count myself lucky. Unfortunately, there are too many people who don’t know his name.” “It was a coerced forgetting, right?” she added. “It was at the hands of the State Department both in the U.S. and various other colonial nations around the world.” Mjumbe also commented on the importance of learning about Robeson and his story. “I think in some ways, you cannot understand Princeton — you certainly can’t understand Black Princeton — if you don’t understand the legacy of the Robeson family,” he said. Redmond also spoke on the legacy of activism at Princeton moving forward, specifically with regard to policing on campus. “How do we actually abolish policing on campuses?” she asked. “These are places of education, these are places that
should be welcoming and accommodating to everyone. And the police, we know, do not make us safer, they make us more vulnerable.” Jagannath highlighted the importance of these movements. “The manifestations of injustice that we see at the local level, they’re all interconnected, right, like the systems that are producing injustice,” she said. “You know, in Princeton, in Miami, and other places there are the same systems that are oppressing people elsewhere.” The event was co-hosted by the Pace Center for Civic Engagement and the Paul Robeson House of Princeton, and made possible with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It was hosted on Zoom from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Katherine Dailey is a Head News Editor who often covers breaking news, politics, and University affairs. She can be reached at kdailey@ princeton.edu or on Twitter at @kmdailey7.
Sports
Friday February 18, 2022
page 15
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com }
From pole vaulters to distance runners to hurdlers, Tigers have broken League and University records in recent weeks TRACK
Continued from page 16
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[of] the hard work [has built up] and we’re able to really explode and try to win,” she said. “I definitely think we are capable of [finishing] in the top couple places but we definitely want to win and I think we can.” With some of the fastest runners in the League, there is no reason that they shouldn’t. Timm anchored the distance medley relay team with Hock, Yared, and Asante that broke a 2007 Princeton school record and has performed well in
her individual events all season, including a 4:39.65 mile time at the Boston University Valentine invitational last weekend that landed her at second in Princeton history in the mile. Timm’s relay teammate, junior Maggie Hock, broke the school record for the 1000 meter race this past weekend with a stunningly fast time of 2:45.54. Unfortunately for the women, other Ivy League teams have had admirable seasons as well. Rivals Harvard and Yale seem to pose the greatest threat to the Tigers. Harvard ended in second place at last season’s HEPs while the Tigers landed at fourth, with the
Crimson currently the only team ahead of Princeton in the Ivy League rankings. “Harvard, I feel like, is always one of our biggest competitors,” Timm said “They are pretty stacked in most events, so that is definitely going to be our biggest challenge.” But the Tigers are not hung up on past or present rankings. “Obviously the rankings matter a little bit because it shows you sort of roughly what people are up to. But at the end of the day, it’s a one or two day competition where you come up and do your event,” senior thrower Luisa Chantler Edmond explained in a recent conver-
sation with the ‘Prince.’ Chantler-Edmond understands that HEPs is never an easy meet, but her attitude encompasses the spirit of the women’s track and field team. “If we keep our hand on the throttle, as it were, we will definitely surprise a lot of people.” The women’s team has certainly kept their hand on the throttle the past couple of weeks. Last weekend at the Valentine Invitational, junior Tia Rozario broke the Singapore National record for long jump with a leap of 5.71 meters. At that same meet the Tigers also achieved top 10 scores in Princeton histo-
COURTESY OF @PRINCETONTRACK/TWITTER.
Both the men’s and women’s track teams have found themselves near the top of the conference standings this season.
ry in six other events: the 400 meter, one mile, 1000 meter, 4x400 relay, and 2 top ten finishes in the 200 meter. The Tigers have proved strong not only on the track, but in the locker room as well, building a strong team dynamic as the season has progressed. The team has engaged in team dinners, social events, and, above all, practices and meets that have built a supportive squad filled with passion and energy. “I can really notice a big difference in our strength and capabilities, but in our team dynamics as well, which I feel like is really going to help accelerate and push us forward into the championship season,” Timm said. The successes of both the women’s team and the nationally ranked men should propel them into strong performances at HEPs on Feb. 26. It is a critical meet for Ivy League track and field athletes, where they perform directly against the rest of the conference. HEPs is usually the one thing that looms over us every year,” Christian Brown said. “At HEPs it’s always win. There’s no other option but win.” Win is exactly what the Tigers plan to do. And if they unleash their full potential on meet day in two weeks, both the men and women will be a very scary sight for the rest of the Ivy League. Eric Fenno is a contributor to the Sports and Prospect sections at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at ef4960@princeton. edu.
WOMEN’S FENCING
Women’s fencing crowned Ivy League Champions By Wilson Conn
Head Sports Editor
Three things are certain in life: death, taxes, and Princeton women’s fencing dominating their competition. The Tigers (25–0 overall, 8–0 Ivy League) entered this past weekend’s Ivy League championship with the No.1 ranking in the country. At the tournament, they proved why they are the top dogs (or perhaps cats, given Princeton’s mascot), defeating all six of their league opponents en route to the program’s 11th Ivy title. It was the team’s first title since 2017, with the group having finished as runnersup at the last three championships from 2018–2020. The victory also extends the Tigers’ streak of top-two finishes at the Ivy championships to 12 seasons. The last time they finished outside of the top two was in 2009, when they finished in third place at the Ivy championships. The Tigers also won all three individual titles at the Ivy League championships, with junior Chloe Fox-Gitomer winning in the saber discipline, first-year Jessica Lin claiming the epee title, and first-year Maia Weintraub emerging victorious in the foil competition. All three fencers posted a phenomenal 12–2 record in their respective bouts at the tournament. The title is especially impressive when one considers that of the Tigers’ Ivy rivals,
all but Brown are nationally ranked, and three (No. 2 Columbia, No 4. Cornell, and No. 5 Harvard) appear in the top five. None of these nationally-ranked opponents even came close to beating the Tigers, with the closest margin being a whopping nine points. The women opened up the weekend by making quick work of No. 11 Penn (16–10, 3–4), who they defeated with a commanding 21–6 scoreline. The Tigers then dispatched Brown (16–7, 0–7) by a tally of 22–5. Next up for the Tigers was No. 10 Yale (12–5, 3–5), who made up some ground by losing just 5–4 in the epee discipline, but ultimately fell 18–9 to Princeton. The Tigers would match this winning scoreline twice more against No. 5 Harvard (15–4, 4–3) and No. 4 Cornell (33–5, 3–5). “The way they picked the format was to have the higher-ranked teams fence each other last to create more suspense and excitement,” Lin wrote in a comment to The Daily Princetonian. The Tigers’ highestranked opponent of the weekend, No. 3 Columbia (26–5–1, 5–3–0), was simply no match for their momentum. Princeton easily handled the Lions 20–7, with an especially impressive 8–1 advantage in foil. The victory was a staggering improvement over a match earlier this season which saw the Tigers eke out a narrow 14–13 win. “Going into the second
day, we knew we had to go really hard against [No. 3] Columbia because the last time we fenced them we won only by a very small margin,” Weintraub wrote to the ‘Prince.’ “This time, we were really prepared and had a plan for lineups and strategy.” “We had the same thing going against [No. 5 Harvard], and it paid off,” Lin added. “Overall, no team
got more than nine bouts out of 27 against us, and we thought that was very impressive.” Following their Ivy League triumph, the Tigers will have one final meet at Temple on Feb. 27 before hosting the NCAA MidAtlantic/South Regional in Jadwin Gymnasium on March 12. “We’re looking to train for NCAAs and keep momen-
tum strong,” Weintraub told the ‘Prince.’ “It’s great to be Ivy League champions.” Wilson Conn is a co-head editor for the Sports section at the ‘Prince’ who typically covers football, basketball, and breaking news. He is also a senior writer for the Podcast section. He can be reached at wconn@ princeton.edu or on Twitter at @wilson_conn.
COURTESY OF @PRINCETONFENCING/INSTAGRAM.
The Tigers won all three individual titles and the team titles at the 2022 Ivy League Fencing Championships.
Friday February 18, 2022
Sports
page 16
{ www.dailyprincetonian.com } TRACK AND FIELD
‘We literally went full throttle’: After historic season, Princeton track looks to Ivy Championships
By Eric Fenno
Sports contributor
The past two weeks have been exhilarating for Princeton’s track and field program. Yet with the Ivy League and NCAA Championships still on the horizon, the Tigers are just getting started. After two seasons affected by COVID-induced cancellations, Princeton has come into the 2022 indoor track season hot off the blocks. The men’s team quickly climbed to No. 7 in the country, and now sits at No. 17. The women, meanwhile, are competing for a top spot in the Ivy League. Earlier this month, junior pole vaulter Sondre Guttormsen launched himself through the air, twirled over a 5.75 meter high bar, and landed gracefully on his back to soar over the Ivy League pole vaulting record. Christian Brown, a senior, sped through the 60 meter hurdles in an astonishing 7.76 seconds for another Ivy League best. Brown described the scene around the track after breaking the record in a recent interview with The Daily Princetonian. “I didn’t even see the time. I was just looking around to
see coaches throwing their hands up,” Brown said. “My head coach was at the shot put pit hugging the shot putter as he’s getting ready to put. You just see everyone get really happy… when people win, everybody wins.” The track and field team’s distance runners have broken records in recent weeks, too. Senior distance runner Sam Ellis ran a 3:56.87 mile to break the Ivy league record. The women’s distance medley relay (DMR) team, composed of runners from all four of Princeton’s undergraduate classes (firstyear Adelaide Asante, sophomore Tsion Yared, junior Maggie Hock and senior Caroline Timm) topped the school record in their event with an impressive time of 11:11. The recent record-breaking is especially impressive when one considers that the Tigers did not have complete seasons the past two years. Senior shot putter C.J. Licata said that the team’s consistency and work ethic over that period is a huge reason for the team’s success this year. “Myself and my teammates, whatever the event group, we literally went full throttle the entire time
THE WEEK IN NUMBERS: TIGERS STANDINGS AND RESULTS MEN’S HOCKEY: ECAC STANDINGS
over COVID,” Licata told the ‘Prince.’ “That’s all we did. No distractions.” A year of training is not the only factor in the team’s remarkable success this season, though. Junior sprinter Ibrahim Ayorinde stated that what sets Princeton’s team apart this year is their ability across every event. “It even surprised me how good we were this year,” he told ‘the Prince.’ “I think it’s because I see a lot of depth [in this year’s team]. We are basically good in every single event group.” The numbers certainly reflect Ayorinde’s claims. Ayorinde himself currently leads the Ivy League this season in the 60m and 200m races, and his teammates top the Ivies in 12 of the other 20 events. The Tigers’ domination ranges from long and high jump, to pole vault, to shot put, to the 800m, and to almost every sprinting event. It suffices to say that the men have earned some confidence moving into the Ivy League Heptagonal Indoor Track and Field Championships (HEPs) at the end of February. Licata called HEPs “the competition [they] always circle on our calendar” as an important meet, and he said
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
QUINNIPIAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 PTS CLARKSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 PTS HARVARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 PTS CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 PTS COLGATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 PTS R.P.I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 PTS PRINCETON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 PTS UNION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 PTS
9. 10. 11. 12.
BROWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 PTS ST. LAWRENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 PTS DARTMOUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 PTS YALE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 PTS
RESULTS FROM THE LAST WEEK: FRI., FEB. 11: CLARKSON 7, PRINCETON 1 SAT., FEB. 12: PRINCETON 3, ST. LAWRENCE 2 MON., FEB. 14: DARTMOUTH 7, PRINCETON 3 UPCOMING GAMES: FRI., FEB. 18: PRINCETON AT HARVARD SAT., FEB. 19: PRINCETON AT DARTMOUTH
WOMEN’S HOCKEY: ECAC STANDINGS
See TRACK page 15
MEN’S SKELETON
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
YALE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46.5 PTS HARVARD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44.5 PTS QUINNIPIAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 PTS CLARKSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.5 PTS COLGATE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39.5 PTS ST. LAWRENCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 PTS CORNELL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 PTS PRINCETON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 PTS
9. 10. 11. 12.
BROWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.5 PTS R.P.I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 PTS DARTMOUTH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 PTS UNION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 PTS
RESULTS FROM THE LAST WEEK: FRI., FEB. 11: NO. 6 HARVARD 2, PRINCETON 0 SAT., FEB. 12: PRINCETON 4, DARTMOUTH 0 SUN., FEB. 13: PRINCETON 4, DARTMOUTH 1 UPCOMING GAMES: FRI., FEB. 18: BROWN AT PRINCETON, 6 P.M. (SENIOR NIGHT) SAT., FEB. 19: NO. 6 YALE AT PRINCETON, 3 P.M. (BLACK OUT BAKER)
MEN’S BASKETBALL: IVY LEAGUE STANDINGS “BMW IBSF WORLD CUP BOB & SKELETON 2016/17 PYEONGCHANG” BY REPUBLIC OF KOREA / CC BY-SA 2.0
Nathan Crumpton ‘08 competes at the Skeleton World Cup in 2017.
Nathan Crumpton ’08 finishes 19th in skeleton at Beijing Winter Olympics By Akshay Swani
Sports contributor
Even before he took to the track to compete in skeleton at the Beijing Winter Olympics, Nathan Crumpton ’08 had already made headlines around the world. For the opening ceremony of the games, Crumpton, who represents American Samoa, was dressed in traditional Samoan clothing. According to Sports Illustrated, he wore a pale fuiono headpiece decorated with nautilus shells, tapa cloth made from mulberry bark, and a feathered kiki fulumoa around his waist. During the Opening Ceremony, he drew quite a bit of attention among viewers worldwide. During the ceremony, Google searches for “American Samoa” surged. After receiving a flood of media requests from reporters, Crumpton had to publicly declare that he would not speak to journalists until after he was finished competing. Crumpton’s skeleton event is one of the more unusual Olympic sports. In this event, participants
run and hurl themselves onto a sled and ride down, headfirst, on an icy 1615 meter — about one mile — long track at speeds up to nearly 95 miles per hour. In the men’s and women’s competition, all riders get four runs. At the end of the event, all participants’ times are added together and calculated to the hundredth of a second. The competitor with the fastest combined time is named the winner. With a time of 4:06.80, Crumpton finished 19th overall at the 2022 Beijing Games. Although Crumpton failed to earn a medal, the result was not his only focus during the games. Crumpton recently declared his candidacy in the current election for one of two open spots on the International Olympic Committee athletes’ commission. Crumpton has said he hopes to increase financial stability for Olympic athletes, who often have trouble affording the expensive costs of competition. Crumpton has struggled with his own sport’s financial demands. He spent $340 of his own money to reactivate the American
Samoa Bobsled Federation in 2020. He has also spent around a total of $40,000 just this past season to compete. A scholarship from the International Olympic Committee’s Solidarity Fund has covered half of these expenses. Crumpton even started a GoFundMe page to raise money, promising to put the names of donors inside his sled. Even with the steep financial demands, Crumpton seemed determined to continue competing. With his appearance in the Beijing Winter Games, he became one of just over 100 athletes to compete in both the Winter and Summer games, having represented American Samoa last summer in the 100-meter sprint. “I realize that my days of top 10 World Cups and World Championship finishes are likely behind me,” he told the New York Times. “It’s more been about just sliding and having fun.” Akshay Swani is a contributor to the Sports and News sections at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at ns9735@ princeton.edu.
CONFERENCE RECORD OVERALL RECORD 1. YALE 8 –1 14–9 2. PENN 8 –2 11–12 3. PRINCETON 7–2 17–5 4. CORNELL 5 –5 13 –8 5. 6. 7. 8.
BROWN HARVARD DARTMOUTH COLUMBIA
4 –6 3 –6 2 –7 1 –9
12–13 11–10 5 –15 4 –18
RESULTS FROM THE LAST WEEK: SAT., FEB. 12: PRINCETON 85, DARTMOUTH 40 UPCOMING GAMES: FRI., FEB. 18: PRINCETON AT BROWN, 7 P.M. SAT., FEB. 19: PRINCETON AT YALE, 7 P.M.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL: IVY LEAGUE STANDINGS CONFERENCE RECORD OVERALL RECORD 1. PRINCETON 9 – 0 17 – 4 2. COLUMBIA 8 –1 17 –4 3. YALE 6 –4 13 –9 4. HARVARD 6 –4 12 –10 5. 6. 7. 8.
PENN CORNELL BROWN DARTMOUTH
4 –5 3 –6 1 –9 1 –9
9 –12 8 –12 6 –16 2 –20
RESULTS FROM THE LAST WEEK: SAT., FEB. 12: PRINCETON 70, DARTMOUTH 48 UPCOMING GAMES: FRI., FEB. 18: BROWN AT PRINCETON, 7 P.M. SAT., FEB. 19: YALE AT PRINCETON, 6 P.M.