The Daily Princetonian: September 30, 2022

U. TO DISSOCIATE FROM 90 FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES, INCLUDING EXXON

Students raise awareness, money for floods in Pakistan

By Michelle Miao and Jackie Zhou News Contributors

The South Asian Progres sive Alliance (SAPA) held a teach-in event on Mon day, Sept. 26, and organized speeches in front of Frist Campus Center to promote their goal of raising $5,000 this week for Pakistan flood relief efforts. The speakers discussed the devastating impact of the floods, the im plications of climate change, and the University’s responsi bility to create change.

Since mid-June, heavy monsoon rains in Pakistan have led to catastrophic floods and landslides that destroyed homes, crops, and critical infrastructure.

Speaking to students gath ered on Frist’s North Lawn, graduate student Meher Ali recounted the devastating ef fects of the floods.

by the floods.

Aleha Amjad ’25, an inter national student from La hore, Pakistan, equated the damage in Pakistan to “the entire state of New York being underwater and destroyed.”

Other speakers recounted their personal connections to Pakistan and urged the Princ eton community to help in any way possible.

Aly Rashid ’26, an interna tional student from Pakistan, described messaging his friends back home and real izing how bad the conditions had become.

“The most important text [my friend] sent me was ‘don’t just go by the numbers’ be cause the numbers on Al Jazeera, the numbers on CNN, [and] even the numbers that the Pakistani government is sending out aren’t painting the complete picture,” Rashid said.

By Paige Cromley Staff News Writer

On Sept. 29, Princeton Uni versity announced that its Board of Trustees voted ear lier in the month to dissociate from Exxon Mobil Corp, NRG Energy, and 88 other corpora tions “active in the thermal coal or tar sands segments of the fossil fuel industry.”

The announcement also stated that the Princeton Uni versity Investment Company (PRINCO) will “eliminate all

holdings in publicly traded fossil fuel companies” and “ensure that the endowment does not benefit from any fu ture exposure to those com panies” as part of the Board’s “commitment to achieving a net-zero endowment portfo lio over time.”

Princeton has current or recent financial relationships with 10 of the 90 companies listed as subject to dissocia tion, including Exxon Mobil, NRG Energy, and Canadian Natural Resources.

The PROSPECT

The mysterious case of a Persian polymath in the Princeton University Chapel

By David Chmielewski | Guest Contributor

In an experience I think is common for many Princeton students, I often find myself searching for more immediate signifi cance to my studies: it is one thing to spend a lot of time reading and think ing about postcolonialism, but an entirely more diffi cult thing to find out how to work with an abstract name for a very real phe nomenon in the contempo rary world.

So, when doing some reading in a collection ed ited by Mahmoud Eid and Karim H. Karim titled “Reimagining the Other: Cul ture, Media, and WesternMuslim Intersections,” I was shocked and excited when I encountered a ref erence to the very campus where I was reading. Final ly, here was the immediate significance I was looking

for: a one sentence men tion of a single window in the Princeton University Chapel.

Chapels are, by conven tional definition, places of Christian worship and Princeton’s chapel is no exception; the most com mon events at the Chapel remain Christian services.

According to its official website, the building was constructed to “permit the University to maintain its religious heritage” as an institution closely linked to the Presbyterian church.

The visual elements of the Chapel represent this Christian identity, such as the building’s Collegiate Gothic style, a reference to Gothic cathedrals in Eng land, or its stained glass windows filled with New Testament iconography.

According to the an nouncement, the “quantita tive criteria used to deter mine the dissociation list were based on recommenda tions made by a panel of fac ulty experts in a report sub mitted in May.”

The Faculty Panel on Dis sociation Metrics, Principles, and Standards had been created after the Board of Trustees first announced its intention to dissociate from “companies engaged in cli

U. AFFAIRS

“This is the worst flooding in Pakistan’s recorded his tory,” Ali said. “The rains are running at more than 780 per cent above average levels of certain regions.”

Ali stood in front of a post er that showed one-third of Pakistan submerged in water. She explained that there has been “two million acres of crop trip and damage so far, one million livestock animals dead, [and] 250,000 homes de stroyed.” More than 33 mil lion people have been affected

Rashid is a features and newsletter contributor at The Daily Princetonian.

“[These sources] might tell you that these many schools have been destroyed,” he added. “They’re not telling you that those children are probably never getting edu cation again. They might tell you that these many people are displaced, but they’re not telling you the amount of waterborne diseases that are spreading.”

Ali added that scientific ev

University Provost Deborah A. Prentice nominated to lead University of Cambridge

By Bailey Glenetske Assistant News Editor

On Sept. 26, Princeton announced that University Provost Deborah A. Pren tice has been nominated to take the lead at the Uni versity of Cambridge as the university’s first American Vice-Chancellor, the equiv alent of the presidency at an American university.

With one of the Univer sity’s most powerful ad ministrative positions now soon to be vacated, Univer sity President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 shared in an email to faculty and staff that “the search for [Pren tice’s] successor will begin immediately.”

The announcement said that Prentice “would be the first American to fill the top academic and administra tive role at the [University of Cambridge], among the world’s oldest, which was founded in 1209.” Prentice, the University’s Provost for the past five years and pro fessor of psychology for over 25 years, called the nomina tion “a huge honor” in the University announcement.

Varsity, a British news outlet, reported that Pren tice will serve as the longterm successor to current

Vice-Chancellor Stephen Toope.

“I am confident that Pro fessor Prentice will bring fresh perspectives and new ideas to Cambridge, and I look forward to seeing our world-leading university continue to flourish under her guidance,” Toope told Varsity of his successor.

The University of Cam bridge, located in Cam bridge, United Kingdom, is regarded as one of the most prestigious higher-edu cation institutions in the world.

Eisgruber said Prentice is a “brilliant choice” for the role in the University state

ment. “I am delighted by the prospect that [Prentice] will lead another of the world’s great research universities,” he said.

Prentice also shared her gratitude for the nomina tion, saying that it is “a huge honor.” Prentice has served the University in a variety of roles over the past 34 years, most recently as the Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Psychol ogy and Public Affairs, and has helped lead “nearly 20 [initiatives] stemming from the University’s 2016 strate gic planning framework.” According to her biography

This Week on Campus

ARTS

Party

Grinalds

ACADEMICS | Decentering Song-dynasty China: The Chanyuan International Order, 1004-1226 C.E. Wednesday, Oct. 5 in Jones Hall 202 @ 4:30-6 p.m.

COURTESY OF AARON SERIANNI ’25

Members of Divest Princeton gather in front of Nassau Hall on Sept. 23.

STUDENT LIFE

Friday September 30, 2022 vol. CXLVI no. 18 www. dailyprincetonian .com{ } Twitter: @princetonian Facebook: The Daily Princetonian YouTube: The Daily Princetonian Instagram: @dailyprincetonian ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

| Icarus and Other Deborah Prentice speaking at a CPUC meeting in November 2021.

History Professor Divya Cherian: We are all in this boat

role in the larger climate cri sis. Nate Howard ’25 criticized Princeton’s connections to the fossil fuel industry.

idence showed the floods are “not a one-off event.” These extreme weather conditions are expected to repeat in the future.

“Alongside the environ mental causes, it’s important to understand the legacies of both colonial and post-colo nial regimes of development,” Ali said. She encouraged stu dents to “support Pakistan’s case for loss and damage” and to “actively encourage conver sations around, not just char ity, but things like debt can cellation, which for Pakistan would be game changing.”

Ali explained that wealthy nations broke the promise to “channel a hundred billion dollars to less developed na tions to fight climate change.”

“Pakistan is one of the most climate vulnerable coun tries in the world, although it contributes less than one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions while the G20 countries produce 80 per cent,” she said.

Several other speakers at the event echoed Ali’s sentiments, and reflected on Princeton’s

“Our institutional wealth, the wealth that Princeton will use to keep itself safe during the climate crisis, is built upon the pollution of our environment,” said How ard, who is active with Divest Princeton, a group that advo cates for full divestment of the University’s endowment from fossil fuels. “The destruction and death in Pakistan is the result of extracted economic practices and fossil fuels that we are benefiting from today.”

Howard is a contribut ing columnist at The Daily Princetonian.

Rashid emphasized the im portance for individuals to help those in need, and said that even the smallest step can go a long way. He called for the Princeton community to “start peeking out of the orange bubble.”

“Ten dollars can mean a lot to the families there. Just asking the three people sit ting next to you [in the din ing hall], ‘Do you know what’s happening in Pakistan?’ can mean a lot to the Pakistanis there,” he said. “Let us try to

actually prove that Princeton’s motto really is to be in the na tion’s service and in the ser vice of humanity, including humanity 7,000 miles away.”

Faraz Awan ’24 emphasized the importance of this is sue to the University and its surrounding areas: “[T]his is something that really needs to be spoken about to the broader Princeton communi ty,” Awan said. “We can really do a lot to help out.”

History professor Divya Cherian said she felt the meeting was important to both register solidarity with the people of Pakistan, and to recognize that eventually, the climate crisis will affect everyone.

“We are all in this boat,” Cherian said.

Michelle Miao is a news and newsletter contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at mm3350@princeton.edu, @mi chxllem on Twitter, or @_michel leiao at Instagram.

Jackie Zhou is a news con tributor for the ‘Prince,’ she can be reached at jacqueline.zhou@ princeton.edu.

Prentice: I look forward to returning and welcoming people to visit me in Cambridge

CAMBRIDGE

Continued from page 1

on the University Provost’s website, Prentice has “served as the dean of the faculty from 2014–2017, chair of the Psychology Department for 12 years, and co-chair of the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity.”

Over her academic career, Prentice has received numer ous accolades and awards, including the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1994, and has published over 50 pieces of

literature in the fields of psychology and public af fairs.

Reflecting on her many years spent at Princeton, Prentice expressed her love for the University and grati tude for the people she has come to know.

“I’ll always love Princ eton,” she said in the Uni versity statement. “I have many, many friends here. I look forward to returning and to welcoming people to visit me in Cambridge.”

The Provost seat has some times been viewed through out University history as a

path toward the presidency. Eisgruber himself — as well as past University President William G. Bowen ’55, who served in Nassau Hall from 1972 to 1988 — were both ap pointed to the position of University President after serving as University Pro vost.

Bailey Glenetske is an as sistant news editor who often covers breaking news, Univer sity affairs and STEM news. She can be reached at bailey. glenetske@princeton.edu or on Instagram @bailey.glenetske.

Comedian Ilana Glazer performs stand up, talks comedy, identity, and success with Jordan Salama ’19

By Sophie Glaser and Abby Leibowitz News Contributors

Comedian Ilana Glazer addressed the Princeton community on Sept. 21, tak ing the stage in Richardson Auditorium to perform an original stand-up set. The show was followed by a con versation with Pre-Read au thor Jordan Salama ’19 about succeeding in comedy, cre ative processes and growth, and incorporating identity as a queer, Jewish woman in her work.

Glazer is best known for her work on “Broad City,” a Comedy Central series cowritten with and co-star ring fellow comedian Abbi Jacobson. Recently, Glazer worked as a producer for the Tony Award-winning Broad way show, “A Strange Loop,” and she released her debut stand-up special on Amazon Prime in 2020.

The Center for Jewish Life (CJL) and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Stu dents (ODUS) co-sponsored the show, but the original idea for the event traces back to student leadership.

Abigail Goldberg-Zelizer ’24, education chair for the CJL, had the idea to bring Glazer to campus this past sum mer.

“It kind of popped into my head that I should invite her to come speak at the CJL. But then quickly, things got much bigger than the CJL, because of just the nature of how famous she was, and so ODUS wanted to get in volved,” Goldberg-Zelizer said.

Goldberg-Zelizer worked alongside Amichai Feit ’23, president of the CJL Student Board, to develop the pro gram. When they brought the idea to representatives from ODUS, they proposed that the University host her in conjunction with Salama, who was heavily involved in late-night comedy while a student at Princeton. Dur ing his time as a student, Salama founded “Princeton Tonight,” an on-campus broadcast television pro gram, and invited various comedians to speak at the University.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Salama spoke about his passion for storytelling and how com edy can be a powerful tool. Salama also discussed his experience with the CJL and Jewish community at Princ eton, recounting Shabbat dinners and community events.

According to Deputy Dean of Undergraduate Students Thomas Dunne, this event was part of a larger effort on ODUS’ part to bring en tertainers to campus not only to perform but also to speak in conversation with others. Dunne said he hopes attendees could “reflect on pop culture as a window to thought processes and cre ative thinking.”

Dunne added that having Glazer in conversation with Salama could be “a gateway for students to think about who they follow and enrich their understanding of com edy.” He said he thinks her work and advice would not only resonate with students interested in performing arts and comedy, but with all Princetonians, stating that “students are all pro ducers of content.”

In her set, Glazer covered many topics, including

motherhood, pregnancy, social pressures, family, and more. Glazer connected her stand-up to the lives of Princeton students, start ing the show by referenc ing the importance of vot ing and acknowledging the leaps that voting rights have made throughout the coun try’s history.

“Your President … is Chris Eisgruber, right? Your vote counts as much as Chris Eisgruber! Go play the ulti mate joke on the Founding Fathers,” she said during the show after encouraging the audience to vote.

Echoing the sentiments of many audience members and organizers, Salama re marked on Glazer’s ability to incorporate her Jewish iden tity into her comedy.

“One of the things that I really admire about what she does is that she actually brings in her Jewishness in a way that is normal. And it’s not over the top. And it’s not seen as something that makes her different necessarily. It’s just sprin kled into everyday conversa tions,” Salama said.

At several points during her set, Glazer played on this aspect of her identity. In one notable instance, a Princ eton sweatshirt she had taken off after some time onstage fell off the stool next to her. Without miss ing a beat, Glazer picked it up and, turning to the audi ence, said “you know what we do now,” before proceed ing to kiss the sweatshirt, in a move referential to the Jewish tradition of kissing a holy book that has fallen onto the ground.

“I will be handing that sweatshirt down to my daughter,” she quipped af terward.

Moments like this that highlighted Glazer’s iden tity made an impression on some student attendees.

“It was great to see a queer, political Jew being queer, political, and Jewish. [Glazer] doesn’t shy away from any of that. She talks about it, she’s open about it,” Emanuelle Sippy ’25 said. “I resonated with so much of the way that she is interact ing with the world.”

Others noted Glazer’s presence while performing. Reflecting on what made the show so engaging, Luke Car roll ’26 said, “She commands the stage in a way that very few comedians are able to do.”

In the latter portion of the show in conversation with Salama, Glazer remarked of ten on learning to “feel like she’s been enough” and en couraged audience members to do what they can to make their lives easier. She specif ically listed saving money, finding the confidence to be oneself, and finding people who provide balance in life.

“Nourish your core, and be as aware as you can of your toolkit,” Glazer said. “Do what you can to be gen tle to yourself.”

Sophie Glaser is a news and features contributor, as well as a copy staffer for the ‘Prince,’ she can be reached at sglaser@princeton.edu or @ SophieMGlaser on Twitter.

Abby Leibowitz is a news contributor for the ‘Prince,’ she can be reached at al6080@ princeton.edu, @abigalleibow1 on twitter and @abby.leibow itz on instagram.

Six days prior to the announcement, Divest Princeton held a rally in front of Nassau Hall pushing for full divestment

mate disinformation cam paigns or that are involved in the thermal coal and tar sands segments of the fossil fuel industry” in May, 2021, following recommendations from the Council of the Princ eton University Community (CPUC) Resources Committee.

The thermal coal and tar sands segments of the fossil fuel industry were identi fied for their exceptionally high carbon dioxide emis sions compared to other fos sil fuels, according to the an nouncement.

Dissociation includes di vestment — a decision to refuse to invest — from a corporation, but is defined by the University as “also re fraining, to the greatest ex tent possible, from from any relationships that involve a financial component with a particular company,” includ ing “soliciting or accepting gifts or grants from a compa ny, purchasing the company’s products, or forming partner ships with the company that depend upon the exchange of money.”

This includes research partnerships with a financial component, such as Princ eton’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, which has had an ongoing re search partnership with Exx on Mobil since 2015.

To compensate for the re search funding lost as a result of dissociation, the University will “establish a new fund to support energy research at Princeton.”

In the announcement, Uni versity President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 was quoted praising this new fund, say ing “Princeton will have the most significant impact on the climate crisis through the scholarship we generate and the people we educate.”

In March, Princeton re leased figures related to its holdings in the fossil fuel in dustry, revealing a $1.7 billion

exposure to the industry with $13 million directly invested in fossil-fuel corporations. In the 2021 fiscal year, Princ eton’s endowment was valued at $37.7 billion.

The announcement also points out that the University could reform relationships with companies subject to dissociation in the future if it deems that they have “suf ficiently changed their prac tices such that they no longer meet the criteria” for dissocia tion.

Currently, the University is contacting the leaders of the companies on the list, and if “a company provides infor mation in a timely manner that resolves the concerns or demonstrates changed behav ior moving forward, it could be exempt from dissociation and removed from the list.”

Students have been advo cating for fossil fuel divest ment for almost a decade. Most recently, campus activ ist group Divest Princeton held a rally on Sept. 23 where students expressed concern about the slow pace of Uni versity action, as well as its ac ceptance of research funding from fossil fuel companies.

Divest Princeton student coordinators Nate Howard ’25 and Aaron Serianni ’25 wrote in a joint statement to The Daily Princetonian that “[t] his decision is the result of a decade of activism by Princ eton students, faculty, staff, and alumni.”

They said, however, that “Princeton still falls short.”

Howard is a contributing columnist for the ‘Prince.’

“Divest Princeton will keep fighting for our goals of full divestment and the end to all fossil fuel funding of research on campus,” they wrote. “We know that it’s pos sible: They’ve come this far. It’s Princeton’s moment to be come a leader.”

Paige Cromley is a junior who writes for the News, Features, and Prospect sections of the ‘Prince’. She can be reached at pcromley@ princeton.edu.

By Owen Travis Head Puzzles Editor

University files motion to dismiss religious discrimination suit brought by ex-employee

By Olivia Sanchez News Contributor

The University filed a motion on Sept. 20 re questing that a religious discrimination lawsuit, brought forward by former University budget analyst Kate McKinley, be dis missed. The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 16, alleged that the University fired McKinley due to her religious objec tions to the COVID-19 vac cine employee requirement and other pandemic proto cols.

McKinley was provided with a religious exemption from receiving the vaccine, but further requested ex emptions from testing, mask-wearing, and contact tracing. The University’s filing notes that McKin ley did not specify her re ligious reasonings for re questing those subsequent accommodations. Rather, she had “generalized medi cal objections, including that healthy people should not have to wear masks,” according to the Univer sity.

The filing, which argues for the dismissal of McKin ley’s suit, claims that Princ eton did not discriminate nor retaliate against her. It states that McKinley failed to plead her claims for reli gious discrimination and retaliation, and that the complaint fails to meet fed eral pleading standards.

The initial lawsuit was filed on the grounds of Ti tle VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the New Jersey Law Against Discrimina tion (NJLAD), and the Ge netic Information Nondis crimination Act (GINA).

In an email to The Daily Princetonian, University Spokesperson Michael Hotchkiss said that the University has nothing to add to its initial statement on the suit.

“The University handled this former employee’s accommodation request fairly, appropriately, and in accordance with the applicable laws and inter nal policies,” University spokesperson Ayana Okoya previously told the ‘Prince.’ “We intend to defend the litigation vigorously and expect to vindicate our ac tions in court.”

McKinley is represented by Vlasac & Shmaruk, LLC, which did not respond to a request for comment.

The University’s filing argues that McKinley’s ter mination from the Univer sity did not violate Title VII or NJLAD due to a prior ruling in “Fallon v. Mercy Catholic Medical Center.”

The filing cited Fallon and stated that employees must “explain how their purported beliefs conflict ing with an employer’s policies are religious in nature.” This argument, if held up in court, would refute McKinley’s claim of retaliation, as the filing states that McKinley “was informed that compliance with Princeton’s COVID-19 safety protocols was a con dition for continued em ployment at Princeton,” but that she chose not to comply, which in turn served as the grounds for her termination.

The University stated in the filing that it did not vi olate GINA because McKin ley did “not allege that the

saliva samples taken from Princeton’s employees were being used for any pur pose other than COVID-19 testing, which is a pub lic health measure sanc tioned by the CDC and the New Jersey Department of Health.” According to the filing, McKinley did not al lege that her employment was terminated due to her genetic information.

McKinley also filed a discrimination complaint against the University through the Equal Employ ment Opportunity Com mission (EEOC). The Uni versity’s filing notes that the EEOC allows employers to mandate periodic COV ID-19 testing and that GINA can only be invoked when employers request specific genetic information from employees.

A similar case was suc cessfully combated by Rut gers University last year, in which a federal judge decided not to block the University’s vaccine man date. In that case, the judge found that the plaintiffs “failed to demonstrate the action was likely to succeed or that the plaintiffs would face irreparable harm.” Similar cases in other states have been similarly unsuccessful.

The University will move to dismiss the complaint in court on Oct. 17.

Olivia Sanchez is a news contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at olivi asanchez@princeton.edu or on Twitter @oliviamsanc.

GUANYI CAO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

Administrators in Nassau Hall face accusations in court of religious discrimination.

‘A voice for Armenia is a voice for democracy’: Princeton Armenian Society responds to conflict abroad

By Rebecca Cho News Contributor

The Princeton Armenian Society is working to raise on-campus and national awareness of the recent in vasion of the Republic of Armenia by the Azerbai jani Armed Forces.

The society aims to pro vide non-Armenians with credible sources of infor mation on Armenia’s his tory of conflict, including the Armenian genocide from 1915 to 1923, the attacks on the Nagorno-Karabakh region in the Republic of Artsakh in 2020, and the current crisis which began overnight on Sept. 12 with the Azerbaijani invasion.

Over the course of the past year, the Princeton Ar menian Society, led by copresidents Katerina Hov nanian-Alexanian ’25 and Hayk Yengibaryan ’26, has been taking steps to raise awareness of the injustic es against the Armenian community. In March, the Princeton Armenian Soci ety invited the Armenian Ambassador to the United States, Lilit Makunts, to campus to discuss the ob stacles facing Armenia’s democratic regime.

Yengibaryan is a sports contributor for The Daily Princetonian.

“We are obligated as Ar menians to do everything in our power to help our country. I personally have

family members in Arme nia and childhood friends who are at the frontlines defending our country,” Yengibaryan wrote in a text message to the ‘Prince.’

“This past week, I’ve dedicated over 40 hours to advocating for Armenia, including long nights with little sleep,” he added. “If our soldiers and service men and women can stay up all night defending our homeland, I can stay up to fight for my people. It be comes extremely hard for all Armenian-Americans to concentrate on their dayto-day life when this is hap pening.”

The society is currently working with Armenian student organizations from universities across the United States, includ ing Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Brown, UCLA, the Univer sity of Chicago, Stanford, and Columbia.

This cross-college col laboration started in an Instagram chat created by Hovnanian-Alexanian with a few friends. Hovna nian-Alexanian and Yengi baryan then started reach ing out to members of the Armenian Student Associ ations of various colleges. This group chat grew in what she says was “a matter of minutes” as more people were added. Ultimately, over 100 college students joined the chat and collabo

rated on an open letter.

On Sept. 20, the Prince ton Armenian Society post ed the letter and a list of resources online, enlisting the support of the Princ eton community.

“We urge our peers and educators to join us in condemning Azerbaijan’s assault on humanity and stand in solidarity with the Armenian people against authoritarianism,” the let ter reads. “We challenge you to show the world that the American scholarly community does not accept these threats to democra cy, diplomacy, and human rights.”

The effort proved its effect further than oncampus, with news of the collaboration reaching Ar menian singer Serj Tanki an, who reposted the open letter, and Rex Kalamian, the Armenian-American NBA assistant coach, who added his signature. The collaboration also reached news outlets run by Arme nians.

The open letter has col lected at least 1000 signa tures in 24 hours. But less than 50 of those are from the Princeton community.

The Princeton Armenian Society is urging students and faculty to join efforts in spreading the word.

“The voice of the youth plays a central role in the efforts to raise awareness of the events in Arme

have a voice in Congress and important matters.”

Rebecca Cho is a first-year from Long Island, N.Y. and a news contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at rc5928@princeton.edu.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen talks democracy, war in Ukraine

By Michelle Miao and Jackie Zhou News Contributors

Content Warning: The fol lowing article contains de scriptions of war and violence.

“When I went there, I saw mass graves; I saw the body bags lying there — men, women, children. I saw these brutal scars of mis siles and bombs that had been aimed deliberately at residential areas, hospitals, schools kindergartens,”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, describing her trip to Bucha, a town lib erated by Ukrainian forces just days before her visit.

The war, she said, “is not only a war that Rus sia has unleashed against Ukraine. This is a war on our values.”

On Thursday, Sept. 22,

von der Leyen spoke on campus, delivering the keynote address for Princ eton’s “Europe’s Moment” event. Her speech focused on the importance of de mocracy, the European Commission’s response to the war in Ukraine, and the fight against climate change.

In response to the inva sion, von der Leyen em phasized the necessity of close cooperation between the United States and the European Union (EU) in levying sanctions against Russia, as well as the shift in energy sourcing among EU nations.

In the vein of a larger discussion on Europe’s prior energy dependence on Russia, von der Leyen said, “Putin has built very strategically, and later on used, our dependency to blackmail us, basically to

suffocate us.” However, she added, “This blackmailing has really united us. And it is a turning point, be cause we have decided, as a European Union: We will end our reliance on Rus sian fossil fuels.”

To achieve this, she called for massive invest ments in renewable energy, a strategy that includes di versifying energy sources to “regions where the [re newable] resources are in abundance.”

In addition to energy in dependence, these geopo litical shifts are also “fight ing the right cause against climate change,” she said.

Von der Leyen referred to the example of Pakistan to illustrate the urgency of the climate crisis and the international cooperation required to address it.

“I had yesterday a bilater al meeting with the Prime

Minister of Pakistan: threequarters of [his] country is inundated — climate change, it is nothing but climate change,” she said. In order to address climate change, von der Leyen con tinued, “We need to devel op a way of life and work that gives our planet a real fighting chance for the next generation.”

To achieve this, the Eu ropean Commission has legally mandated goals for climate neutrality by 2050.

“We are the first highly industrialized continent that has put a concrete plan on the table on how we want to get there,” she said.

Von der Leyen also noted, “The green transition, but also the digital transition, will massively increase our needs for raw materi als. Lithium for batteries; silicon metal for chips; rare earths to produce magnets, for example for electric ve hicles.”

She expressed caution toward a monopoly on raw materials, explaining that the increased need for raw materials brings bad news.

“[China] dominates the market,” she said. “We have to avoid falling into the same trap and depen dency as we did with oil and gas. So we have to be very careful not to replace one old dependency with a new one.”

Overall, the call to de fend democratic values re mained resonant through out her address.

“Those who were lucky enough to be born and raised in democracies — like me — can often take the democracy just for granted,” she said. “Those who have lived in authori tarian regimes will know all too well how precious

freedom is.”

Invoking the Universi ty’s informal motto of “In the nation’s service and in the service of humanity,” she specifically addressed the need for the Princeton community to stand up for democracy in the face of challenges from countries like Russia and China.

“Democracy needs us — each and every one of us,” she said. “I want to address you, the students, the fac ulty members, the admin istration here in this room. You have the privilege to study and work in an in stitution that is based on a long tradition to unveil truth … You have a mis sion.”

The event was held in the Chancellor Green Ro tunda. It was organized by the Liechtenstein Insti tute, Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), and the Eu ropean Union Program at Princeton. It was moder ated by SPIA Professor An drew Moravcsik with an introduction by SPIA Dean Amaney Jamal.

A Q&A followed von der Leyen’s speech. At the end of the event, Moravcsik un veiled a plaque dedicated to von der Leyen’s visit “to mark research, teaching, and policy initiatives with European partners.”

Michelle Miao is a news and newsletter contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at mm3350@princeton.edu, @ michxllem on Twitter, or @_ michelleiao at Instagram.

Jackie Zhou is a news and newsletter contributor for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at jacqueline.zhou@princeton. edu or @jacq363 on Insta gram.

nia,” Yengibaryan told the ‘Prince.’ “We rely on the voices of the youth because this generation is the fu ture of the diaspora. The students in our top univer sities today are going to go on to lead our country and

THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN STAFF

Students with Armenian Ambassador to the United States Lilit Makunts.

COURTESY

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with Andrew Moravcsik, director of the Lichtenstein Institute.

ON CAMPUS

Semester in Full Swing

By Candace Do, Zoe Berman, Guanyi Cao, George Gan, Keeren Setokusumo

Head Photo Editor , Staff Photographers, and Photo Contributors

Hum r

University Health Services announces new COVID-19 ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ policy

By Michelle Ho and George Tidmore Contributing Humor Writers

In response to rising un dergraduate COVID-19 cas es on campus, University Health Services (UHS) has enacted a new policy to in crease support for students who have tested positive for COVID-19.

“To students who have re cently contracted COVID-19, we offer our sincerest com miserations,” UHS represen tative Dr. John Dolittle said. “We want you to be aware of some of our new critical resources available to stu dents in isolation, which in

cludes, comprehensively, our Thoughts and Prayers.”

Rona Cov ’24, a student who was recently in isola tion, told The Daily PrintsA nything the new “Thoughts and Prayers” policy offers the much-needed support that was absent from previous policies.

“After the University re moved some of their restric tive COVID-19 policies, I was worried about how COVID-19 would impact students this semester,” Cov said. “How ever, now that I know the University is praying for me, I finally feel like I’m getting the help I need. Who cares if I can’t leave my dorm to

get meals or if I have to suf fer through laggy Zoom calls for lectures? I have Thoughts and Prayers now!”

However, not all students have given this plan their blessing.

“As wonderful as this plan seems, it’s a little superficial,” Runni Knowes ’26 said. “Just spitballing here, but I think what’s missing from Princ eton’s plan are daily conven tions of COVID-positive stu dents to boost morale.”

When asked whether Pres ident Biden’s recent procla mation regarding the end to the COVID-19 pandemic in fluenced the “Thoughts and Prayers” policy, Dolittle ex

plained that they were un aware when they “slapped this all together.”

“Students of all religious identities and practices have access to the University’s Thoughts and Prayers,” Do little noted.

Michelle Ho is a contribut ing Humor writer and first-year prospective classics concentra tor. She can be reached at mi chelle.ho@princeton.edu.

George Tidmore is a con tributing Humor writer and first-year interested in study ing German and linguistics. He can be reached at gt3974@ princeton.edu.

Eisgruber announces second Clash of Colleges, losers to be transferred to Columbia

By Sophia Varughese Contributing Humor Writer

The following content is purely satirical and en tirely fictional.

In a recent statement, President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 announced a second Clash of Colleges this year, “to provide yet another opportunity for the Great Class of 2026 to work together and display their college pride.”

However, a whistle blower leaked that this event was planned as a result of Eisgruber losing a bet to Columbia Uni versity Dean of Admis sions Jessica Marinaccio.

According to the source, all members of the los ing college will be trans ferred to Columbia with in a month of the event, supposedly before mid terms.

“Ok, fine. I bet Jessica that I could fit my fist in side my mouth,” Eisgru ber told The Daily Print sAnything. “She said that if I couldn’t, I owed them 200 members of our firstyear class. Since we ac

cepted way too many firstyears, and their rankings really need help, and I was sure that I could get my fist in my mouth, I took the bet. Sadly, I couldn’t do it.”

Unlike the traditional Clash of Colleges, this event will consist solely of aptitude tests measur ing students’ ability in the fields of math, phys ics, chemistry, and com puter science.

A University spokesper son said, “We care about all of our students, across all disciplines. More about the ones who are good at STEM, though.”

This announcement has caused outrage across the Princeton campus as first-years fear for their spots at this institution.

“We’re going to miss the members of the Great Class of 2026 who will be leaving us, but it is what

it is,” said Dean of the Col lege Jill Dolan. “And we’re keeping all the math con centrators so they can do my taxes, so everything’s going to be okay.”

Sophia Varughese is a first-year student who is asking very kindly not to be transferred to Columbia. She may be reached at sv1456@ princeton.edu.

ANGEL KUO / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

ANGEL KUO / THE DAIL PRINCETONIAN

By Sarah Gemmell Assistant Puzzles Editor

ACROSS

1 Didn’t flow

6 Made a 34-Across

11 Taste

14 Title literary character who declares “How puzzling all these changes are!”

15 It contains eau

16 T.V. inits. followed by Vegas, Miami, or Cyber

17 *Used one’s trunks as a workbench, perhaps?

19 When doubled, a Michael Jackson giggle

20 “___ All That” (2021 gender-flipped remake film)

21 Choose, as a running mate

22 Crept

24 High-maintenance types

26 It’s above 15-Across

27 *The end of every episode of “The Bachelor,” in a way?

32 Four-leaf clover, e.g.

33 Helper

34 Total

35 Raven, sometimes

36 Place for lifting

37 Fighting

38 Blood-typing letters

39 G.I. garb, for short

41 “Hell is empty, and all the ___ are here”: Shakespeare

43 *Figure skating spectacle starring Bill Gates, say?

46 Resistance figures

47 It’s said you can only put seven into a sheet of paper

48 Pooper ___

51 ___ Milli (rapper)

52 Adage

55 Type

56 Toggle ... or a hint to 17-, 27-, and 43-Across

59 Mai ___ (cocktail)

60 Nabbed 61 ___ board

62 A hurricane, a cyclops, and London each have one

63 Big name in nail polish

64 Feature of 10 NFL stadiums DOWN

1

Per person

2 “Mr. ___ Sky”

3 0’s and 1’s, to a programmer

4 Prefix for “friendly” or “logical”

5 Job that at times can feel like pulling teeth?

6 Fireplace receptacle

7 “Gloria in excelsis ___”

8 Hot gossip

9 Drew in

10 Absolutely abhor

11 Company behind many elementary school book fairs

12 “Oh okay, that makes sense”

13 Pulled a prank with a particular pastry

18 Classic Harlem ballroom, with “the”

23 Vietnamese holiday celebrated with five-fruit trays

24 “Whatcha ___?”: Isabella, to Phineas and Ferb 25 Avoid, as a conversation subject

27 Classic Disney character whose first word was «bird»

28 Snack found in a popular McFlurry

29 He/___ pronouns

30 Trickery

31 CPR experts 32 Wander

36 Like over 90% of U.S. corn

37 Rental company with the apt ticker symbol CAR

39 Write music

40 Says “aye,” maybe 41 Annabelle and Barbie, for two

42 Like Princeton, financially speaking

44 17th letter of the Greek alphabet

45 Sweet made with sugar and butter

48 Where a link takes you 49 Pot-making material

50 Down Under hoppers

52 Part of the rose you cut 53 43,560 square feet

54 Questions from some curious kids

57 Like around a third of Princeton’s undergraduate population: Abbr.

58 Texter’s “personally, I think...”

By Owen Travis Head Puzzles Editor

Bowlful eaten by David Blaine (ouch!)

“Umm ... nevermind then”

Largemouth or

Pandora’s

“Last but not ___”

Subject of a New York vs. New Jersey

Freshman Flu reliever, maybe

Justice Sotomayor

Dirties

with Oktober

Scan to check your answers and try more of our puzzles online!

When a club initiation becomes hazing

Aybars Önder Guest Contributor

Inpopular culture, hazing is often associated with alcohol and Greek Life — yet it exists in different forms as well. Hazing, defined by the University, includes “indifference or disregard for another person’s dignity or well-being,” specifically “de meaning behavior.” I believe I experienced hazing last year, when I went through Princ eton Debate Panel (PDP) initia tions. My experience with PDP leads me to worry that other clubs may have their own ver sions of repulsive initiation “traditions.” Yet there is very little open discussion of haz ing on campus, and those who go through it often choose to stay silent. By sharing my own experience in more de tail, I hope to help the com munity recognize that some “traditions” are unacceptable, deeply harmful, and must be stopped.

I was one of about 20 stu dents who joined PDP in Fall 2021. We were invited to a “second round of tryouts,” which was just a cover for ini tiations. The initiations last year were governed by a sixpage document that planned the evening minutely. Once I became a PDP member, I saw this document, along with emails and registration forms available on the PDP’s shared drive and listserv. Emails dat ing back to 2016 refer to the fact that they “want as little in writing as possible” about the initiations process, suggest ing that traditions that could count as hazing were already in place six years ago.

In the initiation guide for 2021, members were instruct ed to: “Be stern, be mean, be judgmental … scare them, make them think this is a seri ous second round of tryouts.” Humiliation was apparently the core goal. Members asked us questions about interna tional politics, the humanities

and the social sciences, but no matter how we answered, they found ways to belittle us and our answers.

We were led from activity to activity, blindfolded, and bad gered if we resisted. After all, the initiation guide instructs members: “MAKE SURE [the initiates] ARE BLINDFOLDED BETWEEN STATIONS” and “Be scary … Be annoyed if they don’t take it seriously.” The ini tiation guide also instructed members to put stickers on us in order to “evaluate” us and give us scores, without reveal ing this was not a serious try out. I remember seeing scores on me when peeking out from underneath my blindfold. Even more bizarrely, PDP has a history of asking members to serve as decoys among the initiates, described in previ ous years as “a mole (who gets cut in round 2 of tryouts and storms out emotionally).” Af ter witnessing someone storm off during my initiations, an existing member told me that this person had been a decoy.

The purpose of the initia tions is no secret: to “make the frosh feel smol,” in the words of a former PDP officer in an email to the club (“smol” be ing internet slang for the word “small”). Throughout the pro cess a hierarchy was built: old members over new initiates. For example, the initiation guide instructs members to “bark” questions at initiates. I was guided around initiations by a handler and expected to obey the instructions of exist ing members, no matter how ludicrous or humiliating it seemed. The scores they wrote on us were a concrete mani festation of this hierarchy. Some may argue that hazing is a way of bringing a group closer together, but establish ing a hierarchy between class years does nothing to bring a group closer together — it pushes a group apart.

Being hazed by PDP was a stressful experience for me. The moment I entered ini

tiations, I was barked at for disobeying the order to be blindfolded. I felt angry and frustrated. Others told me they felt the same way. The author of the initiation guide themself even alludes to how intimidating aspects of the event were: “I still remember them [from last year] I was so traumatized.” Bonding through a ritual intended to be terrifying not only leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the initiates, but may also spark rumors that frighten off fu ture members. This is not in the interest of the organiza tion.

So if hazing has no bene fits, why does PDP continue to engage in it? There may be another reason at play. Haz ing robs the initiates of their capacity to make rational de cisions about their continued participation in PDP. After the disgraceful night, I con templated leaving PDP many times, only to be beset by the fear that if I did, I may have suffered in vain. Later, when I had a moment to breathe, I recognized this as an instance of the sunk cost fallacy — the idea that just because you have already lost, you should continue on a losing endeavor. PDP leadership bombarded us with unreasonable demands to attend training sessions and tournaments. They took advantage of the emotions that the hazing stirred up to convince new initiates that, after going through the shared initiations experience, they couldn’t back out now. To this day, many relatively inactive PDP members staff the tour naments that PDP hosts. Per haps, like I did, they fear that they will be expelled from the group otherwise, and getting through the hazing will have been in vain.

Members of PDP are clearly aware of this, with one PDP member explaining in an email to the PDP listserv that initiations are the reason “why the freshman class tends to

be very engaged, indeed, the most engaged out of any PDP year … why people staff tour naments even if they quit.”

The member calls this effect “a higher sense of group iden tity,” yet all it is is a warped form of manipulation.

After initiations, I was puzzled as to why nobody stood up against the hazing conducted by PDP. After all, that “initiations” is a euphe mism for hazing is hardly a secret. In an email sent to the PDP listserv on Sept. 1, 2020, an officer referred to “initia tions” as “the typical ‘round 2 of tryouts’ hazing.” At the post-initiations party, I recall vividly that I was asked by an existing member if I had been “hazed too hard” and assured that I would get to haze the new initiates from the Class of 2026 — as if getting to perpet uate the foul tradition makes it better. I suspect that other members are nervous about exposing the hazing precisely because of the culture of con formity that hazing fosters. Thus, hazing perpetuates it self.

Some members of PDP have maintained that “initiations” are not “hazing.” After all, as one PDP member wrote to me, initiations are “opt-out” and “frosh are supposed to be told participation is voluntary in all aspects.” This is simply false. The event is billed as another round of tryouts — an event that cannot be opted out of if one wishes to join the club. The initiations instruc tion document at no point re minds members that initiates have the right to opt-out. It suggests that members create an “intimidating” culture that necessarily scares initiates from excusing themselves. From the start, PDP members cultivated a stressful environ ment for me; they used their power as the judges to make me feel that I had no control. Those are not the character istics of an optional event — that’s hazing.

No student group should be allowed to haze its members, especially not a group that has a monopoly on an activity like PDP does over debate. It’s not too much to ask that groups allow students to join in a wel coming and open manner.

This year, PDP has said in an email to their listserv they hosted a straightforward “celebration.” The point of this piece is not to condemn whatever PDP did in recent days. I don’t know what they did, though I suspect they did not repeat the mistakes of last year, if only because they are under pressure after I brought these allegations to the campus community’s at tention last summer via list serv email. However, I do wor ry that other clubs on campus may engage in similar hazing practices, and perhaps that it may return to PDP unless we actively oppose it.

In the wake of an amended New Jersey anti-hazing law, Princeton’s updated stan dard for hazing includes pe nal measures not only for students who run the event but also those who willingly participate. If we permit haz ing to continue, we also bear responsibility for what hap pens to our fellow students. If we want to eliminate haz ing from our community, we must break our silence and expose it wherever it rears its ugly head.

Aybars Önder is a junior from Turkey concentrating in phi losophy. He can be reached at aonder@princeton.edu.

Editor’s note: In the process of publishing this piece, the ‘Prince’ took several steps to corroborate the author’s account, includ ing reviewing emails and docu ments referenced in the piece. The ‘Prince’ could not independently verify the author’s specific expe riences at PDP initiations. The pa per has solicited a response from PDP.

3.98 percent a year later: reflecting on the rat race of college admissions

Yejin Suh

Princeton’s admissions cycle for the Class of 2025 was touted by the University as an “ex traordinary year” in admis sions, with a “record-low ac ceptance rate of 3.98 percent.”

Such a number was gratifying for the accepted and seem ingly impossible to outsiders; however, the 3.98 percent rare ly look back on how exactly we were able to slip into such an outrageously small window.

More than a year after my acceptance, I look back and think, “Was everything I did to get in worth the cost?” And my answer is: No, not really. I love and belong at Princeton — but no one should have to subsume their passions to get into a place like this.

As a current sophomore, I’ve been thinking about how I ended up at Princeton in the first place. Like many other Ivy-hopefuls, I participated in the rat race of college ad missions in order to push my way into this exclusive world.

That period of our lives is not something that we linger on very much: after all, those were unpleasant and stress ful times for many of us, and now that we’re here, does it really matter?

I discovered that for me, at least, that time affected me more than I had thought. My biggest passion is cre

ative writing — it was the part of my identity I empha sized most when applying to colleges because it was what I wanted to study. I had the awards and experiences to back me up on these claims. I even wrote my personal state ment about my love of writ ing.

But the thing about having to package and commodify an artistic passion to apply to college is that the line be tween authenticity and selfbranding becomes easily, and irreversibly, blurred. In my later high school years, I single-mindedly chased af ter what I perceived as pres tige. I never dared try any thing new artistically even though I wanted to, because it wouldn’t immediately get me anywhere in terms of col lege applications or award validation. For an overachiev ing high schooler who want ed what the upper echelon of colleges promised, nothing seemed to be a valid hobby or interest unless you somehow turned it into a nonprofit, a start-up, or an international award.

That experience ruined some aspects of writing for me. Sometimes it’s still hard for me to shake the feeling that writing solely for myself equals “wasted time,” which is ridiculous. How could I be wasting time while doing the thing I love most? Why do I sometimes still feel like

I’m working against myself, against a ticking timer, when there are no deadlines or prospects in the near future, or at all?

I thought that playing the “admissions game” was smart and necessary for me in order to get to where I wanted. And after I graduated from high school, I still thought it had been smart and necessary, and that I could just “go back to normal” with writing — like it was a phase I could sim ply shed and outgrow. For my whole first year of college, I didn’t notice anything amiss. I thought I was still myself. But I failed to see how I dam aged my love of my craft by treating it like a tool to get ahead instead of something true to me. It’s taken me an entire year to see that, reflect, and write this.

I see now that I’ve found it hard to “go back to nor mal.” That I had irrevocably changed some part of myself. If I could go back in time, I would take myself and my passions more seriously. I thought they were the most serious parts of my life, but ironically, I treated them without care or knowledge. I would think long and hard about the spaces I chose to share and partake in, forging a balance between the neces sary pursuit of achievement and retaining my identity.

I’m sure that many stu dents might not relate, hav

ing never succumbed to the rat race at all, or who ended up feeling the opposite way: liberated to explore once in college. But, I know I’m not alone. And it’s sad that there are many young students in high school out there right now who feel the same way and are possibly, without knowing, losing the ability to see the magic in their pas sions.

I think it’s okay to admit if the rat race hurt you in some way if it’s not completely be hind you, however subtle or large the effects may be.

We’re here now, with Princ eton’s prestigious name, bil lions in endowment funds, and renowned community, but many of us paid a price to get here. And, it’s okay to acknowledge that and think

ABBY DE RIEL / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

about how to work to move forward from it and adapt to that loss. Princeton can be a rat race, too — one with even arguably higher stakes. The constant pressures of productivity are serious, and we’re all struggling within our individual fields and am bitions. But, it may be pos sible to simultaneously reap benefits from spaces that rely on these prestige-chasing no tions without actually buy ing into them or adopting the same mindset. And it may start with us individually rec ognizing and sharing how we really feel.

Yejin Suh is a sophomore from Glen Rock, N.J. and a prospective English concentrator. She can be reached at ys4601@princeton. edu.

Guest Contributor

Reactions: USG considers eliminating referenda

The USG Reform Project

This move would defeat the purpose of a referendum

Christofer Robles Contributing Columnist

In abolishing the referenda process and proposing oligarchi cal hearings in their place, the Undergraduate Student Govern ment (USG) misunderstands the purpose of a referendum and the purpose of the USG.

Referenda exist as one of few democratic vehicles for collective action that the student body has. The very definition of a referen dum is “the principle or practice of submitting to popular vote a measure passed on or proposed by a legislative body or by popular initiative.” Referenda are the solu tion to a, at times, greatly inacces sible and cryptic USG.

Referenda engage and distrib ute power. Moving to a system where the USG has discretion whether to hear the student body seems to both dissuade engage ment with the USG and consoli date power to a few students. The USG plays an important role in elevating students’ concerns, but it should not seek to overarbitrate and filter out student perspectives. In the event of a truly unreasonable or destructive proposition, the USG already has a republican solution: determin ing frivolous referenda by a fivesixths vote and preventing their passage. Blocking anything with less than this would be tyranny.

If the USG wishes to fulfill its purported preamble dedication to “the proposition that students must be included in the making of decisions that affect them,” they should leave referenda as they are.

referendum process. While most student petitions that gather enough signatures would formerly be put to the

hearing, and the USG alone would decide which issues should be put to the student body.

Christofer Robles is a sophomore contributing columnist from Tren ton, N.J. Christofer can be reached at cdrobles@princeton.edu or on Insta gram @christofer_robles

***

Abigail Rabieh Columnist

Referenda are valuable forms of discourse; currently, they are one of the only ways to encour age widespread controversial political discussion. The Cater pillar referendum of Spring 2022 sparked vigorous and intense de bate throughout the student body — demonstrated vividly in the Opinions section of the The Daily Princetonian. Though its end was unsatisfactory, a hard-fought ref erendum should not be perceived as an undesirable campus event or an unwelcome aberration on an otherwise calm campus. President Eisgruber states that “universities should foster rigorous, construc tive, truth-seeking discussions about questions of consequence.”

I agree; the University should be a place where students explore their opinions and become galvanized to fight for what they believe in. Princeton should not exemplify apathy, but motivation.

We need to maintain this op portunity for discourse. But per haps USG is not the best place to arbitrate these essential debates.

It is generally acknowledged that student referenda have little to no effect on the administra tion. Thus, the USG has no pro ductive role to play — the point

of a referendum is to start con versations, not enact a policy. Students should take advantage of the fact that they live in a small community where we have other ways to engage with each other.

If USG wants to step back, WhigClio — the “nation’s oldest colle giate political, literary, and debate society” — should take over the campus space for rigorous politi cal discourse by starting these conversations at a campus-wide scale. This move could be for the better — students could focus less on political rhetoric poised to win votes and learn more about deeply engaging in discussion and, may be, coming to a solution.

Abigail Rabieh is a sophomore col umnist and prospective history con centrator from Cambridge, Mass. She serves as co-captain of the Princeton Model United Nations team which is affiliated with Whig-Clio. She can be reached by email at arabieh@princ eton.edu, on Instagram at @a.rabs03, or on Twitter at @AbigailRabieh.

***

USG should fight for students. Instead, this proposal reflects its cowardice.

Nate Howard Contributing Columnist

In November 2020, there were two referenda considered by the student body: one to divest from fossil fuels and one to cancel class es on election day. Both of these referenda passed overwhelm ingly, garnering 82 percent and 89 percent support, respectively. To this day, the University has not implemented either of these policies. So, as Divest Princeton

continues to organize, garnering thousands of student signatures and over 160 faculty and staff members’ signatures for our peti tion, one would expect the USG to fight alongside student activists.

Unfortunately, the USG parrots administration talking points, aiding the University’s efforts to greenwash its reputation. For example, on their Instagram ac count, the USG said that the re lease of the report by the faculty panel on fossil fuel dissociation “marks a substantive step towards divestment.” But it doesn’t. It is yet another exercise in delay and denial, intentionally designed to waste a year and have no impact on Princeton’s $1.7 billion of fossil fuel investments.

The USG should stand up for students. Instead, the USG Reform Project seeks to silence students by stopping further referenda, because the culture of USG is to be more interested in cozying up to the administration than repre senting the student body.

Nate Howard is a sophomore con tributing columnist from Princeton, NJ. He is a prospective sociology con centrator and co-coordinator of Divest Princeton. He can be reached at nate howard@princeton.edu.

***

Oh, great, USG is going to hold a “hearing”

Mohan Setty-Charity Senior Columnist

Aside from the change to the referendum process, referring student petitions to USG “hear ings” is a rather impotent bureau cratic solution. Not every problem

will be solved by the creation of another committee or a new pro cess for considering complaints. We have to remember USG’s limi tations. While the Caterpillar ref erendum in the Spring was very contentious, much of the contro versy was derived from a simple miscommunication, rather than the referendum itself. Adding layers of procedure creates more room for confusion.

It’s true the referenda rarely convince the University to make a change, no matter what their result is. But the solution to par ticularly contentious referenda that won’t really make an impact is an attitude shift and a better understanding of the University processes from referendum spon sors. Eliminating referenda en tirely means we can never gauge student sentiment. And it doesn’t solve the problem of contentious issues: by eliminating referenda and keeping the opportunity for a highly politicized and bureau cratized USG hearing, we may be getting the worst of both worlds.

I think that USG has been do ing some really impressive things recently. I was excited to see the work on the new mental health initiative, along with other initia tives on community dining and free box fans. The USG should fo cus on these productive initiatives rather than holding what would surely be both an ineffective and deeply political hearing.

Mohan Setty-Charity is a junior from Amherst, Mass., concentrating in economics. He can be reached at ms99@princeton.edu.

Student leadership matters in the disciplinary process

Dylan Shapiro Guest Contributor

Asthe Chair of the Honor Committee, I want to address a recent guest contribution in The Daily Princetonian by Benjamin Gelman ’23, which argues that students should exercise solidar ity by refusing to join the Honor Committee. I initially joined the Committee because of horror stories I heard from a professor about pleading with members of the Committee for leniency for ac cused students, so I understand the argument that the whole sys tem is illegitimate. However, de spite the claims made in Gelman’s article, student involvement in the Honor Committee has signifi cantly changed the way the Com mittee approaches every aspect of its work. I am confident that if students who are skeptical of the Committee chose to apply, it would make the Honor Commit tee process fairer for students who go through it.

To start, I want to address some misrepresentations of the facts in the guest contribution. The ‘Prince’ did not seek comment from or verify Gelman’s claims with the Honor Committee prior to publication. To suggest, as the article does, that “students who are on financial aid and found guilty of Honor Code and COD in fractions are not eligible for grants for the semester they must repeat” is misleading. Most students are found guilty of Honor Code viola tions at the end of the term — the Honor Committee deals most fre quently with final exams — and are allowed to complete the term; thus, they would not have to re peat a semester. Gelman may be referring to this small minority of cases resulting in suspension that occur early in the semester, or where students voluntarily with draw rather than finish the semes ter and would therefore have to repeat the semester and have their

aid prorated against what they have already used in the semes ter they are suspended. The Honor Committee is actively engaged with the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) Ad-Hoc Com mittee on the Disciplinary Process and University administrators to ensure these cases do not result in a financial penalty, but even so, this allegation does not reflect the majority of cases.

Additionally, Gelman portrays the Committee as an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy muzzled by a “University-sanc tioned screening process.” Mem bers of the Honor Committee are not “screened” by perspective, and University administrators have no role whatsoever in select ing appointed members of the Honor Committee. Members of the Honor Committee are also not “unelected”: they are either elected class government members, cho sen by elected USG members, or chosen by the Honor Committee itself. While the issue of account ability is subjective, the manner of Honor Committee members’ elections and appointments is not. By publishing Gelman’s ar ticle, the ‘Prince’ did a disservice to students by failing to provide accurate context for such mislead ing claims.

To be clear, I appreciate those who challenge us not to accept the current Honor System as perfect. It is not, by any means. The inves tigation done by the ‘Prince’ was an important effort to highlight where we continue to fall short and the consequences of those shortcomings. Reasonable minds can also disagree on whether the penalties recommended by the Committee are appropriate. How ever, I would note that over the past five years, the Committee has overwhelmingly declined to im pose suspensions, much less ex pulsions, except in severe cases or repeat violations. I serve as a member on the newly-formed USG Ad-Hoc Com

mittee on the Student Disciplin ary Process. Among other priori ties, the committee is focused on improving the transparency of all disciplinary bodies at the Univer sity, including the Honor Com mittee, Committee on Discipline, and Residential College Disciplin ary Boards. It aims to make disci plinary processes more navigable to students accused of violations, eliminate the minority of cases in which a finding of responsibility inadvertently imposes financial aid consequences on students, and assess the appropriateness of the current penalty system.

Student leadership is one of the unambiguously beneficial parts of the Honor System at the Uni versity. Findings of responsibility and decisions about penalties can hinge on the votes of individual members of the Committee, so it matters who those Committee members are. The type of student who may read the recent opinion piece and waver on whether or not they ought to join the Committee is exactly the type of student it is essential to have as a member. As Chair of the Honor Committee, I have seen that members who are entirely uncritical of the Honor System are more likely to have a lower, and in my view insufficient, threshold for being “overwhelm ingly convinced” of a student’s re sponsibility for a violation — the Committee’s standard for finding a student responsible. Instead, we need students who believe that the system is imperfect, or who are committed to the system but are wary of whether the Committee always gets it right in practice.

It is essential that Commit tee members approach each case with a commitment to academic integrity. Any shortcomings of the Honor System do not di minish the importance of a fair exam environment. But an effec tive Honor Committee member should always balance that com mitment with the possibility that our impressions of the case could

be wrong. As alluring as it may be to imagine that refusing to join the Honor Committee allows us to cleanse our hands of its poten tial imperfections, the reality is that this makes it more likely that control of the Committee will pass to students who are far too confi dent in the righteousness of their decisions.

The Honor Committee also has significant flexibility in deter mining the pace and intensity of investigations. Committee mem bers bring a student perspective to the process and can accommodate the needs of a student in question more appropriately than a mem ber of the faculty or an adminis trator could.

I understand the disillusion ment many students have regard ing the potential to reform the Honor Committee in the wake of the failed 2018 referenda, which understandably remains a touch stone for the seeming impossibil ity of improving the Honor Com mittee.

However, despite the failure of these referenda, I want to em phasize that the Committee does not operate in the abusive manner that past iterations of the Com mittee have; I am confident that the findings of responsibility and penalties assessed by the Com mittee reflect that change. These changes are a result of both the students who have stepped up to serve on the Committee and those who have advocated for changes to our Constitution. Even regarding the referenda that formally failed, much of their substance have been incorporated into the Honor Committee Constitution and our best practices. This includes the more appropriate penalty of a rep rimand for overtime violations and a provision barring reliance on only one student’s testimony.

Beyond referenda, the Peer Rep resentatives, as student advocates for students accused of Honor Code violations, play a crucial role in improving the fairness of the

Committee’s work.

Some students may want to replace the Honor Code with a new system entirely. Some may question whether exams should be unproctored in the first place. Students’ roles in evaluating al legations of academic integrity, however, is more appropriate than an administrative process. In every hearing, the Committee must evaluate whether a student should reasonably have known their actions were in violation of the Honor Code or Rights, Rules, Responsibilities. With all due re spect towards faculty and admin istrators, those who adopted the Honor Code in 1893 were correct in their novel contention that stu dents are best fit to evaluate this question.

Ceding the unique place that students have in the academic in tegrity process at Princeton would only serve to reduce student con trol. In fact, the 2018 final report of the Honor System Review Com mittee recommended transferring all responsibilities of the Honor Committee to a student-faculty committee mirroring the Com mittee on Discipline. This would weaken the core idea of the Honor System — that students set our own standards — within the con text of past disciplinary precedent.

The Honor Committee is not a perfect institution, but we should believe in the idea that only our peers can assess what we should have reasonably known. We should vigorously defend this core idea against attempts to diminish it, even as I hope we will all work to improve the system in the ways that suit us best. I urge you to in clude applying to join the Honor Committee in that effort.

Dylan Shapiro is a senior in the School of Public and International Af fairs from Atlanta, Ga. He serves as Chair of the Honor Committee. He can be reached at dylan.shapiro@princ eton.edu

We need opportunities for discourse beyond a USG referendum

In defense of DUO Mobile authentication

Christopher Lidard

Contributing Columnist

Ilaughed aloud when reading the recent, clev er humor article on an imagined plan to add DUO Mobile, our lovely cam pus multi-factor authentica tion (MFA) service, to dorm door locks so as to incon venience undergraduates as much as possible, all the time. But I also shed a tear at the lampooning of the MFA’s effectiveness and security, which I hold near and dear to my heart. While somewhat annoying, the presence of DUO Mobile does consider ably more good than harm by protecting all of our personal information and the Univer sity network at large.

The basis of MFA is that you are enhancing the security of a system by requiring multi ple “factors” for login. These factors are broadly defined by the federal government’s Cy bersecurity and Infrastruc ture Security Agency (CISA) as something you know (e.g. a password), something you have (e.g. your phone, where you accept DUO push notifi cations), or a biometric (e.g. a fingerprint). This is to create a failsafe, so if any one factor is compromised, the possible infiltrator is still locked out. And whether it is apparent or not, MFA is one of the most important factors in not only safeguarding your own per sonal information, but also securing Princeton’s network as a whole.

Before I make the case for MFA as a technology, I want to highlight the gravity of how vulnerable systems can be to rudimentary attacks. Consider as an example the recent string of phish ing emails sent to a variety of princeton.edu email ad dresses over the summer soliciting student research assistants, such as those falsely claiming to be on behalf of Prof. Ryan P. Ad ams. While the “gmail.com” sender domain and question able grammar of the message were hopefully obvious indi cators of suspicious activity, all it would take is one un suspecting student to enable this attacker to do harm. Had a student responded to the email requesting more infor mation, the infiltrator could have used a variety of lowcost, highly effective tools for stealing information, such as the publicly avail

able blackeye tool that can make near-perfect malicious spoofs of common login pag es in an instant. With sto len credentials in hand, the infiltrator would then have free range to any account that uses them, regardless of platform. From there, this attacker might attempt privi lege escalation, using exist ing access as a stepping stone to further exploitation. This could include moving later ally, infiltrating more sensi tive accounts affiliated with your personal information, or vertically, attempting to compromise deeper and more critical systems on the Princeton network.

The case of vertical esca lation has particularly con cerning consequences for the student body at large. A com mon nonchalant response to the rigorous security prac tices on University systems is along the lines of “What’s the worst they could do, steal my course schedule?” While I agree that an attacker having access to your hundreds of listserv emails per day and your Writing Seminar drafts is not the end of the world, this reasoning neglects two central aspects of your stu dent account: it’s association with and storage of impor tant demographic informa tion, such as on TigerHub, and its privileged access to certain University services, including Office of Infor mation Technology (OIT) re sources. These avenues are likely the first places an at tacker will look to facilitate privilege escalation.

In an attacker’s eyes, you are just the first step to wards a broader goal: 82 per cent of data breaches in 2021 involved a human element. Of those, 89 percent were in pursuit of some financial motive. In short, attackers generally have a clear (often financial) objective that re quires user participation to succeed. Whether they are hunting for your personal fi nancial information, or are seeking to infiltrate Princ eton’s network to target its vast financial resources, it is up to you to stand in their way.

The good news is that MFA apps like DUO are the first line of defense in protect ing against this barrage of attacks. The prevalence of phishing I have highlight ed, along with advances in other password cracking

techniques, means using passwords alone (i.e. a single factor) is increasingly inse cure. Some would even argue passwords have reached the point of obsolescence. MFA has taken up the mantle as the new minimum standard of security to compensate for human fallibilities: the counterweight to the fright ening prevalence of phish ing is the ease at which it can be stopped by utilizing one additional factor. At any point in the long, strik ingly straightforward chain of events I outlined above, having MFA enabled on your device could stop an attacker in their tracks. Moreover, you would be instantly notified of your credentials being compromised by receiving a push notification when you are not actively logging in — allowing you to instantly change your passwords and mitigate the takeover before it can spread elsewhere.

Another important point to consider when griping midway through your log-in process: we already use mul tiple systems with MFA in our daily life. Ironically, one of the best examples of effec tive MFA is the dorm doors at Princeton. They combine something you have (i.e. your prox) with something you know (i.e. your PIN) to prevent easily breaking in if someone were to lose their prox or accidentally divulge their PIN. This system works extremely well — dorm break-ins on properly func tioning doors are basically unheard of — and few people resist the need to have both factors.

Has anything I have writ ten changed the fact that rummaging around for your phone when you are trying to expediently login to a sys tem is annoying? No. But the profound security benefits behind mandatory MFA far outweigh the daily minor in convenience of tapping a few buttons. So in those extra 15 seconds you have to wait to log in, enter a small thank you into the OIT ether and rest easy knowing our net work lives another day.

Christopher Lidard is a soph omore from Baltimore, Md. A computer science concentrator and tech policy enthusiast, his columns focus on technology is sues on campus and at large. He can be reached at clidard@ 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 David Baumgarten ’06 secretary Chanakya A. Sethi ’07

treasurer Douglas Widmann ’90 assistant treasurer Kavita Saini ’09

trustees Francesca Barber Craig Bloom ’88

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 Caitlin Limestahl ’23

Tanvi Nibhanupudi ’23 Zachariah Wirtschafter Sippy ’23 Strategic initiative directors

Accessibility

Isabel Rodrigues ’23 Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Melat Bekele ’24 Auhjanae McGee ’23

Education

Evelyn Doskoch ’23 José Pablo Fernández García ’23 Financial Stipend Program Rooya Rahin ’23 Engagement Analytics Sai Rachumalla ’24

Sections listed in alphabetical order.

head audience editor

Rowen Gesue ’24 associate audience editor

Meryl Liu ’25 head cartoon editors

Inci Karaaslan ’24 associate cartoon editor

Ariana Borromeo ’24 head copy editors

Alexandra Hong ’23 Nathalie Verlinde ’24 associate copy editors

Catie Parker ’23 Cecilia Zubler ’23 head web design editors

Anika Maskara ’23 Brian Tieu ’23 associate web design editor

Ananya Grover ’24 head graphics editors

Ashley Chung ’23

Noreen Hosny ’25 head print design editor Juliana Wojtenko ’23 associate print design editor Dimitar Chakarov ’24 head data editor

Sam Kagan ’24 head features editors

Sydney Eck ’24

Alex Gjaja ’23 head news editors

Katherine Dailey ’24 Drew Somerville ’24 associate news editors

Kalena Blake ’24

Anika Buch ’24 Sandeep Mangat ’24 newsletter editors

Kareena Bhakta ’24

Amy Ciceu ’24

head opinion editor

Genrietta Churbanova ’24 community editor

Rohit A. Narayanan ’24 associate opinion editor Lucia Wetherill ’25 head photo editor

Candace Do ’24 associate photo editor

Angel Kuo ’24 Isabel Richardson ’24 head podcast editor Hope Perry ’24 associate podcast editors

Jack Anderson ’23 Senna Aldoubosh ’25 Eden Teshome ’25 head prospect editors

José Pablo Fernández García ’23 Kerrie Liang ’25 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 humor editors Claire Silberman ’23 Liana Slomka ’23 associate humor editors Spencer Bauman ’25

head sports editors Wilson Conn ’25 Julia Nguyen ’24 associate sports editor Ben Burns ’23 Elizabeth Evanko ’23

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

Joanna Tang ’24 lead software engineers

Roma Bhattacharjee ’25

software engineers

Eugenie Choi ’24 Giao Vu Dinh ’24 Daniel Hu ’25 Dwaipayan Saha ’24 Kohei Sanno ’25 Pranav Avva ’24

THIS PRINT ISSUE WAS DESIGNED BY Dimitar Chakarov ’24 Brooke McCarthy ’25 Juliana Wojtenko ’23 Annie Rupertus ’25

AND COPIED BY Alexandra Hong ’23

A tight-knit walk-on community and a return to the national stage: A new era for women’s rugby

By Molly Taylor and Gia Musselwhite Staff Features Writers

In 2019, Josie Ziluca, then the parttime coach at Princeton’s women’s club rugby team, was driving across the country when she received a phone call from Princeton Athlet ics. On the side of the road, she was informed that her team was going varsity.

“I had tears of joy,” Ziluca said. “I was so excited.”

After years of student advocacy, the change to varsity status repre sents an opportunity for the team to compete at the highest level of collegiate rugby, an NCAA emerg ing sport. But this season is also a moment of transition as the play ers — most of whom hadn’t played rugby before they got to Princeton — become Division I athletes. Amid this adjustment, the players have sought to maintain the team’s walkon culture.

A new member of the National Intercollegiate Rugby Association (NIRA), the team competes against other varsity programs. After a na tionwide search for a full-time head coach, Ziluca was selected to con tinue leading the team, with Anna Albrecht as assistant coach. And for the first time in the University’s his tory, three athletes were recruited to Princeton for rugby.

The team’s elevation to varsity status, according to Captain Leilani Bender ’24, is regularly described as “historic.” Bender serves alongside Captains Sophia Villacorta ’24 and Kathyrn-Alexa Kennedy ’23.

Still, players try to keep the shift to varsity in perspective — espe cially as the pressure of the word “historic” hangs over the team.

“That word inherently adds pressure,” Bender said. “Before our first game, I tried to remind every one that even though they’re going to sing the national anthem, and they’re going to announce all of us, once the whistle blows, we’re just playing rugby.”

The path to varsity status

A little-known fact, according to Ziluca, is that women’s club rugby was once the “winningest sport” at Princeton. Between 1995 and 1997, the team won back-to-back national championships and 57 consecutive matches.

But a few years ago, players began to notice a trend that troubled them: teams they used to be competitive with — like Harvard, Brown, and Dartmouth — were consistently de feating them in Ivy League tourna ments. In the early 2010s, these club teams had been elevated to varsity status.

This change was not limited to the Ivy League. Recognizing the growing popularity of women’s rugby, the NCAA established the NIRA in 2015 to increase varsity opportunities for female athletes. Since then, NIRA has expanded from eight founding teams to more than 20.

The idea for the club team to go varsity, according to former club president Kate Leung ’20, originat ed as a way to remain competitive within the changing landscape of collegiate rugby.

When Leung was a first-year in 2016, upperclassmen had already begun to sketch out a plan. Still, at the time, Leung said, “it seemed like a very far-off possibility, like a dream.”

But with time, Leung and her teammates began to embrace the idea. With the understanding that higher level competition would de mand a greater commitment from each athlete, the team took a vote in 2018. It was unanimous: they would pursue varsity status.

“We knew this probably wouldn’t happen while we were here,” Leung said. “But we thought, ‘if we don’t do

it now, it won’t happen for the people that come after us.’”

In 2019, the team, with the sup port of its alumni board, submit ted a 15-page proposal to Princeton Athletics. Its motivation to go var sity, the document stated, was to “return to the national champion ship stage.”

The proposal included statistics on player injuries, addressing the administration’s concerns about safety — it would only be improved, the players argued, with a full-time coach and better training support. The document also emphasized that a varsity rugby team would help close the gender gap in athletic par ticipation. That year, the University had 32 percent more male athletes than female athletes.

In the spring of 2021, two years after the team submitted its pro posal — and several years after players first imagined going varsity — Princeton Athletics announced that women’s rugby would become a varsity team.

‘We want to find our stride’

When Bender first entered the team’s locker room in August, she knew that this season would be dif ferent.

“That was the first time we were in a space that was solely for varsity athletes,” she said. “It was our own space, too.”

In this moment of transition, even the smallest of changes — like access to a locker room — carries symbolic weight.

“The other captains and I made cute themed signs for everyone’s lockers,” Bender added. “Just to make it a little more fun and less official.”

But other changes more immedi ately affect the team’s level of play, allowing the program to build to ward its goal of national champi onship. For one, the coaches now have the ability to recruit up to three players each year.

Alayshja Bable ’26 is among the University’s three first-ever rugby recruits. Before coming to Prince ton, the fullback from Philadelphia played for elite club teams like At lantis Rugby and Midwest Thunder birds.

She hadn’t even thought about playing for Princeton’s debut varsity program until she met Ziluca at an Atlantis tournament in the winter of her senior year.

“We played a game, and [Ziluca] was cheering me on from the side lines,” Bable said. “Afterward, she told me, ‘I’m with Princeton, and I want you to check us out.’ I had no clue that would even be an option.”

But now, despite being new to the team, Bable and the other two re cruits have taken on leadership roles to share their unique competitive background with walk-on team mates.

“We’re allowed to lead things in practice,” Bable said. “You can say, ‘Oh, hey, maybe if you try doing this, you’ll have a better pass or be able to get a little bit stronger in a tackle.’ It [still] felt a little bit odd… we’re all new to the varsity experience.”

Beyond this season’s logistics, Zi luca sees the team’s elevation to var sity status as a long-term endgame that demands strategic decisionmaking.

“I’ve always put pressure on my self,” Ziluca said. “It’s not so much about game outcomes or scores — it’s more of, ‘Are we exploring all op tions to make sure that we’re mov ing forward the best way possible?’”

Ziluca started coaching at Princ eton in 2019, bringing years of elite competitive experience to the pro gram. She currently plays for the USA Touch Women’s Open Team, and she used to tour nationally with club teams — even winning a na tional championship in 2014. It was at Longwood University, where Zilu ca entered as a two-sport varsity ath lete, that she discovered club rugby.

“I’m a fierce competitor,” Ziluca said, but “in our first [varsity] year, our goal is certainly not to win the conference. We want to find our stride.”

Tigers at home

On Sept. 10, Princeton women’s rugby played their first home var sity match against the U.S. Military Academy.

The match served as a reunion for dozens of former Princeton rugby players, who were honored during the team’s “Alumni Appreciation Day.” Several alumni in attendance had competed on Princeton teams that advanced to the national semi finals — there were six between 1997 and 2005.

Former captain Gretchen Jacobi ’06, who watched the debut, had also been to a rugby match at each of the 10 Princeton reunions she has attended.

“When I see the team now has trainers and a locker room, I think it’s going to make them that much more competitive,” Jacobi said, “but it will also build their community because really, rugby is about com munity.”

For Mags Dillon ’06, who worked on the varsity initiative, the game represented the culmination of the years-long effort to go varsity.

“It’s rare to see so much change happen really quickly,” Dillon said. “[Watching the match] was really moving.”

That day, Princeton lost its sec ond game of the season 87–0. The first game, versus Sacred Heart, ended in a score of 51–21. And over the last two weekends, the team fell to Brown and Harvard.

But for Jess Ward, senior associ ate director of Campus Recreation, the significance of this season isn’t related to the team’s win-loss record against opponents that have been varsity for years.

“I went to their first game and watched them score their first try, and I cried because it didn’t matter that they were losing,” Ward said. “They were still working super hard, and this is what they want.”

Even with the team’s difficult schedule, Stuart Rickerson ’71 noted his optimism for the season ahead. Rickerson, the founding chair of the Princeton University Rugby Endow ment Board, traveled from his home in California to watch the home opener versus Army.

“It’s all new,” Rickerson said, sporting orange Converse and kneehigh tiger-print socks. “But we’re go ing to surprise some people.”

The walk-on culture

Despite the team’s new ability to recruit athletes, most players joined the rugby team when they got to Princeton, without ever having played the sport before.

In the spring of her first year at Princeton, Bender saw a club rugby

“I really threw myself into it,” Bender said. “I never felt scared be cause I didn’t know something. The seniors made it really clear: as long as you’re trying, it’s all good.”

For Bender, who played water polo in high school, rugby was a way to continue with high-level sports in college. Former team president Frances Walker ’22, who had played basketball, tennis, and volleyball before Princeton, saw rugby as a similar opportunity.

“Growing up, I always wanted to play football,” Walker said. “And my mom wouldn’t let me. There was the stigma that it was too dangerous for me, as a girl.”

Like football, rugby is a “colli sion sport.” Before new players can participate in contact practices, they repeat drills to learn how to tackle and fall safely.

Because rugby has so few barriers to entry, like previous experience or expensive equipment — mouth guards are the only protective equipment used — several players noted the team is distinctly inclu sive.

“As a sport at Princeton, it was one of the most, if not the most, diverse with regard to ethnicity, income groups, and parents’ edu cation status,” Walker said. “It also allows for a diversity of bodies and different types of skill sets.”

“We had people from tennis, who could move very liberally, and we had people from track and field who run very fast or jump really high,” Walker continued. “I was bigger, so I played prop, a forward position that requires a lot of strength.”

For captain Sophia Villacorta ’24, it was key to preserve this team at mosphere between the other chang es brought on by the shift to varsity.

“I wanted to make sure that the community and the environment didn’t change too drastically,” Vil lacorta said.

Villacorta is a podcast contribu tor for the ‘Prince.’

President Zoë Koniaris ’25 agreed, noting that walk-ons’ lack of experi ence has not impeded their achieve ment.

“We’ve produced walk-ons who have come out to be great, competi tive players after their time at Princ eton,” Koniaris said. “And we hope to keep doing that.”

For example, in recent years, for mer captain Jessica Lu ’18 and Char lotte Wallace ’21 competed in the Women’s Premier League, the topranked American club women’s rug by league organized by USA Rugby.

In the team’s competitive season, it plays 15 versus 15. Consequently, in three years, when the roster might contain 12 recruits, walk-ons will still make up a significant part of the program.

“We are a walk-on team, and we always will be,” Ziluca said. “That’s just the spirit of rugby.”

Looking forward

The team is in its “test-drive” pe riod for prospective walk-ons, invit ing students to attend practices at West Windsor Field and learn the fundamentals of the sport.

“To me, rugby looks very in tense,” prospective walk-on Kata rina Ivkovic ’25 said. “[But] they’ve done their best to try and make it more bite-sized.”

On a Tuesday afternoon in midSeptember, Koniaris coached the group of new players, demonstrat ing passing technique and remind ing them to call to each other by name throughout the drills.

“In rugby, we only pass to people who are calling for the ball, develop ing that skill of constantly commu nicating on the field,” Koniaris said.

For Koniaris, the transition to varsity has been an opportunity to refocus her energy as president away from logistical operations, which are now primarily handled by Princeton Athletics.

“Rather than being in the nittygritty, I get to be more of an ‘ideas’ person,” Koniaris said. “I see my job as checking in with each of the in dividual players on the team and advocating for them as best I can.”

The growth of rugby at Princeton is a part of a larger trend. Over the last two decades, the number of rugby participants in the U.S. — in cluding youth players — more than tripled. In 2018, rugby was deemed the fastest-growing sport in the country.

With universities increasingly adding varsity programs for wom en’s rugby, according to Ziluca, this is a particularly important moment for the women’s side of the sport. There finally exists a path for young girls to advance from club teams to collegiate play to professional com petition.

“In the future, when we think of rugby in the States, it’s going to be women’s rugby,” Ziluca said.

While leading practice, Ziluca joined the returners in their scrim mage as a “double-agent” for both teams, weaving through players to score quickly.

After a few minutes, the coach paused the game to address the pro spective walk-ons. They couldn’t join just yet, as they hadn’t been medically cleared for contact play. But they could stick around.

“Feel free to watch the craziness that’s about to ensue,” she called as she ran back toward the scrimmage.

Molly Taylor is a Features staff writer for The Daily Princetonian. She can be reached at mollypt@princeton.edu.

Gia Musselwhite is a Features staff writer for the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at gmusselwhite@princeton.edu or @ gia.musselwhite on Instagram.

flyer in the bathroom of Frist Cam pus Center. By the end of April, she was practicing with the team.

COURTESY OF EMILY DELLA PIETRA ’24

ARTS & CULTURE

the PROSPECT.

CHAPEL

Continued from page 1

Moving through the Chapel, one is confronted with image after image of Jesus Christ, quotes from the Gospels, and references to Christian epics like the “Divine Comedy” and “Paradise Lost.”

And yet, if an adventurous visitor to the Chapel im mediately turned right upon entering they would be confronted with the seemingly odd sight identified by Eid and Karim: a stained glass window depicting the Muslim Abu Bakr al-Razi, a ninth-century Per sian doctor, philosopher, and scientist, accompanied by Arabic script which reads “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate.” For an explicitly Christian building constructed in the 1920s, the only depiction of the Islamic tradition in the Chapel being one of the first images one encounters is certainly confusing and even contradictory. How can we wrap our heads around this singular place for Islam in the overwhelmingly Christian imagery of the Chapel?

To begin to unravel this mystery, one has to under stand that the definition of Christian imagery in the Chapel is quite expansive. Despite the overwhelm ing presence of Christian imagery, there was also an intentional effort on the part of Ralph Adams Cram, the Chapel’s architect, to embrace a sort of semisecular Gothic style. As the Chapel’s official tour tells it, Cram believed “Classical architecture must not be used as the visible expression of Christian religion.” Cram believed any endorsement of Christianity must come from the narrative told by the Chapel, making the design a sort of rhetorical defense of the virtue of belief in God.

In the case of the Chapel’s stained glass windows, they are not meant to be explicitly Christian and in stead embrace a progress narrative of “Western civi lization” as “rational” evidence for the importance of Christianity. Thus, characters from the Gospel appear alongside a variety of less explicitly or notat-all Christian figures: Jesus and his apostles exist alongside Plato, Immanuel Kant, James Madison, Emily Dickinson, T.S. Elliot, Baruch Spinoza, and, of course, al-Razi.

Alongside windows focused on Biblical stories like the “Book of Job” or Jesus’s crucifixion, there are win dows centered around poetry, law, philosophy, and science. To quote the Chapel tour again, the purpose of this inclusion of non-Christian sources was to ac tually highlight the power of Christianity; as Cram says, “we’re confident enough in our claims that we’ll see any truth that you do have is welcome inside.”

According to the stained glass narrative, all think ers, even those who claim to be secular or belong to totally different religious traditions, contribute to the greatest evidence of the glory and power of the Christian God: the forward march of the West.

Within this framework, the inclusion of al-Razi in the Chapel’s narrative makes perfect sense. While al-

Razi was in no way Christian, al-Razi played a key role in the history of a number of fields which are founda tional to the civilization half of the phrase “Christian civilization.” Al-Razi’s list of accomplishments in “secular” fields are incredibly expansive, contribut ing to the development of medicine, chemistry, and philosophy all while he directed an important hospi tal in Baghdad in the midst of the Islamic Golden Age. Considered one of the most important individuals in the history of medicine, an article in the Annals of Saudi Medicine attributes to al-Razi such achieve ments as pioneering neuroanatomy, founding the first recorded psychiatric aftercare facility, publish ing the first monograph about pediatric medicine, and being the first to differentiate between smallpox and measles. In chemistry, his work in alchemy led to his being credited with the discovery of ethanol and sulfuric acid.

Crucially, these achievements were in no way re stricted to the context of “Islamic civilization,” as alRazi became an important thinker across Europe and the Middle East, frequently known by the Latinized name Rhazes. As the Journal of the British Islamic Medical Association notes, al-Razi made key contri butions to the Greco-Arab medical tradition which serves as the foundation for the practice of medicine in a wide range of geographic and cultural contexts. Most of al-Razi’s works were translated into Latin and other European languages, serving as vital parts of the curriculum in early European medical schools. As al-Razi’s solitary window in the Chapel attests to, if one wants to tell the story of science and medicine within Western, Christian civilization that story actually cannot be told without the work of Muslim thinkers and practitioners.

Standing in front of al-Razi’s image myself, I was struck by how a small window, tiny in comparison to the windows in the main body of the Chapel, could have taken on such a significance for me: why was it even notable that a small portion of the Chapel made reference to Islam? The answer, I think, lies not so much in the material reality of the Chapel but instead in the narratives of the society around it. Having been born in the post-Sept. 11, 2001 world, I have never existed in a context where the opposi tion between West and East, erroneously equated to Christianity and Islam, was not at a fever-pitch.

Attending Princeton has only made me more acutely aware of this fact: reading the critique of the University’s Department of Near Eastern Studies for helping to popularize the “Clash of Civilization” narrative by Edward Said ’57 in a course in that same department induced a healthy amount of cognitive dissonance in me. And yet, as a material sign of op position to these narratives, there was a stained glass depiction of al-Razi, the doctor who had an incredible impact on science in both “West” and “East” by draw ing on multiple traditions and histories of medicine.

In the face of my lived experience as a student at a university still embroiled in controversies over di

versity and its over-emphasis on the Western Canon, here was a tangible symbol that the foundational dividing line that designates part of the world as the “West” cannot be easily drawn. The West’s “others” have made such decisive contributions to its history that they must be acknowledged through featuring Islam in a Christian building.

For me, al-Razi felt so important as an embodi ment of my academic musings during my first two years at the University: here were the stakes of all those abstract terms like Self-Other Dichotomy, Post colonialism, and The Canon made material in glass. To quote Said in “Orientalism,” where the afore mentioned critique of Princeton can be found: “We must take seriously Vico’s great observation that men make their own history, that what they can know is what they have made, and extend it to geography: as both geographical and cultural entities—to say nothing of historical entities — such locales, re gions, geographical sectors as ‘Orient’ and ‘Occident’ are man-made.”

Similarly, we must take seriously a small stained glass window in the Princeton University Chapel: the figure of al-Razi reminds us that there is no easy narrative of European, Christian, or Western history which can be meaningfully separated from the “West’s” “Others.” Distinctions that are so easily bought into over the course of our careers as Princ eton students are just as man-made as glass: maybe we can try and find if they are just as easily breakable as well.

David Chmielewski is a junior at Princeton University concentrating in English.

All eyes on Soonja’s Cuisine, where traditional Korean dishes offer an underrated taste

By Russell Fan | Contributing Prospect Writer

On the western edge of campus lies Alexander Street, a road rarely-mentioned among the student body. It may not have as many vibrant restaurants or be as commercialized as Nassau — commonly thought to be the soul of down town Princeton — but it houses a hidden gem: Soonja’s Cuisine.

Located across the street from the Springdale Golf Club, the restaurant’s quaint exterior renders it both mysterious and inconspicuous at first glance. I walked down the two sets of wooden stairs, feeling intimidated by the somber atmosphere created by the dim lights. I sat down with my friend, who accompanied me to enjoy a nostalgic taste of home, anxious about what to expect. The owner of the restaurant briefly explained to us that while Soonja’s offers a range of Asian foods, their speciality is Korean cuisine. Scanning the menu, I immediately found this to be held true. Our familiarity with dishes such as bulgogi — bar becue-grilled slices of beef (though chicken and pork were offered as alternatives here) — and soondubu — spicy mag ma-colored tofu stew — enveloped us in a sense of coziness.

As I pondered what to order, I realized that this menu had fewer items than the places I’d visited back home in Fort Lee, N.J., but tried to keep that observation from distracting me from the present. Ultimately, the piercing winds of the transitioning seasons led my friend and I to order the kim chi jjigae — spicy kimchi stew — in an attempt to warm our slightly shivering bodies. We also ordered tteokbokki, stir-fried rice cakes, which I had never tasted before and

was excited to try. While waiting for our food, we admired the decor of traditional paintings, which contained Hanja characters, the traditional Korean writing system that in corporates Chinese characters.

The tteokbokki was served first. It was covered with a golden glaze and came with carrots, Korean squash, and shreds of white onion and cabbage. White and black sesame seeds garnished the platter. It was a perfect balance between sticky, sweet, and spicy. It was truly a performance of flavor; the light sweetness of the sauce-glaze opened up the show, followed by the firm yet gelatinous texture of the rice cake itself, and a crescendo of mild spiciness closed it all out. The slight crunchiness of the cabbage, carrots, onions and ten

derness of the squash provided an array of different textures to counter the chewiness of the rice cakes. This tteokbokki was certainly a unique introduction for me to the snack/ street food that is very popular on the Korean peninsula.

Later came the kimchi jjigae in medium-sized bowls. The peppery aroma jumped right at my nostrils, and the broth caught my attention with its spicy-looking red hue and its warm rising steam. The stew broth instantly warmed me, save for a hint of wateriness that toned down the spiciness. The following sips were much better as the spiciness started to kick in gradually, but not overwhelmingly.

The tofu was almost al dente, but still soft enough to be easily separated with a spoon. It provided a very pure, soothing comfort. The kimchi, slices of red-tinted, fer mented cabbage, was also of a mostly-soft texture, albeit a bit crunchy during some bites. Its slight tanginess paired well with the savoriness of the tender, thinly-sliced pork. The less-prevalent slices of onions and long scallions in the stew were especially crunchy and refreshing.

Walking back with my friend, I made a mental note to remember how to get to the hidden treasure of Soonja’s, for it deserves all the hype and attention that restaurants on Nassau Street receive. All eyes ought to be focused on Soonja’s Cuisine.

Russell Fan is a contributing writer for The Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at rf4125@princeton.edu, or on Insta gram @russell__fan.

‘The West’s ‘others’ have made such decisive contributions to its history that they must be acknowledged through featuring Islam in a Christian building’

COURTESY OF DAVID CHMIELEWSKI

Seuls en Scène 2022 presents Traces: My experience with French theater

By Regina Roberts | Contributing Prospect Writer

The play “Traces,” presented in the Marie and Edward Matthews ’53 Acting Studio on Sept. 19 and 20, began with the melodic sound of the kora, a West African string instrument. The lights illuminated the stage, spotlight ing the musician Simon Winse. The music was a trance-inducing force that I felt I couldlisten to for hours. When actor Étienne Mi noungou joined on stage and began speaking, I was reminded that the play was in French, a language I only know a handful of words in. I was a bit lost during his preface of the show, when the subtitles had yet to appear; as some one who studies Spanish, I unsuccessfully tried to latch onto some familiar words.

When the play started, helpful subtitles appeared on a screen above. From then on, I alternated my focus from the actors perform ing in French in real time to the English sub titles so I could make sense of the story. Then something interesting happened — I started relying on the subtitles less and less.

In the span of an hour, I did not sud denly begin to understand French. Rather, I started to recognize the meaning of some words, their connotations in the play, and the emotions they provoked. The emotion of Minoungou was what really connected me and the language. I could feel his anguish, his exasperation, his hope. I started to follow the story of the African slave trade and its effect on the continent — a story I knew well from history classes, but one I had never experi enced in such a way before.

During the performance, Minoungou oc casionally posed questions to the audience, directly looking at specific people. I wasn’t sure if it was scripted, but there were no sub titles during this part, so I was at a loss; only the French speakers in the audience could re spond. It was an amazing way to include audi ence participation, and I was captivated even though I did not understand the exchange.

At one point, he posed a question to the front row, where I was seated. We locked eyes as he waited for a response. My “answer” was a smile and a nod. Luckily, that was sufficient — or perhaps, he sensed my hesitation and graciously continued. Surprisingly, I did not feel as uncomfortable about the situation as I had expected. Actually, engaging with the language added to my fascination. I could not speak a word of French, but after that, I felt more included in the experience. I was not only watching a show; I was in it.

“Traces,” which is inspired by the lyrical text of the same name by Senegalese philoso pher and poet Felwine Sarr, ends with a call to action. During the final moments, I focused more on the expressions of the performers rather than the words on the screen. While I could not recount every word, I came to un

derstand the intent behind them. Yet, when the show concluded, I was not entirely sure that it was done. For me, there was no definite ending. First, the actor’s portrayal of opti mism for future change was a message that had persistent continuity. Mostly, however, hearing the play in French created a certain temporal fluidity. I was not overly caught up on every word, simply because I did not understand them. Instead, I moved with the story at my own pace. Although it was slow, it made every word I read, heard, and felt even more meaningful.

Before the play began, as I walked into the corridor of the acting studio, it was in timidating and humbling to hear everyone around me speaking in French. However, by the end of the show, I felt the discomfort was necessary.

When I watch TV shows in Spanish, I can usually grasp the words or rewind if neces sary, but interacting with a different lan guage during a live performance was an en tirely unfamiliar experience. I know that

experience will not end here, and I am excited to continue my immersion into different lan guages by exploring various art forms. I also challenge you, the reader, to engage with art that pushes you out of your comfort zone.

While the last show for the season was on Sept. 23, the Princeton French Theater Festi val is annual, going on its 12th year, so you will surely have an opportunity to experience the arts in another language, either with this program or others.

Even after the show ended, I remained transfixed by the words and the music. One phrase that was repeatedly mentioned was “et le temps a passé,” meaning “and time passed.” Indeed, as time passed during the show, I emerged with a different feeling than when I had entered – accomplissement.

Regina Roberts is a contributing writer for The Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at rr8156@princeton.edu, or on Instagram at @re gina_r17.

Award-winning filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi visits Princeton

By Tyler Wilson | Contributing Writer

On Sept. 23, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi came to Princ eton’s campus, kicking off the weeklong “Conver sations” that began with the Humanities Council’s Fall 2022 Belknap Global Conversation at Betts Auditorium. Throughout the week in residence — sponsored by Department of East Asian Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Program in East Asian Studies, and the Commit tee for Film Studies — the award-winning direc tor is leading a series of workshops where some students will create and present short films. In tandem, the Princeton Garden Theatre is holding multiple screenings of a mini retrospective of his most recent films.

Hamaguchi’s visit follows the breakout success of his latest feature film, “Drive My Car,” which won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film at last spring’s ceremony and Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. The threehour film is meditative and highly emotional, cap turing the hearts and minds of critics and viewers across the world.

The campus community buzzed with excite ment from the Japanese director’s presence at the Bellknap Global Conversation. At the jam-packed Betts Auditorium, Hamaguchi fielded questions about his process from four panelists: Associate Professor in East Asian Studies Steven Chung, Associate Professor of Music Gavin Steingo, Pro fessor of English Anne Cheng ’85, and Professor of Comparative Literature Thomas Hare ’75.

Hamaguchi began the event by thanking the University in English for having him back, which eh then quickly followed with “Let me speak in Japanese.”

Through translation provided by Tara McGowan ’90, Hamaguchi began discussing his process with the four panelists. The first topic of conversation was his documentary work – his initial entryway into the world of cinema.

Following Japan’s triple disaster of 2011 (an

earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown), Hamaguchi began interviewing victims of the crisis, typically multiple people at once. These interview resulted in multiple documentaries di rected by himself and Ko Sakai, including “The Sound of Waves,” “Voices from the Waves: Shinchi machi,” “Voices from the Waves: Kesennuma,” and “Storytellers.” While working to reconcile with the tragedy that had struck his home country, he came to realize that both the trauma of the disas ters and the shared histories of the interviewees’ relationships could come through authentically on film. He found that although these interview ees knew each other well, they had never had these conversations in real life. When he saw these emo tions peek through, it was unlike anything he had ever seen in fiction before, and he immediately wanted to incorporate that raw sincerity into his narrative films.

Hamaguchi credits folklore scholar Kazuko Ono, the subject of the documentary “Storytell ers,” as the person who revealed this to him. Ono interviewed many survivors in the wake of the disasters, showing that by listening with whole hearted respect, it was possible to pull genuine emotions out of her interviewees. Hamaguchi uti lizes these same techniques with his actors to imbue his work with its signature authenticity, blurring the lines between film and documentary.

In fact, this obsession with realness seems to define much of his work. Like the lead character of “Drive My Car,” a stage actor-director named Yūsuke Kafuku, Hamaguchi insists that his actors repeat their lines over and over again to rehearse. He believes that an actor should know more about their character than the audience — he even pro vided actors with supplemental texts containing more information about the characters than is present in the screenplay. Hamaguchi wants the dialogue to become a part of the actors’ bodies because their interactions keep his films engag ing for the audience. It’s their almost intangible interiority that counts the most.

Hamaguchi finds these interior moments — specifically the internal shift in emotions — most present in the musicality of the human voice. When a character is talking for an extended pe riod of time, he looks for moments when the voice is particularly beautiful. Sometimes, he thinks the voices sound so great that background music isn’t necessary. He jokes that he uses music when the directing is not going so well. Many directors avoid including too much dialogue because so much believability is found in the voice; it can be crippling to the film’s sense of immersion if not perfect. Hamaguchi is not afraid. He dives in head first.

Hamaguchi’s films are famous for being espe cially long. When asked why, he self-deprecatingly quipped, “Basically I think shorter films are bet ter.” He believes that, despite their length, each of his films is as short as it can be. “Drive My Car” is about three hours long, with an opening credits sequence that arrives around 40-minutes into the film. His love of dialogue is partially responsible for that runtime, along with his desire to include as many different shots of actors listening as pos sible. But beyond that, his unique pace serves a different purpose. He believes that good storytell ing is when the audience can fill in the world with you. For this reason, what is not said in a scene is incredibly important; long, extended moments of silence are just as integral to Hamaguchi as an emotionally-wrought monologue.

Hamaguchi ended the talk by answering audi ence questions. An audience member asked how satisfied he was with the authenticity of “Drive My Car.” He said he felt about 70 percent success ful. For an artist like him, there is always work to be done.

Tyler Wilson is a contributing writer for The Prospect and Humor at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at tyler.wil son@princeton.edu, or on Instagram at @tylertwilson.

REGINA ROBERTS / THE DAILY PRINCETONIAN

The Prospect 11

Weekly Event Roundup

As September comes to a close, there are a wide range of events and co-curricular activities for Princeton art-lovers to look forward to. Whether you are interested in film or music, there is something happening on campus to attend.

1. WOMEN ON THE WALL

All day Sept. 10 – Oct. 8

3. Princeton Sound Kitchen: New Music

by Yoon, Trueman, & Morrison

Department of Music

Taplin Auditorium, Fine Hall Oct. 4 from 8:00–10:00 pm

Featuring performances of excerpts from Bora Yoon’s “Handmaiden,” Tom Morrison’s violin piece performed by Courtney Orlando, and a string quartet composed of faculty from the Department of Music.

5. A Masterclass with Marya Martin, Flutist

Princeton University Sinfonia Rockefeller College Common Room Sept. 30 at 7:00 p.m.

Princeton students perform orchestral works by two composers: Mozart’s “Overture to the Impresario” and the third movement of Piano Concerto 23, and Marianna Martines’ Symphony in C and clarinet duet “Ma tu Tremi.”

7. Faculty Panel: Seeing Shipwrecks

Betts Auditorium and virtually, via Zoom Sept. 30 from 2–3 p.m.

Princeton scholars discuss their favorites amongst four paintings, and the dif ferent forms of knowledge in molding understanding, followed by a reception.

9. Sonorous Worlds: Musical Enchantment in Venezuela

216 Aaron Burr Hall Oct. 5 12–1:20 p.m.

11. Celebration/Party Time

Theatre Intime

Hamilton Murray Theater

Sept. 30, Oct. 1, and Oct. 2 at 8 p.m.

6. Hip-Hop Techniques and Foundations — Afrobeats with Omari Wiles

Lewis Center Princeton, Omari Wiles

Ellie’s Studio, Lewis Arts complex Oct. 1 from 1:30–3 p.m.

Dance class that seeks to strengthen hip-hop foundations and “expose danc ers to the many dance forms that exist under the umbrella of hip-hop.”

8. Ryan Gander, A Melted Snowman

Lewis Center Princeton Hurley Gallery, Lewis Arts complex Oct. 3 at 4:30 p.m.

10. All-Nighter, Season 11, Episode 1

Princeton University Art Museum, Karl Kusserow, Nicole D. Legnani, Laure Resplandy, Jerry C. Zee

Showing of two one-act plays by Harold Pinter directed by Kat McLaughlin ’25.

Arts Council of Princeton, Wendy Gordon and Karen Titus Smith Taplin Gallery, Arts Council of Princeton

An exhibition exploring the structures nature uses to survive and twodimensional artworks that grapple with forms and the illusion of them.

4. Martines & Mozart

Yana Stainova, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, McMaster University

A discussion by Stainova on her book about how youth in Venezuela utilize

A reading of Gander’s work by Guggenheim Museum curator Katharine Brin son, and an interview with Sohrab Mohebbi about the stories in Gander’s art.

A masterclass workshop with Martin and Princeton students, followed by a concert performance and the world premier of “Microvids for flute and piano” by Stefania de Kenessey.

Department of Music, Donna Weng Friedman ’80 Masterclass Series

Auditorium, Fine Hall

2: Masterclass

and concert

Featuring conversation with Olympic fencer Mo Hamza ’23, acapella group Shere Khan, and a song from Kate Short ’23.

Co-Hosted by Tiffany Huang ’23 and Asher Muldoon ’23 Frist Theater Sept. 30 at 9 p.m.

2. INKED!

An exhibition that simultaneously honors the works of late printmaker Trudy Glucksberg and exalts six printmakers with a diversity of outlooks and techniques.

Arts Council of Princeton, Judith K. Brodsky, Celia Connaire, David Dimarchi, Eileen Foti, Trudy Glucksberg, Elizabeth Massa Taplin Gallery, Arts Council of Princeton All day Sept. 17 – Nov. 5

Abby Yuexi Lu |

page 14 Friday September 30, 2022The Daily Princetonian Writer

WOMEN’S VOLLEYBALL

‘The nerves went away’: Women’s volleyball dominates Penn in Ivy opener

By Allison Ha Sports Contributor

In an electric Ivy League opener, women’s volleyball (9–2, 1–0 Ivy) increased their winning streak to six games with a 3–0 win against Penn (1–10, 0–1 Ivy).

The first set was a bat tle, with back and forth volleys all around. The score was tied at six early, but then Princeton be gan to pull away. Soon enough, the score was 15–10 Princeton, which led Penn to call a timeout. The Princeton lead didn’t drop below four, with the Tigers claiming the set and taking the lead 1–0.

The second set start ed off just as competi tive as the first one, but the score soon turned to 14–9 Princeton. With this shift in the score, Penn decided to take a timeout. Unfortunately for Penn, it was too little too late, as the score was soon 24–12 Princeton. Princeton then won on a double block by senior right side hitter

FIELD HOCKEY

Avery Luoma and sopho more blocker and right side hitter Mariah Haislip to win the set 25–12.

The third set started off in the same fashion as the first and second, but the game quickly started to slip away from Penn. The Quakers called a timeout when the score was 13–8 Princeton but could not stop the bleeding, and the Tigers pulled away easily.

Late in the final set, Penn called a timeout, during which the men’s basketball team brought out a broom to indicate that Princeton was going to “sweep” Penn and win the match 3–0. Soon, the score was 24–12: match point. The game ended on a block by first-year blocker Lucia Scalaman dre.

Senior outside hit ter Melina Mahood end ed with a match-high 11 kills, while Scalamandre and fellow first-year out side hitter Valerie Nuta kor each had nine kills of their own.

After the game, Nuta

kor told The Daily Princetonian about her mindset coming into her first Ivy game ever.

“At first I was ner vous because I felt that this game would give us a sense of where we stand in the conference, but once [senior libero and captain] Cameron [Dames] emphasized the

fact that this is just like any game that we had pre season, the nerves went away,” she said.

“I think after the game against Penn, we know what we need to work on and we know what we need from each other in order to achieve success and have fun,” Nukator added.

The women’s volley ball team will face Dart mouth at Leede Arena in Hanover, N.H. on Friday, Sept. 30 at 7 p.m.

Allison Ha is a writer for the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at ah8897@princeton.edu.

Field hockey experiences major upset as Tigers fall to No. 60 Lafayette

By Evelyn Walsh Sports Contributor

The Princeton Tigers (5–4, 1–0 Ivy) lost their fourth game of the season to the Lafayette Leopards (3–7 overall, 0–2 Patriot) on Sept. 25 at their home Bed ford field. The huge upset ended in overtime for the third time this season for the Tigers.

Both teams took their time settling into the game, playing tight de fenses during the first few minutes of play. Lafayette almost broke through in minute six of the game, with a corner shot giving them the opportunity to score. Junior goalie Robyn Thompson, however, was able to make her first of many great saves through out the game.

After 10 minutes of play, Princeton seemed to be making progress, spending more time in their offen sive territory; first-year for ward Talia Schenck made tactical stops, causing sev eral turnovers. Princeton continued to pressure the Leopard defense and drew a corner with three min utes left. This momentum was carried throughout the remainder of the first period and with 45 sec onds left, senior midfielder Zoe Shephard scored a goal with an assist by sopho more midfielder Beth Yea ger, ending the period with a score of 1–0 for the Ti gers.

The second period began with senior defender Han nah Davey driving mo mentum for the Tigers on offense and senior defend er Gabby Andretta leading the Princeton defense. La fayette also had many good opportunities to score but did not until the second half. Despite the Tigers outshooting the Leopards 9–1 in the first half, the score remained 1–0.

Both teams turned up the heat during the second half, with Davey continu ing to drive Princeton to wards the Lafayette goal. Five minutes into the third period, however, Lafayette began to chip into Princ eton’s defense, and a de fender for the Leopards was able to connect with the back of the net, tying the score at 1–1. Immedi ately following, the Tigers were ready to fight back on offense. Princeton played aggressively, sending pass es up the sidelines to try to create opportunities in the circle.

With four minutes left in the period, Princeton drew five consecutive corner shots. The third caused an upset, as Princeton fired a successful shot at the same time as the whistle, which caused the play to go un der video review. The call

on the field stood; the goal would not count. During the next two corners, the Tigers’ shots did not find the goal. The fifth and fi nal corner was also called for video review and re sulted in no goal.

The score was tied at 1–1 going into the final period, and both teams were eager to see results. Three min utes in, Thompson made an impressive save during a corner shot from the Leop ards. Players from both sides became more physi cal, and the first penalty of the game was awarded to a Lafayette player three minutes later. After an additional three minutes, Lafayette received another penalty. Princeton con tinued to drive into the circle, with senior forward Sammy Popper pushing to wards Lafayette.

The last minutes of regu

lation play were filled with action, beginning with Yeager drawing a penalty shot for Princeton. Junior defender Sam Davidson took the shot for the Ti gers, which she launched into the top left corner of the goal, making the score 2–1 with only three min utes left.

Lafayette was not ready to give up, however; a mere nine seconds later, they lined up for their own cor ner. The Leopards scored, and the game was tied again at 2–2 with only two minutes left in the fourth period. Neither team was able to finish the game, and the Tigers were once again playing overtime.

Two minutes in, Andret ta found herself with a pen alty, and the Tigers were playing six on seven for two hard-fought minutes. Princeton was able to hold

off Lafayette, and Davey made multiple attempts to find a shot. But their strong defense and the out standing performance by the Leopard’s goalie meant the Tigers could not score. After five minutes, Lafay ette found themselves with a corner and an opportu nity to score. A perfectly executed play sent the shot straight to the back of the net, and the Leopards ran to the field to celebrate their victory. Ranked 60th, Lafayette shocked No. 7 Princeton fans.

“I wasn’t too nervous taking the stroke. I’ve tak en two already this year, and I knew I was going to go top left, so I was just focused on putting the ball in the net. I think we had good possession and put them under a lot of pres sure. We just weren’t able to finish in our attacking circle,” Davidson wrote to the ‘Prince.’

“We were pretty confi dent going into the game, especially coming off of two solid wins. We try not to underestimate any of our opponents, and I don’t think we did that with La fayette; we just lost our fo cus. But I think we’re all on the same page about this being a turning point in our season, and we will grow from this game and use it as fuel for the rest of the season,” she added.

The Tigers will face Yale in New Haven on Friday, Sept. 30 for their second Ivy League game this sea son.

Evelyn Walsh is a contrib uting writer for the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’ She can be reached at ew0974@ princeton.edu or on Twitter and Instagram at @evelyn walshh.

COURTESY OF GOPRINCETONTIGERS.COM.

The Tigers have now won six straight.

Princeton played their third overtime battle in just eight days.

Ryan & Roko: From Zagreb and Los Angeles to Princeton

By Hayk Yengibaryan Sports Contributor

Sophomore Roko Po zaric started playing wa ter polo in his hometown of Zagreb, Croatia. Se nior Ryan Neapole grew up playing water polo in Southern California, home of the largest num ber of high school water polo players in the na tion. Today, they are both starters on the Princeton men’s water polo team, and they have a lot more in common than one would think.

Their similarities start from the day they picked up a water polo ball.

“I started out swim ming a lot over the sum mer, and water polo was practicing in the same pool next to me,” Neapole told The Daily Princetonian. “It looked really fun. I gave it a shot and fell in love with it right away. I’ve been play ing since the age of 11.”

By the time he got to high school, water polo was the only sport Nea pole played. He was a leader on both his high school team and local club, LA Premier Water Polo.

Pozaric also got into the sport at a young age.

“My dad got me into swimming when I was about five or six,“ he told the ‘Prince.’ “I saw water polo on the TV during the 2012 Olympics, the year Croatia won, and I wanted to start playing. I loved being part of a team sport, not an individual one.”

After an early intro duction to the sport, both players went on to thrive. Neapole attended Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles and had a memorable career. In 2018, Neapole led his team to the California In terscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section Division One Champion ship as the team captain. Along the way, he earned the Mission League MVP, First Team All-American, and CIF Southern Player of the Year honors. He was also named Daily News Player of the Year.

Meanwhile, Pozaric had an amazing youth career overseas. He and his team won the Senior Croatian Cup in consecutive years.

His team also finished second in the Dubrovnik Junior Croatian Champi onships three times. Po zaric said his best memo ries from home included playing for the youth na tional team and scoring the winning goal for the bronze medal in the Croa

tian Cup.

Both players were re cruited by current head coach Dusty Lidvak. Nea pole was within driving distance from UCLA and USC, two of the top water polo programs in the na tion. With how well he played in high school, Ne apole could have chosen to join UCLA (12-time na tional champions) or USC (10-time national cham pions). Despite these in credible opportunities, he chose Princeton.

When asked about this important decision, he said, “I wanted to have a balance between water polo and academics. I saw [that] water polo can take me to some really good institutions.”

What sold Neapole on Princeton was his visit to the school. He described the team as a tight-knit group, saying “it was so apparent how close the team was outside the pool and how much fun they had with each other.” He said he did not want to miss out on the opportu nity to play with such a great group of guys. Nea pole called this decision “the best and most in fluential decision he has ever made.”

Pozaric said he had dreamed of going to the United States to contin ue playing the sport he loved. He started put ting together highlight tapes and reaching out to coaches in hopes of find ing the right fit for him. Coach Lidvak said he was sold on Pozaric when Alex Bowen, a former Stanford star and current U.S. na tional team water polo player, recommended Po zaric to him; Bowen was in Croatia playing profes sional water polo with Po zaric at the time.

“Princeton is an awe some place to be,” Pozaric said. “It’s a great school with great academics.”

The balance between academic and athletics, he explained, was an im portant factor in him ul timately committing to Princeton.

In Princeton’s 2021 sea son, the team broke the school’s win record by going 26–8, with Pozaric and Neapole both as ma jor contributors to the squad. As a first-year, Po zaric led the team in goals with 68 goals, while con tributing 41 assists and 41 steals. Neapole had 19 goals and 35 assists along with 22 steals.

Both players agreed that winning the 2021 North east Water Polo Confer ence (NWPC) Champion ships at DeNunzio Pool

was the best moment of their Princeton careers. They reminisced on how special it was to win the conference champion ship at their home pool, especially after the previ ous season’s cancellation due to the COVID-19 pan demic.

This year, the two have continued helping the program succeed. In 10 games this season, Pozar ic is once again leading the team in goals with 26 goals and 10 assists. Nea pole is also another major contributor with 12 goals and 10 assists, along with 16 steals. The team is cur rently 8–4 and ranked No. 15 in the nation, putting them in the running for another championship bid.

When asked about how he tries to be a leader to the younger players on the team, Neapole men tioned “the key has been to lead by example. Our ceiling is as high as we want it to be. We all love to get better together. This team is the clos est we’ve ever had. We’re gonna work to get better everyday.”

Similarly, Pozaric has his eyes on the national championship this year. He explained if they prac tice the right way and gameplan well, they can compete for the confer ence championship and, eventually, the national championship.

While being stars in the pool, both Neapole and Pozaric have succeeded academically and said they found an amazing balance between school and water polo. Both play ers agree that the Univer sity gives them multiple resources to help them succeed academically.

“We are a fall sport, so we have to set up our good study habits ear ly on. It’s an advantage when the season ends and we have a lot more time to commit to academics,” Neapole said.

As the season unfolds, Pozaric and Neapole will undoubtedly continue to help this team succeed day in and day out by leading the program to new heights. While they started out on two dif ferent sides of the world, they are now teammates with a shared goal in mind: to help Princeton win another champion ship.

Hayk Yengibaryan is a contributor for the Sports section at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at hy5161@ princeton.edu or on Insta gram @hayk_10_11.

FROM THE LAST

SATURDAY, SEPT.

LEHIGH

PRINCETON

GAMES: SATURDAY, OCT. 1: PRINCETON AT COLUMBIA,

WOMEN’S SOCCER

RESULTS FROM THE LAST WEEK:

SATURDAY, SEPT. 24: PRINCETON 0, YALE 1 TUESDAY, SEPT. 27: PRINCETON 4, BUCKNELL 0

UPCOMING GAMES: SATURDAY, OCT. 1: DARTMOUTH AT PRINCETON, 1 P.M.

FROM THE LAST WEEK: FRIDAY, SEPT. 23: RIDER

PRINCETON

TUESDAY, SEPT. 27: PRINCETON 1, ST. JOHN’S 2

UPCOMING GAMES: SATURDAY, OCT.

AT DARTMOUTH,

TUESDAY, OCT.

MEN’S WATER POLO

Sophomore Roko Pozaric (left), Senior Ryan Neapole (right).