Letters to the Editor

For the U-Council, a test of conviction

Taking a cue from David Brooks's critique of the Stephens-Center-toned, Street-frequenting, Econ-trained, McKinsey-bound, but, alas, discourse-shy Princeton undergrad, the U-Council recently published an open letter which lamented the dearth of deep conversation among undergraduates.

"Students," the Councilors wrote, "complain that dinner conversations rarely shift to intellectual topics." The Council took this predilection for banal chitchat, coupled with unused office hours, undergrad-free public lectures, hesitance to challenge authority, and — worse still — a workload that leaves undergrads without the time even to read a newspaper, as symptoms of chronic intellectual atrophy.

Such a public proclamation is both unprecedented and quite necessary. The Council deserves our praise for raising it. However, while the absence of serious conversation among the student body is evident, the letter reveals neither why undergraduates mourn its passing, nor, for that matter, how they might revive it. In their analysis, the U-Council avoided the most important question: If students truly want to discuss issues beyond their adventures on Prospect, why do they not do so?

The Councilors danced closer to the answer in claiming that academics and extracurriculars leave students so exhausted that they want a break from rigorous discussion when they enter the dining hall.

The USG, true to form, pounced on this fingering of the difficulty of the Undergraduate program. Their proposal? According to the 'Prince' of Oct. 14, it is to slow down the pace of classes by lengthening the semesters without adding new material.

While this author would welcome a long, relaxed school year, a useful proposal might suggest something that has a chance of being implemented before our 10th reunion. In the grand tradition of punditry, I will reveal my own:

To the USG, and any other organization that has endorsed the Councilors' findings, I issue a challenge. To your criteria for approving grants, recognizing new student groups, sanctioning events, and the like, add the following: "Every proposal approved by this body must demonstrate how it will make a nontrivial contribution to undergraduate intellectual discourse."

The policy must specify "must" rather than "should" — the nature of bureaucracy is such that a "should" policy would quickly become a dead letter. No penny should be spent, no charter should be granted, no activity should be approved unless the proposer has shown how the proposal supports undergraduate conversation. Avoid prolonged dithering, act quickly, and codify it before December. The discourse it will facilitate will provide ample opportunity to ponder the details later. The controversy alone might provide sufficient material to make art of conversation fashionable again.

To those shouting "fun-spoiler!" from the peanut gallery, I direct my closing remarks: Princeton is first an intellectual community, and it is hardly unreasonable to expect that its student organizations should serve it as such. While this policy may not transform campus conversations overnight, it would at the very least encourage our student groups (renowned for their innovation and enthusiasm) to promote their activities as catalysts of discourse. If extracurricular activities are indeed leaving students too exhausted to engage in deep conversation, why not encourage those activities to reverse that trend? Joseph Barillari '04