I’d be willing to bet that those experiences are fairly unusual, and I expect them to feel strange because they are. What I did not expect was that everything else would also feel so bizarre after I officially finished. There is the possibility that Passover-induced hallucinations explain why the world has been hazy, but there is a definite sense of unreality at the moment that I believe extends beyond those of us struggling with the restricted diet of the breadless life.
It’s one of those things that you just have to feel to understand, a vague sense that things are off — but at the same time completely and totally right and entirely different. A class that only knows how to go hard or go home is currently going nowhere instead. And right now, there is no next except more of the same. Strictly speaking, of course, there is a next whether we know what that is or not, but the concurrent finality and uncertainty of everything has left the world as cloudy as the overcast skies of late. Though I promised a friend I would do this feeling justice, I know that I haven’t, and I’m not sure I can.
One of the things that feels so weird is that I haven’t stopped caring about campus events, just like the alums who litter The Daily Princetonian comments section. If you’d asked me a month ago whether I’d care about the latest fiat from Nassau Hall, I’d have confidently said no. Yet I do, and I’ve gone so far as to help bring a referendum to this year’s ballot that would ban USG members from accepting letters of recommendation from administrators. Perhaps that’s because on that issue and others there’s a stark dichotomy between what is right and what’s actually happened.
One of the clearest examples of such a divergence from the desirable is the ACC’s absurd party monitor proposal, reported by the ‘Prince’ on April 1 and defended in an op-ed last Friday. This is slightly less moronic than some past proposed changes to the alcohol policy, but it is still pretty stupid. I get why the administration is obsessed with having students crack down on drinking, but the fact remains that this is a bad idea. But please, if you’d like to destroy to destroy the ACC’s relationship with the student body by turning it into an arm of Public Safety, go right ahead.
The parade of idiocy continued with the University’s announcement that it was establishing August interim housing. The stated justifications for this policy, shredded by Eric Kang in a recent column and a slew of online commenters, are just so absurd that I have trouble believing that the administration believes its own spin. The policy itself is a disaster, and the explanations offered for it are yet another example of the endemic and transparent dishonesty that marks the administration.
This public relations helplessness is why our admit rate rose fractionally while those of our peers fell by little. The University has decisively lost the war to shape prospective Princetonians’ perceptions of our financial aid policies, grade deflation and the eating clubs. For instance, regardless of whether Princeton’s financial aid policy is superior to Harvard’s (and I know from personal experience that it certainly is), the general public doesn’t think so. Whatever the University is doing to manage our image, they need to try something else.
Perhaps a good place to start would be with the travesty of a trial that Charter Club faces. It seems difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that two people were served alcohol by a club when both individuals unequivocally and explicitly said that they weren’t. That Charter must go to court anyway is a perversion of the American justice system and one that also hurts Princeton’s reputation. At the very least the University should loudly trumpet Charter’s inevitable acquittal, though I won’t be holding my breath. If we can start working together to repair the damage done to our image by this and other fiascos, then Princeton can begin to grow again as a community, and I can go on to the contented quiescence I imagined post-thesis life to be.
Barry Caro is a history major from White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.
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Let’s acknowledge those who make “boutique teaching” possible, those who work tirelessly to make our rigorous curricula more accessible, and those who dedicate their time to advising and guiding us through all the challenges we face at this University. Lecturers should be eligible for the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.
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