On campus, the Orange Bubble motif is portrayed in conflicting and contradictory lights. The Triangle Club’s show has a song praising Princeton as a place where nothing ever happens: It’s a bubble insulated from the perils of life off campus. Conversely, the bubble is also described as limiting, a wall that prevents students from sincere interactions with those outside of a narrowly defined community. Last week, columnist Keith Griffin contended that “we’ve bought into the notion of the Orange Bubble, with the town revolving around us, instead of realizing that our campus is a part of the town.” I agree with Griffin that students would benefit from interacting with more people, but Griffin is just as vested in this problematic metaphor of “The Bubble” as the people who think Princeton is the center of the universe.
Before coming to Princeton, my experiences with bubbles involved economic crises ranging from the dot-com bubble of the 1990s to the recently collapsed housing bubble. In an e-mail, economics professor Elizabeth Bogan described a bubble as “a substantial deviation in price from some underlying fundamental.” Basically, an economic bubble occurs when expectations are out of touch with reality: They’re distortions and follow in the wake of poor information management or ignorance of basic market fundamentals.
If we are to glean anything from the bubble metaphor, I think it should be the connotation of distortion. On campus, there is a discord between the image we try to project and the one we see when we’re the least bit introspective. A series of investigative news articles this year highlighted just how fragile the protection of the Orange Bubble is. The articles showed that students drink heavily, fear expressing their sexuality, are affected by income inequality and feel discriminated against. Princeton is just as plagued by alcoholism, homophobia, classism and racism as everywhere else.
As Griffin noted, we aren’t impervious to the world — there are alcoholics, drug users, drug dealers and deviants outside of Princeton University’s gates as well as within — it just so happens that those within the gates tend to wear $300 pants and dine in mansions. The Orange Bubble metaphor is misleading — many problems we’d like to think only occur outside our idyllic campus are in fact quite common here.
If the metaphor of Princeton as a bubble is useless, it is worth asking why we can’t find more accurate language. The Office of Communications is partially responsible for propagating the myth of the Orange Bubble. They have four main “priorities” outlined on their website: “emphasize the exceptional scholarly quality of our faculty,” “showcase our diversity, particularly in the student body,” “expand international appreciation of Princeton” and to “focus attention on President Tilghman’s leadership.” They are tasked with minimizing negativity while emphasizing the singular perfection of Princeton.
But the student body is ultimately more responsible than any other party for maintaining the myth. I think that most of us want to believe in the Orange Bubble. As an eager high school student, I wanted to believe that there was a quiet place tucked away in the suburbs where brilliant professors diligently worked to increase understanding and students lived and worked together without strife.
The reality is quite different from this idyllic projection. This may seem like a semantic quibble, but the ways in which we frame debate often dictate our response. If, for example, we exclusively blame factors outside the Orange Bubble for campus sexual harassment and sexual assault, then we risk ignoring the abuse that happens between students, faculty and staff.
The Orange Bubble is a tired and inaccurate metaphor. The walls and gates that separate Princeton from “the real world” aren’t nearly as tall or thick as we’d like to imagine: In fact, they do not exist. If we want to actively work towards solving the problems that plague our campus, we must begin by speaking in terms that don’t misrepresent reality.
Michael Collins is a sophomore from Glastonbury, Conn. He can be reached at mjcollin@princeton.edu.
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