The royal 'we'

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that I am here at all. In 2001, Princeton introduced its no-loan policy for financial aid to let economically challenged students like myself come and attain the best undergraduate education this country has to offer (yes, Harvard, the best). Though Princeton has been judged to be a safe haven for privileged young adults, diversity has made great strides, even within the past 10 years. The offices of Annual Giving are a testament to this, as they are laden with photos of Reunions past, depicting classes huddling together in front of Blair Arch. On the walls, the dreary and monotonous black and (primarily) white photos of bygone decades have given way more and more to bright variations of race, background and income that bring welcome flavor to the University, a flavor we strive to advance today. In this swelling diversity, our natural disposition would be celebratory but for our simultaneously growing numbers that make a mockery of it.

Between 2000 and 2010, the average class size has grown by about 125 students. In recent years, our network as Princeton students has expanded, making our roots as Princetonians more potent than they have ever been. Unfortunately, such strong numbers have forced us to lose something that even the small, lamentably homogenous classes of the 1950s had: collective community. If you doubt this loss, you also doubt that skin color still influences where students hang out in Frist Campus Center or that certain campus groups are composed of uniform incomes, religions or ethnicities. In these ways, the diversity we are so proud of has become nothing but ornamentation, and our growing might in population superficial. The profusion of colors, nationalities and faiths are reduced to tacked-on tokens that never became fully integrated into a “Princeton” identity. At best, we are fragmented.

For the record, I in no way believe that our own school’s growth in the past years is a bad thing in itself. Rather, it is the way in which that growth is managed, and not even by the University administration, but by individuals who solidify these divisions every time they are too afraid to step out of their comfort zone. In large eating clubs and dining halls, one too often sees 10 people of the same exact background crowded around a small table rather than taking a risk and going for something that I, personally, would hope to be the desire of every Princeton student: exposure. Our liberal academic programs do a fine job of making us well-rounded citizens who are knowledgeable about the world around us, but our unwillingness to engage in unfamiliar scenarios outside of the classroom hinders us.

Fortunately, I have been blessed to witness the solution to these maladies of segregation. Take the example of the handful of active white students in the Princeton Committee on Palestine, or the numerous talented Asian-American dancers gracing the stage with the Black Arts Company. They are the perfect models for the rebuilding of a Princeton community, in which students are mutually invested in cultures outside of those from which they came. As for myself, some of the richest times I have had at Princeton have been my junior paper research on Bollywood cinema, my dancing with Naacho and celebrating Diwali with good friends, though I had hardly met three or four South Asians before coming to Princeton. Through crossover, we come to legitimately care for our wider student body.

At the end of the day, I proudly consider myself a true Princetonian. Though my conception of life here is biased by some of my own experiences, I still like to think of this second home as a cohesive unit, a “we,” a network of people who have the feeling that we are all on the same team. There are arguments and disagreements, rivalries and, sometimes, hatred, but the community of the University is what has managed to persist to the present day and is something that requires an active preservation on our part if we are to continue growing as we have. If there is one thing I wished for more of in the past decade of Princeton, and one thing I hope for the decades to come, it is the possibility to maintain both our celebrated diversity and our traditional community, something that can only happen if we care to take the time to imagine ourselves as part of something bigger than the group of people with whom we share a room, table or club. It takes the time to imagine that we are, in fact, a “we” at all.

Joey Barnett is an anthropology major from Tulare, Calif. He can be reached at jbarnett@princeton.edu.