Editorial: Evaluating Easop's administration

Easop’s presidency saw several enhancements to Princeton’s campus life, highlighted primarily by the addition of campus-wide events to Princeton’s social calendars and by administrative changes to the USG’s recruitment and selection process. Social events, like the Silent Disco, left a positive imprint on Princeton undergraduate life by offering alternatives to the Street and allowing students to meet members of their class who they may not have met on Prospect Avenue. Internal organizational reforms to the USG, such as opening up the application for the Presidential Search Committee to the entire senior class, also constituted a positive step to making the USG accessible to a broader array of students. We commend Easop’s administration for organizing these popular social events and for making the USG more accessible to the campus community. We also encourage the next USG administration to build on Easop’s legacy with campus-wide social initiatives, such as Restaurant Week.

The past administration also undertook several projects to improve the quality of student life and respect the needs of our diverse student body. For example, the Board praises the Easop administration for prioritizing healthy living campaigns, such as Mental Health Week, and applauds his successful push to extend gender-neutral housing to the residential colleges. For these initiatives to be truly successful, however, the coming administration must ensure that conversation around these issues does not cease.

However, certain academic policy changes begun under Easop’s presidency remain unfinished. We encourage Jackson’s administration to build on Easop’s work and to tackle the academic policy issues left unresolved by his presidency. Among these issues are the pass/D/fail policy and scheduling changes to the academic calendar. Last year, the Academic Life Total Assessment survey found that an overwhelming majority of the student body would favor having the ability to rescind P/D/F after final grades become available. The Board has previously written in support of such a policy and urges Jackson’s administration to work to see to its implementation. Meanwhile, a scheduling change targeted by Easop’s administration, which would cancel classes the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and begin the school year a day earlier, is in preliminary stages for approval by the faculty but has yet to be passed. Working to finalize this schedule change ought to be a priority for the coming administration.

Finally, we believe that the USG should work to attract more students to run for elected positions in the USG. A significant number of USG candidates ran unopposed in the previous election cycle, and the Board believes that competitive elections are in the interest of the study body because they function to improve the caliber of the USG.

Overall, we commend Easop’s positive contributions to students’ social life, but we hope that Jackson’s administration will balance social initiatives with efforts to address academic issues at Princeton.