Hating and loving Princeton

“We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre’s castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. No one doubts that an ordinary man can get on with this world: but we demand not strength enough to get on with it, but strength enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough to change it, and yet love it enough to think it worth changing?”

While G.K. Chesterton, in his tour de force, Orthodoxy, directs these words toward Christian life generally, his powerful words can be a helpful lens for all Princetonians as we think about our University specifically. How can we take issue with all that needs to change about Princeton, while simultaneously enjoying all that is very good about it?

Hating and loving Princeton is a tension I — and perhaps you — face daily. I hate the success-hungry Princeton culture that contributes to 43 percent of students feeling depressed often or sometimes , not to mention the persistent stress that can plague even those students who aren’t depressed. I hate the Princeton in which independence is lauded so much so that needing God, desiring a spouse or even simply being vulnerable with friends is often seen as foolish. I hate the Princeton in which social interactions on the Street are fairly homogeneous, focused on social climbing, hooking up and getting drunk. And I really hate the Princeton that espouses a false open-mindedness in which it’s fine to believe whatever you want, as long as it’s not certain social or religious views.

But I also love Princeton. I love the intellectual depth of the student body and faculty, as well as the incredibly rich course offerings. I love the periwinkle sky that so often provides an elegant backdrop for the gentle, interweaving plant and stone that characterize our campus. I love Princeton’s commitment to helping undergrads travel abroad and pursue exciting independent work. (Conducting my thesis research in the rain forests of Costa Rica was a major highlight of Princeton for me, and I’m constantly amazed at the ways Princeton opens similar doors for hundreds of other students.) I also love the strong sense of community here, both among current undergraduates as well as the eccentric yet amazingly faithful alumni. I love the access to professors, the overall professionalism and excellence maintained by the University and the blend Princeton strikes as a major research institution with a liberal arts spirit.

Feeling the independent and fierce pull of both emotional categories, love and hate, is helpful. As Chesterton says so well, the danger is allowing the two emotions to mix and produce a “surly contentment” that accepts the status quo and neither rejoices in the good nor seeks change for the bad. We must, to some degree, separate the different components of our Princeton experience or we risk understanding them wrongly.

To that end, I encourage you — in whatever arena of campus life you feel it — to fervently hate the problems with that aspect of Princeton so that you can usher in a better Princeton down the road. Let your hate be motivated ultimately by an abiding love for Princeton that drives you to make it the best place it can be. In the same way that good friends can show love by firmly pointing out one another’s flaws, I think we love our University community best when we are genuine about its real shortcomings and aggressively seek transformation for them.

What does intense love and hate for Princeton actually look like? It could look like a social scene that encourages diversity in clientele and activities for the purpose of creating more dynamic Saturday night options, or a truly open-minded dialogue about religion in which it’s okay to criticize religious traditions in a frank but civil way (rather than side-stepping massive differences in worldview and painting them as different paths up the same mountain), or a culture in which women can feel equally accepted whether they choose grad school, a high-powered job, or motherhood upon graduation. Do something that allows you to lean on both fountains of passion, hate and love, so long as the result is sincerely pointed toward the betterment of Princeton.

Let’s then seek the good of our University, because in its welfare we may just find our own.