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University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 discussed government cuts to higher education and the need for business leaders to press for more funding to state schools during a speech at the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Princeton Marriott on Thursday, The Princeton Packet reported. The speech was Eisgruber’s first to the local business community, and he urged business leaders to make their voices heard in support of higher education. Eisgruber cited evidence that opposes the idea that students are graduating from college with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, countering newspaper articles which he said cast doubt upon whether higher education is worth the cost.
Rich Vyas ’14, a concentrator in the Wilson School, has been chosen as a winner of the United Nations “Many Languages, One World Essay” contest in the Spanish language.
Ten students in GSS 397: Feminist Media Studies presented Thursday on topics they chose at the beginning of the semester in a symposium titled “More than MAD WOMEN: Examining Gender in Public Discourse.” Each student used examples from the media and popular culture, historical events and personal experiences to present the importance of their topic in relation to public discourse on it, as well as ideas moving forward for how to change or rethink the discourse. The class, taught by professor Melissa Deem, a lecturer in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies, focuses on the representation of women and feminism in various forms of media. Kayla Bose ’16 said Deem proposed the idea of a symposium in order to present the culmination of their research.
Editor's note: this article has been retracted due to incorrect information provided to The Daily Princetonian by the University.
While USG has not gone over its budget for the past two years, some Pace Center for Civic Engagement projects have had to operate with a more limited budget. USG president Shawon Jackson ’15 explained that USG has operated within its budget during his terms as president, noting that money has sometimes been left over.
The Office of Information Technologypartnered with Frist Campus Center as part of its color printing initiativeto install a new Xerox 7500DN color printer on the Frist 300 level. There was only one color printer available in Frist prior to this installation.
For students in ITA 401: Economic Politics and Organized Crime, Italy is far from the land of Pisa and pizza.
Of the approximately 135 students who take time off from the University each year, about 35 take leaves of absence for mental health reasons, Dean of Undergraduate Students Kathleen Deignan told students at a dialogue with administrators on Tuesday about mental health on campus. Of those 35 students, the University has a serious safety concern and pursues involuntary withdrawal for about three to five students, Deignan noted.
Ten students were transported for alcohol intoxication on Sunday, the day of Lawnparties, to either the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro or McCosh Health Center. Additionally, one student was transported on Friday and one student was transported on Saturday, the two evenings of Houseparties, for a total of 12 transports over the weekend. This is an increase over last fall’s and last spring’s Lawnparties Sunday transportation numbers, when seven students were transported to McCosh and UMCPP.
Harvard faculty have approved the college’s first Honor Code,theHarvard Crimson reported. With the new honor code, which will likely be put in place in the fall of 2015, students will be required to make a “regular affirmation of integrity.” The nature and frequency of the affirmation of the honor code have not yet been determined. However, exams will still be proctored, a key difference from the Princeton Honor Code. According to the Crimson, the code will lay out “formal expectations for academic integrity” and create a new student-faculty/administrator judicial “Honor Board” to hear violations of these expectations. Discussions about creating an honor code began nearly two years ago in the wake of the Harvard cheating scandal in fall of 2012, in which over 100 students were investigated for cheating. “The impact will probably be small, but I think over time it will help to create that culture shift where people really value academic integrity and personal integrity,” Harvard Undergraduate Council Vice President Sietse K.
Revisions to sexual violence and personal safety clauses under the University's RRR policies were passed on a 12 to six vote on Monday during the last Council of Princeton University Community meeting of the academic year. The revisions were drafted over the course of a year and originated from the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which required institutions to prohibit acts relating to dating violence, domestic violence and stalking, University Provost David Lee GS '99 said in his presentation. To ensure adequate prohibitions relating to these three issues, a sexual misconduct working group comprised of faculty and administrators has worked on developing comprehensive definitions of such acts. There is a new definition for "Intimate Relationship" and "Intimate Relationship Violence," which includes domestic violence and stalking.Additionally, subsections were added to "Personal Safety" stating that serious offenses include "violence directed at a person cohabiting in the same space as the perpetrator" and stalking. Lee said the committee expects to introduce further revisions, as the legislation and policies regarding such acts are constantly evolving.
The Department of Education will likely resolve the ongoing complaint against the University for alleged violations of Title IX within two weeks, according to New England School of Law adjunct professor Wendy Murphy, who was responsible for filing the complaint. Murphy opened cases against the University and Harvard Law School under Title IX — the law that prohibits discrimination based on sex in educational institutions that receive federal funding — for sexual violence complaints in fall 2010. The Department of Education included these institutions on a list of higher education institutions under federal investigation released last Thursday. In sending the cases to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, Murphy said she wanted the agency's headquarters to issue global guidelines so that all schools could improve their sexual assault and Title IX policies, as the problems at the University and Harvard Law School were allegedly systemic in higher education.OCR responded by releasing a Dear Colleague Letter in April 2011 that explained "schools’ responsibility to take immediate and effective steps to end sexual harassment and sexual violence" under Title IX regulations. However, a few weeks after the letter's publication, legislators filed a new federal law called the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, referred to as SaVE, that reduced the standards for helping sexual assault victims, according to Murphy. "It in effect gives Harvard and Princeton and all schools federal authority to mistreat sexual assault victims on campus," she explained.
While a new $180 million neuroscience building was completed in the fall of 2013, the program will only be offering three elective courses for the neuroscience certificate in the fall of 2014, compared with seven this semester and nine in the fall of 2013. In order to get the neuroscience certificate, students need to take two core courses and three electives. According to the Registrar’s website, the neuroscience electives offered next fall are NEU 408: Cellular and Systems Neuroscience, NEU 501A/501B: From Molecules to Systems and NEU 336: The Diversity of Brains.
Students no longer have to line up early in the morning by New South Building to register for workshops in the Program in Creative Writing. Registration for fall 2014-15 will now take place electronically through SCORE, the University's student course online registration engine. The Program in Creative Writing offers small workshops that focus on poetry, fiction, literary translation and screenwriting.
Potential new costs for the town, incurred through the University’s construction projects, did not play a role in increasing its voluntary contribution to the municipal government, according to a University official. The new agreement, which was approved during a public meeting last week, provides the town with $2.75 million in 2014, an increase of over 10 percent from last year’s contribution.
First Lady Michelle Obama ’85 wore a T-shirt on Thursday bearing the University's name, according to an Instagram picture shared on Obama's account. Obama wore the shirt for a College Signing Day event in San Antonio on May 1 as part of her Reach Higher Initiative to encourage young adults to finish their education. Obama, who has rebuffed invitations from the University in the past and rarely mentions her connection to the University, also discussed her experience at the University in her speech at the event. "I focused my entire high school career not just on getting a high school diploma, but on getting into Princeton," Obama said. "I thought I had done everything I could to prepare myself for Princeton, but when I got there, I was totally overwhelmed.
The position of dean of Forbes College, which was recently left vacant, is open to only six eligible candidates.The positioncan only be filled by someone who is currently a director of studies in a residential college at the University,according to an online job posting. A posting for a new director of studies is also advertised, although the residential college is not named, and is not restricted to internal candidates. Filling the post of dean with a director of studies is standard hiring procedure, Senior Associate Dean of the College ClaireFowler said in an interview.
Conversations, the first summit of a new dialogue series,took place Thursday at Frist Campus Center’s food gallery during late meal. This new initiative, sponsored by USG and the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, intends to bring students from different backgrounds together and engage them in dialogues on different topics. “I was initially hoping that there would be a couple of 15-minute dialogues in five tables,” U-CouncilorSol Taubin ’16, the lead project coordinator for Conversations, said.
University politics professor Martin Gilens appeared on an episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Wednesdayalongside Northwestern University political science professor Benjamin Page. Gilens and Page published a study in April that used regression analysis to analyze the differences in influence that affluent individuals, interest groups and average citizens have on government policy outcomes. Gilens told Stewart that they analyzed over a thousand policy changes over the past few decades and found that elite groups and individuals had a disproportionate share of influence over policy. Page also addressed University economics and Wilson School professor Paul Krugman's view that the study raises good points but discourages people.
