Opinion

Preview of coming attractions

The bottom line for most college applicants is that if you have thought hard about what matters to you and made sure that the schools you applied to will do well in those things, then it doesn’t actually much matter where you go. The experience will be different for sure, but not in any predictable way, and for the most part, it will be what you make of it, independent of weather, tours, panelists and parents. So let’s hope all our visitors applied to schools that really make sense for them, thought hard about what they want in a school and, in the end, make the right decision: to come to Princeton.

Campus Community Challenge

In an ideal world, everyone would be interested in giving back all the time and wouldn’t require any external rewards or praise. But the month of service confronts a reality — the current approach to cause weeks or months is the most likely to get students interested and motivated, if only for a short time. In providing many options for one-time service opportunities and fostering a spirit of friendly competition through prizes awarded to those who have logged the most service hours, the USG is bound to get people involved in service who otherwise would not have been involved.

Editorial: Princeton prizes

We believe that the Princeton Prize in Race Relations is an important project that benefits both the award recipients and the University. As such, we believe that more prizes of a similar nature should be created to commend high school students who have done outstanding things in various areas of civic engagement. Prizes in fields such as education, public health, LGBT and gender activism and poverty alleviation would attract a wide array of talented students that may also be interested in Princeton.

Cartoon: Princeton preview

Editorial: Improving room draw

We believe that these changes would greatly improve the room draw experience. Easily accessible information would allow students to make more informed decisions, increasing the probability that they will be satisfied with their housing arrangements in the coming year. Weighed against the costs, we believe the numerous benefits to these initiatives heavily favor their implementation.

Contraception compromise

Some observant Catholics have come out against even the reformed version of Obama’s mandate. Various Catholic parties that were adverse to the mandate have come around. I will not claim to understand the objection of those who view the current mandate as contrary to their morals, but, as I stated before, morality is a difficult thing to debate. I do believe, however, that the compromise is comfortable for most. No piece of legislation or executive order will have the entire support of the people.

Princeton type

We know what this stereotyped Princetonian looks like: Sperrys, J. Crew shorts and white skin. It’s the look we all mock — some of us more ironically than others — twice a year at Lawnparties, which no one outside of Princeton seems to find as amusing as we do.

Earn your stripes

The prefrosh that come to Princeton Preview can experience for themselves whether or not Princeton gives off the right vibe to them. It is our job as students to provide them with actual information about what being a Princeton student is like to help them make their decision.

Cartoon: Generation gap

On social entrepreneurship

The immediate question for me at least, is how we can turn Princeton into an entrepreneurial leader.

Labeling

"I’m labeled. And I don’t like it.”

Hijabs and hoodies

We are encouraging students to wear hoodies or headscarves in an effort to show solidarity with all past, current and potential victims of hate crimes.

Cartoon: The curse of good weather

A human defense

Not all engineers or natural science majors demonstrate it, but there’s a definite category of them that look down on humanities majors and often social science majors, too. And it doesn’t strike me as a friendly sort of rivalry. It’s a distinct “I am much smarter than you, and I work much harder than you” kind of vibe.

Close reading

The problem with these readings is that no one’s truly, honest-to-God paying attention. They’re just there to react in the moment. And sometimes that means they miss the point.

English for engineers?

Fulfilling the humanities and social sciences distribution requirements for an engineering major thus ends up being an interesting task. We can and do survive in the current system as it is now. But I think it would be interesting for the University to explore the development of a few humanities and social sciences courses that are perhaps suited more toward the engineer and science major in the way certain science classes are suited toward the humanities major, and to see if there is any interest in them.

___ (gender) __ (prep.) ___ (noun)

The idea for this column grew out of a feeling I had that every story published on the subject of women on campus has begun to take on the same rubric, using the same buzzwords and reiterating the same points. As I said, I find this to not only be useless and distracting, but also detract from any true accomplishment of the stated goals of the Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership and the University more generally.

Letter to the Editor: April 10th, 2012

We think it is commendable that the ‘Prince’ has made a point of covering the gender gap that the Steering Committee on Women’s Leadership exposed last spring. However, we write today because we find the nature of some ‘Prince’ coverage of that gap troubling.

Blind date II

Cartoon: Architechnicality