Opinion

Grades and happiness

However, my complaint is not that we are less competitive when compared to our Harvard peers. My complaint is not even that grade deflation is unfair. Rather, my argument is that the competitive atmosphere created by grades — and grade deflation in particular — is antithetical to education. My proposal is not to merely eliminate grade deflation, but to eliminate grades altogether.

NassWatch

You’d be forgiven for not having noticed this, but The Daily Princetonian has a competitor on campus. It’s called the Nassau Weekly, or the “Nass” for short, and it could charitably be described as a “weekly student newspaper” containing a “blend of campus, local and national news; reviews of films and bands; original art, fiction and poetry and other college-related material.” (I stole that description from Wikipedia.) A more realistic description would focus on the large ketchup stains usually found on its cover due to its primary distribution in dining halls and eating clubs, its over-reliance on irony and its apparent lack of an editing process.

Editorial: Excellence in research

We do not deny that work done on primates plays an important role in achieving goals in scientific research. While it is appropriate that the University’s researchers employ primates in their work, we have an obligation to avoid inflicting any unnecessary harm upon them in the course of conducting research. Much of the research misconduct identified by the USDA — depriving monkeys of water, for example, or failing to provide adequate care for pregnant monkeys — seems clearly to violate this obligation. We must stop these violations.

What Tigers can learn from Nittany Lions

Clearly the football culture at Penn State has been problematic — at least at the administrative level. It must be rethought. But it can be and almost always is a force for good. And the fact that Princeton doesn’t have a single comparably unifying institution on its campus is unfortunate.

Editing the Writing Center

I consider the Writing Center an extremely valuable academic help program at Princeton, and I am definitely grateful that I have access to it. But, while I have had several positive experiences at there, I think that the process could be improved. Several of my friends and I who have been to the Writing Center so far this year have experienced a significant problem with the system — the possibility that the writing fellow has little or no experience with the subject material of your paper.

Princetonian entrepreneurs

In the safety of the Orange Bubble, it is hard for many students to truly grasp the tumultuous and gut-wrenching experience of those who continue to deal with the recession daily. In an economy where one in five youths is unemployed, the opportunities to get an adequate job are shrinking, and the futures of our careers remain an enigma.

Cartoon: Eurozone Thanksgiving

Occupy the Streets: Princeton

There is no promise that you will see any results from your protests with Occupy The Streets: Princeton. But if you expected anything different, that was your own fault.

Cartoon: Happy birthday

Editorial: Greater transparency

Princeton University consistently earns the highest endowment per student of any college in the nation, but PRINCO and the University’s Trustees should also assure us that it is being invested securely and ethically.

'Unknown unknowns' in your course catalogue

The Registrar’s office should send out an email at the beginning of each academic year and during each course registration period reminding students that chances for academic innovation exist and encouraging their use.

Great educations

We read the books, finish the problem sets, take the exams and then, having been “taught to think,” we are shoveled out into various careers, better equipped to contribute in any field. Or so we’re told.

Let's knot

As I stepped into the bathroom today I had a choice of four vacant showers. Waiting for me in shower one was a diverse array of hairy situations plastered on the wall.

What's a little liberty?

The calls for government involvement point towards a disturbing, and increasingly prevalent, mindset. Government is not the solution for anything we don’t like in our lives, and especially not for problems that government itself actually created.

Cartoon: Medieval Chain Mail

The products of our places

Community is no less important in the lives of the students who make up each freshman class at Princeton. All of us matriculate as products of our places. We come to this university with a set of morals instilled by our friends, family and neighbors.

Editorial: A linguistics department

As of 2010, six of the eight Ivy League universities offer undergraduate single concentrations in linguistics. Princeton, however, is not among them, even though we do offer a certificate program in linguistics, and undergraduates commonly create independent concentrations in the subject. The Editorial Board feels that this gap in our academic offerings must be filled in order to provide the most enriching intellectual environment for our students and to continue to attract the highest caliber of prospective students.

The American university and the world

In recent years, universities and research centers from Berlin to Beijing have caught up or passed us in many fields. The states have decided that higher education isn’t a public good, which they should support, but a private one, which students and their families should pay for.

Editorial: Knowing the numbers

In order to adequately assess the success of our efforts to increase the socioeconomic diversity of the student body and in order to effectively discuss future modifications to our efforts, it is necessary that we possess accurate and clear measurements about the current state of affairs.

Appreciating veterans

Since we cannot personally thank the dead, we most certainly should show our appreciation for the living veterans. It’s men like the following four who we thank on this day. Each epitomizes the soldier’s duty of putting his own life at risk to protect others.