Schadenfreude is a uniting force, one that perpetuates the distinction between being in and being excluded from a group. While pickups and the eating club system are perhaps the most institutionalized form of schadenfreude at Princeton, schadenfreude also exists outside of the realm of social life.
There are eight students in the class, some Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh and Hindu. On the table in front of us are our three, 500-page Pequod packets, compilations of the major Sufi teachings and their contemporary commentators. The name of this course is NES 324: Introduction to Later Sufism, the second in a two-semester series on mystical Islam.
If community service is considered great and those who “give back” are admired, why should we not institutionalize incentives to perform further community service?
Among the many things the American educational system needs are stronger intellectual ties across the unnaturally large institutional divide between 12th grade (and what comes before) and freshman year in college (and what comes after).
The University should cease its current policy of imposing disciplinary consequences on students found in possession of marijuana in excess of those regulations required by law.
The Daily Princetonian's editorial board overestimates the negative aspects of pick-ups and misunderstands pick-ups’ significance. Pick-ups should not be abandoned.
Nathan Mathabane cannot understand why one of the largest and wealthiest research libraries in the world should inspire sentiments of “sadness, oppression and darkness.” Why would Firestone frighten anyone who hasn’t yet been assigned a junior paper topic?
Although less effective in reducing the overall budget, President Obama’s recent blueprint proposal for the 2012 budget seems to strike a balance between the importance of post-secondary education and the need to cut overall federal spending.
I believe we often need to be prodded to be reminded of the importance of our education.
Princeton does not require that its undergraduates take courses in any particular department, and so Berger’s call for an economics requirement reads as an assumption that the discipline is more valuable to the world than others.
By attempting to chastise Rebecca Gomperts without actually taking a stance on abortion, Darling and Scholl fail to make a convincing case.
The eating club system — in fact, the entire upperclass social system — is incompatible with the residential college system.
Tenure has its downsides: It can leave a lazy professor in authority, soaking up campus resources and blocking energetic underlings from advancement. Students may suffer from incompetent teaching, or worse.
The University should be less cavalier about the private information that students entrust to it, and it must make clear to students when information they share will be revealed to the public.