In this week's PrinceCast, Michael Medeiros '11 sits down with Opinion columnist and Eating Concerns Advisor Sophia LeMaire '11 to discuss her column on No Fat Talk Week.
No Fat Talk Week was not about putting tape over our mouths, it was not about talking people out of eating disorders, and it definitely was not about consoling people who have abused their bodies. It was meant to encourage ostensibly average people to reflect on how they speak about others’ bodies or view their own bodies.
Every now and then, when I think about PrincetonFML.com, the odd Tiger magazine prank and (dare I say it) Robot Unicorn Attack, I am reminded that behind all the harsh politics, competitiveness and grade deflation lies a community that is willing to have a laugh together. And while campus issues will often get us riled up, we can all chill a little. Things don’t need to be too extreme.
Tainting the economic purity of Christmas transactions reduces them to a shallow recall of formulaic niceties that say nothing whatsoever about the amount of thought devoted to another individual on a regular basis.
I think that students voted against the hummus referendum because PCP made two mistakes:First, it let the referendum turn into a political question instead of a moral one. “Yes” votes became votes for Palestine, and “No” votes became votes for Israel. Second, PCP members behaved like activists. They used words like “boycott,” which one peer told me was extremely offensive, and printed posters with images of hummus containers covered with big red X’s.
Sustainability inspections are justified and the University should consider expanding this program to include inspections during the academic year.
WikiLeaks forces us to reevaluate whether anyone is entitled to secrets.
The “no fat talk” campaign has nothing to do with making fat people feel better, because, to put it bluntly, there aren’t that many fat people to console. Instead, it is intended to reduce the anxiety anorexics have from fear of being fat.
I am not entreating anyone to watch holiday specials on TV instead of writing a paper or to go make a gingerbread house with an exam happening the next morning. But we should make more of an effort to treat the holidays as a special time.
The everyday fat talk thrown around in the United States is not about health. There is a moral undertone to much of our discussion of obesity.
Before coming to Princeton, I was a public school teacher and union member for 10 years, the first two of which I was also a Teach for America corps member. During that time, I was often frustrated by what the schools, and the union, could not or would not do for children who needed more. But more often, I was proud to be part of a profession that I believe does a great deal for our nation and grateful for the protection and advocacy that the union provides.
To help students contemplating graduate school understand their options and the career paths for different disciplines, graduate placement statistics should be collected and published.
Sometime this spring semester will mark the 10th anniversary of the Princeton Justice Project, a student activist group dedicated to social justice that I was pleased to mentor as an attorney, Princeton alumnus and preceptor in politics courses with the word “law” in them. PJP was conceived after a class tour of Trenton State Prison, a maximum-security prison with housing units dating to pre-Civil War years. Students gamely walked the harshly lit corridors in tow with corrections officers (“don’t call them guards”). Among their comments that still ring in my ears are “They’re almost all black” and “They’re in for so long!”
Bob Durkee says that the working group on campus social and residential life has not reached an agreement on the campus pub, and Catharine Bellinger and Alexis Morin write that teachers' unions can improve the education system.
My anxieties over my relationship with my dogs became a mirror for my fear over losing my special relationship with my home.
In this week's PrinceCast, Opinion columnists David Mendelsohn '12 and Allen Paltrow-Krulwich '14 discuss their perspectives on feminism.
