Opinion

Editorial: A more rational lockout policy

Students who are locked out of their room during normal business hours must now borrow a temporary key from the housing office. If the key is not returned in 24 hours, they will be charged a $75 fee to change the lock. Beginning in the spring semester, the Undergraduate Housing Office plans to implement a fee schedule for lockouts. The new policy is misguided, and the University should seriously consider alternatives.

Cartoon: Common Misconception

A long night’s journey into the future

Prox-access rooms will allow for a more efficient lockout system, which will increase the speed with which rooms will be unlocked in the future. As enticing as this prospect is, it’s important that the Facilities Department takes a number of precautions and carefully explores implementation options before making this switch.

Cartoon: Slylock Box

Declared my major and Ma ain't happy

While for some people choosing a major is an agonizing decision filled with multiple “changed-my-mind”s, for me, it was more a realization that I had known what I wanted to do all along. In retrospect, I had really been leaning towards comparative literature for quite some time. My mom, however, was still hoping in her heart of hearts for a last-minute change to something practical like electrical engineering or operations research and financial engineering. She was not exactly thrilled.

Letters to the Editor: Sept. 28, 2010

Linda Dowling defends the dinky and Chris Schlegal adds to Tim Nunan's column, "Avoiding navel-gazing and idolization."

Changing meanings of victory and defeat

From our present vantage point, preventing any form of classical military defeat will no longer assure our safety from either aggression or terrorism. We might now be perfectly capable of warding off any more-or-less tangible defeat of our military forces, and perhaps even of winning more-or-less identifiable victories in Afghanistan and elsewhere. But, in the end, we may still have to face extraordinary or even existential harms.

Editorial: Bring back the pub

A University-operated pub would provide a welcome and necessary alternative to the current on- and off-campus social options. By establishing a venue for responsible casual drinking, the University can facilitate a campus social scene that is more welcoming, safe and accessible to all members of the Princeton community. In the coming months, the working group should lend its support to the re-establishment of a campus pub and open dialogue with the Borough to gain its approval.

Call me Ned

There’s an art and even some science to creating good user interfaces. One of the simplest rules is to enlist potential users as victims and get their frank opinions before the design is frozen.  Our world is full of gadgets and systems like my GPS that have focused on elaborate “features,” apparently at the expense of this basic step.

Cartoon: Fresh Meat

Death of the bookstore

Fortunately, reading doesn’t have to fade, even if bookstores do. But unlike the idea of selling paper-and-ink books online, the e-reader will fundamentally change how books look. I suspect the e-reader phenomenon is the tip of an iceberg of innovation yet to come. The digital book will probably be the latest stage in a journey from scrolls and diligent Middle Age monks to paper and movable type. With each innovation, reading has become more affordable.

The orange brick road

While Princeton certainly grants you the ability to be wealthy, powerful and influential, it can also rob you of the ability not to be.

Flooding and fairness

The generosity and compassion for the people in Haiti was truly awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, the flooding in Pakistan has received nowhere near this level of concern.

Editorial: On weighting club sign-ins

Charter’s new sign-in system is a reasonable and creative response to the surge in demand that it has experienced in recent years. In the event that other sign-in clubs reach full capacity, they would be wise to consider following Charter’s approach.

Cartoon: Post, poster, postered

Chrashing the Tea Party

In his nine months in office, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has shown himself to be a shrewd and effective dealmaker and a real alternative to the populist, uncompromising Tea Party movement.

Think Yiddish

Most of us have been looking through the registrar?s course offerings this past week ? either as freshmen picking classes or as upperclassmen looking for courses to switch into.

Cartoon: Profile pictures

Some unnecessary face time

We are in a four-year no-man’s land, during which consequences are at a minimum  as long as we don’t get caught.

The freedom to shoot the breeze

On the farm where I stayed in Honduras, there were not even telephones or electricity. I don’t know how my hosts would have reacted if I had mentioned that 1,900 miles away, men in boat shoes abounded with their noses buried in pocket-sized devices that could send and receive text messages, e-mails and phone calls.