Two USG officers discuss their decisions.
Teaching is a good way to stay metaphorically young. That said, it is hardly news that teachers do get older while freshmen remain forever youthful, and various things over the course of this semester have made me consider how curious it can be to go from young to not-so-young while remaining at the same institution.
Last Thursday, The Daily Princetonian reported that the employment of Associate Dean of the College Frank Ordiway ’81, whose responsibilities include oversight of postgraduate fellowship advising, will be terminated this June. We see no reason, based on performance and a thorough knowledge of the system, that Ordiway should have been fired.
Whenever someone asks me why I think I was selected as a Rhodes Scholar, I give the same response: luck, declining standards and my advisers. Were it not, I believe, for the many hours I spent at 406 West College conferring with Dean Frank Ordiway ’81 on applying for major postgraduate fellowships, I wouldn’t have had a chance.
Last spring, the student body passed a referendum requiring that USG members not solicit or accept recommendations from high-level University administrators.
The internet represents a distinctly harsh brand of meritocracy.
Members of the faculty express dissapointment by Ordiway ’81’s dismissal.
In a lot of ways, though, the crisis over the cost of public higher education shouldn’t be surprising. Contrary to popular orthodoxy, it has much less to do with the recession and much more to do with the popular conception of public universities in the U.S. — a conception that may not be sustainable.
We have all been told to be careful about what we post on our Facebooks and that the internet can be dangerous. What we never expected was that we would have to start being careful about what we do in our everyday life.
I see now that my plan was a product of freshman idealism; I got very little actual work done and ended up having to pull several all-nighters when I returned to campus.
The American Philosophical Association (APA) took a small but important step last week toward promoting non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in higher education when it announced it would censure universities that use sexual orientation as a basis for hiring decisions.
My initial reaction was to think: “What’s the point of studying that?” This was followed a split second later by the realization that as an astrophysicist, I was not exactly in a position to pass judgment on the practical utility of other people’s research.
Last year, I ended up with not one, not two, but three copies of “Chemical Principles: Sixth Edition” by Steven S. Zumdahl, the textbook for my chemistry course. Now I loved CHM 207, but that’s taking it too far.
While I was forming these ideas and calling myself a vegetarian, my actions didn’t exactly follow suit. In truth, I began the process of becoming a vegetarian at the age of 8, but I did not give up all meat overnight.
Why doesn’t Princeton, which even offers Swahili and Sanskrit courses, offer some kind of for-credit class in ASL?
