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July 4, 2001 Letters Please vote, Professor Bartels Note
to our readers PAW welcomes letters. We may edit them for length, accuracy, clarity, and civility. Our address: Princeton Alumni Weekly, 194 Nassau St., Suite 38, Princeton, NJ 08542 (paw@princeton.edu). I applaud the appointment of Dr. Shirley Tilghman as the 19th president of Princeton. Dr. Tilghman is a true Tiger; she epitomizes the qualities that those close to Princeton hold dear. She truly loves Princeton and its diverse academic and social environment. She has already taken steps to integrate Princeton's academic disciplines through the development of Princeton's genomics institute. Most importantly, Dr. Tilghman cares passionately for the students of the university. I first met Dr. Tilghman as a confused sophomore in search of academic direction. At the suggestion of President Shapiro, I approached her with an idea for an independent major in bioethics. Dr. Tilghman quickly became interested in my multidisciplinary proposal. On top of her responsibilities as head of the genomics institute, a researcher, and a professor and adviser in the molecular biology department, Dr. Tilghman agreed to sign on to my program as both a junior-paper and senior-thesis adviser. Together we designed the first independent concentration in bioethics at Princeton. During my work with Dr. Tilghman, she pushed me to engage the most important questions in bioethics from all angles of science and the humanities. During countless exchanges about the definitions of health and disease in the modern world my senior year, Dr. Tilghman responded to my questions with new questions aimed at stimulating innovative thought. Dr. Tilghman engaged my projects with great passion and devotion; she was a true mentor during my years at Princeton. I know that Dr. Tilghman will bring this same passion to the office of president. Princeton will grow stronger both academically and socially under her leadership. I am sure all of you will join me in looking forward to the development and prosperity that will occur during her presidency. Mike Hehir '99
I've just been reading through Professor Tilghman's bio, and I'm as pleased and impressed as I'm sure the Board of Trustees were. It is thoroughly appropriate, as we enter the new millennium, that The Best Old Place of All should choose a leader who is an outstanding teacher, scientist, and administrator who happens to be a woman. I applauded when Princeton made the decision, unfortunately after my time, to go coed. I was impressed with the rationale, and even more impressed with the methodology. The decision to jump directly to having 25 percent of the undergraduates be female was absolutely correct. I had visited friends at Cornell, and knew about the strain which the 10-percent female undergraduate population there placed on both the guys and the girls. It was obvious at the time that Princeton had chosen the high road. Now Princeton has come full circle and closed the loop by choosing a woman to lead the university forward. I had not expected it, but I am ineffably pleased. Kudos to all concerned! P. Burr Loomis '61
With its selection of Dr. Shirley M. Tilghman as its first female president, my graduate school alma mater once again demonstrates that it earns its motto of "In the nation's service." However, as one who went to Princeton's engineering graduate school during a time which saw the university "agonizing" in alumni magazine articles whether to admit women officially as students while my undergraduate alma mater - The Stevens Institute of Technology - put out a press release that in "matter of fact" manner just stated that the class entering in the 1969-70 era would have the Institute's first female science and engineering students, I say "three cheers" for Princeton as well as for Stevens, whose motto of "To the stars through aspirations" also seems to aptly fit this outstanding pioneer in efforts to map the human genome. Ronald M. Eng *68
In my view, what makes Princeton such a special place (and what accounts for its outstanding per-capita alumni contribution figures) is its unique undergraduate experience. To understand Princeton, I contend, requires a deep understanding of the undergraduate experience and undergraduate daily life. Again, and again regrettably, the trustees have chosen a president without this undergraduate experience. My concern is that President Tilghman, lacking this experience, will not have the understanding and sensitivity to campus life issues that an undergraduate alumnus or alumna would. How am I to trust her as a custodian of Princeton's unique undergraduate life and its issues if she has never lived in a Princeton dorm, never been in a residential college, never been a member of an eating club, never played in the band, never debated in Whig-Clio, never represented Princeton in a sporting contest, and never enjoyed those four wonderful years that tie all alumni to Princeton so intimately? Surely an equally qualified undergraduate alumnus or alumna for the position exists, and, to my mind, would have made a superior choice. Peter Moyers '00 Is every candidate for alumni trustee barren, unmated, or simply opposed to reproduction? Do these success-driven supermen and women even like children? Bios of trustee candidates shipped to us for evaluation-before-voting don't reveal whether candidates are mothers or fathers, and the number of their children. This information was standard in candidate bios for decades. Trustees function as "parents" to thousands of Princeton students by helping shape university policies that facilitate or impede the success of their education. It's important to some of us that most (not all) of the professionally proven alumni we're asked to consider for trustee think enough about the next generation that they also participate in creating it. Thus they will care about kids, have firsthand experience in coaching and financing their march to maturity, and thus can make informed decisions about how best to underwrite and educate promising sons and daughters in the Princeton environment. Superfathers and supermothers should dominate the trustee candidate roster for these reasons. By the same token, the few of us who take the time to review candidate bios and vote for these key delegates should be given a broader snapshot of their priorities and achievements, including parenthood. Rob Mack '62
I could not agree more with the letter of Terry Wintroub '69 (May 16) re: the complete waste of the present balloting procedures but would like to add a different reason. As a conservative I find I almost always have the choice of a liberal, a liberal, or an ultra-liberal. Why bother? Donavin Baumgartner,
Jr. '52 I would like to add a footnote to Ben Kessler's excellent article on the growth of the Princeton campus (cover story, May 16). Kessler gives appropriate attention to the master plans of Joseph Henry (1836), Ralph Adams Cram (1908), and most recently Machado and Silvetti (1996). But it may be a bit unfair or at least incomplete to characterize development during the Victorian era as eccentric and "idiosyncratic." Although President McCosh and his colleagues may not have worked from a written plan, they nevertheless appear to have been guided by a number of principles that were as decisive in their way as the rectangular geometry of Henry and the Beaux-Arts classicism of Cram. I would identify at least three. First, the public buildings built in this period (Chancellor Green Library, Alexander Hall, Dickinson Hall [destroyed by fire in 1920], and the John C. Green School of Science [another fire, 1928]) all had their front doors facing Nassau Street. In other words, the university's academic face paralleled and opened out to the commercial realm on the north side of Nassau Street. Together they created a complementary streetscape. In addition, by placing its most prestigious academic initiatives on public view, the newly self-confident College of New Jersey intended the world to take notice. The second principle is that student life (Whig, Clio, the dormitories, Murray and Dodge Halls) was consciously located in a residential precinct behind the wall of academic buildings that lined Nassau Street. Princeton's Victorian campus was not unlike a Victorian house where the formal rooms in which the family welcomed guests faced the street, and the family rooms were at the rear. A familiar example is Prospect House, the design of which is formal on the north side and relaxed on the south overlooking the garden. Which leads to a third principle - the importance of landscape. It is difficult to imagine that what today is widely recognized as one of the most beautiful campuses in America was barren right through the Civil War. It was McCosh who hired Princeton's first landscape architect, and it was McCosh who, with his wife, Isabella, walked the campus with cuttings underneath his arm, always in search of a strategic vista where nature might reveal another delight. Additional Victorian design principles suggest themselves, including the positioning of buildings according to the contour of the land, rather than an abstract plan. In this regard Witherspoon, Edwards, Dod, and Brown Halls are not at all idiosyncratic in how they are placed. Like an archaeological site, the Princeton campus is a great dig. Neoclassical, Collegiate Gothic, and modern are there to be treasured and learned from. So is the Victorian, distinguished by what seems to be spontaneous, mutable, and organic, but which is in fact guided by its own compelling logic. Raymond P. Rhinehart
*68
I couldn't agree more with Jack Huyler '42's letter regarding the risk that Princeton loses some of its unique character by going for growth (June 6). I wrote a letter in the May 17, 2000, issue critiquing the Wythes Report decision to increase the size of the student body. I predicted they'd use this mandate and the growing endowment to "pave over the entire campus with new architectural monstrosities." Now I read that they are going to build the new residential college in place of one of the most beautiful parts of campus: the tennis courts and the surrounding space. With all the people like Ben Kessler who believe in "well-conceived planning" or with all the alum (and non-alum) architects on the university dole coming up with grand plans to expand to Route 1, doesn't anyone on the Board of Trustees ask the more basic, aesthetic questions? What a joy it was to have dozens of tennis courts in the middle of campus. What hell it will be to see that space and that luxury destroyed with yet another travesty à la Butler College or Scully Hall. Andrew M. Keller '87
I am thrilled to see the issue of recruited athletes back on the table, because I think the presence of recruited athletes detracted appreciably from my Princeton experience. Though I avoided the classes that all undergrads knew to be easy and therefore attractive to elite athletes (there is a long list, and it is common knowledge), I found that many of the athletes in my classes would show up without having read the material and, much more seriously, unready even to try to engage in the subject matter. I think this is simply because elite athletes don't have the time and energy to also be elite students. Not only must varsity athletes attend rigorous practices, but through team bonding they are drawn into powerful social cliques that swallow much of their off-field time and, through mechanisms too complex to enter into here, deprecate academic pursuits. I simply don't think Princeton can offer both an outstanding academic and an outstanding varsity athletic experience (if you call winning a national championship outstanding); the two are mutually exclusive. Furthermore, the best athletic experience depends on a sense of personal and team honor, and respect for the opponent, rather than from dreams of national glory and a potential future as a pro. Not that I accuse Princeton's varsity athletes of bad spirit, but our current system certainly promotes something other than the fundamentals of sport. It must do so, because the fundamentals of sport come easily, without high price tags and elite training. As an example of what I consider a good athletic experience on campus, I offer Clockwork Orange, the Princeton ultimate Frisbee team(s). Ultimate is a club sport, administered completely by students themselves, and receives very little funding other than field-space from the university, last I heard. When I used to practice with the team, in the late '90s, there were perhaps 30 students, men and women, who would come out to two or three practices a week and drive long distances to weekend tournaments. Often ultimate players would be those who hadn't made it in other sports - I had never played any sport well - and it was beautiful to see these people learn and teach each other all the lessons that team sports offer. The kicker is that these were really interesting people, who would mock each other in pregame poetry (I remember one particularly grand spoof of Chaucer that went on for pages and pages), and who, when exams came around, would let their sport fall by the wayside so that they could achieve their academic goals. None of them had "come to Princeton to play ultimate." Princeton's recruiting of athletes is equivalent to offering sports scholarships, because the degree is valuable and is made affordable to all who are admitted. It is my fervent wish for Princeton that the administration will someday find the chutzpah to abolish recruitment. The athletics department will then be able to focus on supporting sport as a spirit-building rather than a horn-blowing activity. George Showman '99
W. E. Schiesser *60 tells us (Letters, May 16) that the ambitions of the athlete lie not with her studies but her tournaments. No doubt he is an honorable teacher, schooled in the learned arts. Not to disprove what Mr. Schiesser spoke, but these learned arts unfortunately do not extend to matters of grammar, syntax, and rhetoric. I should do Mr. Schiesser wrong, though, were I merely to attack, without split infinitive, the form of his plain blunt speech. Surely this honorable teacher gladly would have adjusted his schedule to tutor the athlete of whom he wrote. Of course, from the athlete's response, it appears that she was offered a single appointment, which she could not attend. (Perhaps some details were omitted from Mr. Schiesser's small, half-page column.) I assume the same fate would befall an English major who had not "the writ, nor words, nor worth, action, nor utterance" to devote all treasured time to Mr. Schiesser's engineering class. But I certainly see the merits of the singular pursuit of the "computer code" as I drive home each day through the diminished shadows of Silicon Valley. There are places for these singular pursuits; thankfully, Princeton is not such a place. The rich legacy of Princeton is embodied in the distribution requirements, encouraging exposure to a variegated palette of education. Fortunately, that education includes athletic endeavors. So, in answer to the seemingly rhetorical question of the honorable teacher, it sounds as if physical therapy and training for a tournament might be far more important than the creation of some computer code, given the options. And a true question for Mr. Schiesser: Did you even ask the nature of the "tournament"? R. Wardell Loveland '81 Please vote, Professor Bartels How interesting and revealing it was to learn from a recent article in the news that Dr. Larry Bartels, "a distinguished professor of political science" at our university, boasts that since moving to New Jersey in 1991, he "has not voted in any election, has not registered to vote, and could not care less who is in or out in our state capitol." Also, he goes on, he has "never worked in a political campaign, and the last time he voted was in the 1984 presidential election." Now, aren't those interesting views for one instructing our youth in "political science?" Tell us, Professor, from your sheltered academic grove, is this the position you advocate for all of us? Or is it simply the view of American politics which should be exclusive to those who form the minds of our educated youth? Surely bipartisanship or nonpartisanship is a defensible stance in the classroom, but how can one justify a complete lack of political participation in our democracy, flawed as it may be? Perhaps you don't care who "is in or out in our state government" - or even in our national government, Professor, but thank God many of us still do care certainly enough to exercise one of the most valuable rights offered to the U.S. citizen. A right for which better men and women than you or I have been willing to give their lives. Princeton in the nation's service? How about Princeton on the nation's sidelines? Wilson Britten '45 For the past nine years I have been living in Indonesia. I am the proud father of a mixed-race baby, as well as two stepchildren who differ from me in nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, and gender. I feel somewhat qualified to speak about human diversity and the Third World. I praise Princeton's Third World Center for its promotion of cultural pluralism and mutual respect. However, I question the accuracy of the organization's name and the relevance of the justification offered at the TWC Web site: "In our name we align ourselves with the struggles of Third World peoples." Although it is historically accurate to lump American ethnic minorities with populations in their ancestral countries, the divergence increases with each generation. In many cases, people of color are socially, financially, and politically better off today than they were in 1971. Most empathize with their fellow Americans in worldview and I daresay that few consider themselves to be allied with the real Third World. Thirty years have passed since student activists spurred the university to establish our TWC. I'd hate to see outdated radical rhetoric enshrined as a timeless tradition. I respectfully suggest that the Governance Board of Princeton's Third World Center adapt to their surroundings by adopting a more relevant name for the organization. Something along the lines of Center for Cultural Pluralism would be more accurate. Martin A. Schell '74 Concerned alum, late 30s, balding, nearsighted, financially dependent upon earned income, incorrigibly Libertarian, married, father of one with second on the way, seeks to understand the reasoning behind the solicitation of revenue from those seeking relationships with members of the PAW readership through "Personal" advertisements. Ian M. Smith '85 In our May 16 issue, we mistakenly made a bulldog a tiger: Donald Malcolm Wilson, former deputy director of the U.S. Information Agency, is not Princeton '51; he is Yale '48. Also in that issue, we neglected to include a credit for the photograph on page 14; it was taken by Lynn Greenberg. St. Olaf College is the correct name of the institution where Chris Thomforde '69 is president; it is not St. Olaf's College. PAW regrets the errors. |
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