Getting In
Gordon Wu's Gift
The Bomb
Animal Treatment
Lewis Rebuttal
Geezer Game
Tigerlilies

Getting In

Contrary to your November 22 cover story on admissions, which would have us believe that most good things in life are attributable to Dean Fred Hargadon, the method of processing applications doesn't appear to have changed much in the last few decades.
Still there have been some changes, but not all for the good. I have never met Dean Hargadon, but he apparently is a pleasant, hard-working, and thoughtful person. However, as a graduate of both universities, I cheered when he left Stanford and was dismayed when he popped up later at Princeton. Under his leadership, admissions at Stanford was coldly impersonal. It was impossible to have one-on-one interviews with members of the admission staff, and being an alumni child was generally seen as the kiss of death. Despite strong ties to Stanford, my son was so turned off by its approach to admissions that he wouldn't apply there.
It is obvious that Dean Hargadon is now working his "magic" at Princeton. As your article notes, "On-campus interviews with an actual staffer are becoming increasingly rare because they take up too much time." Also, the percentage of alumni children enrolling in each freshman class has declined continuously during Hargadon's reign. He apparently looks upon the admission of legacies contemptuously, as a necessary evil done for the sake of fund raising. One need only glance at the minuscule participation of alumni in Stanford's activities compared to Princeton's to understand where he developed this policy, and how effectively he practiced it at Stanford. While Hargadon's approach may contain a number of sensitive and well-intentioned facets, it is hard to believe that the current "Stanfordizing" of our admission process is in Princeton's best long-term interests.
Philip S. Heinecke '56
San Anselmo, Calif.

During our daughter Kathy's four years at Princeton, we had the privilege of getting to know Fred Hargadon while watching her play hockey. He was in Baker Rink on the Saturday or Sunday of every game we were able to attend-not for the entire game, because he tried to cover every varsity event each weekend, but at least for a while. I have a wonderful photo of him standing above the Princeton goal, gripping the railing and muttering, "Come on, come on!" as the Lady Tigers bested Brown.
I was amazed at what seemed to be Fred's knowledge of every student. As our daughter once told us, the sense of family at Princeton is special: "I've visited all Ivy campuses and some other colleges. Even at Notre Dame I've not seen the commitment to each other that we have here. I define that as character. The Princeton student body has character, and I credit a lot of that to Fred Hargadon."
Fred was the first Princeton administrator Kathy met. After her junior year in high school, while touring eastern colleges with her mom, she arrived unannounced at Princeton. They bumped into Fred on the campus, and he proceeded to give them a tour. After Commencement last June, while packing to leave, Kathy lamented not having seen Fred to say goodbye. As we drove away, we saw him sitting on a wall chatting with a friend. Kathy jumped out of the car and ran to him, and he swept her up in a great hug. After some pictures and reminiscences, we had to be on our way. Obviously choked up, he said, "You know, this is the hardest part, having to say goodbye to all of you. Please keep in touch. Let me know how you're doing."
Lou and Barbara Issel p'95
Ann Arbor, Mich.

Your article on Fred Hargadon told me more about the admission process than I had learned in the previous 15 years of working for the National Schools Committee.
Jim Kreder '60
Laguna Beach, Calif.

Congratulations to author Bill Paul '70 for his riveting article, "Getting In." When I was spending my time on Princeton's periphery at the Graduate College and the Forrestal Campus, I had no notion that such marvelous ideas and decisions were being manifested in the undergraduate admission office. Hargadon's philosophy of looking at the whole person is all too rare, both in college admissions and other areas of life.
Brent M. Lofgren *93
lofgren@genie.glerl.noaa.gov
Ann Arbor, Mich.

Thanks for your article on Dean of Admission Fred Hargadon, which provided great insight into the admission process. The dean appears to be an exceptional and fair-minded person who does an incredible job in selecting students to attend Princeton. I especially appreciate his explanation of Princeton's philosophy of affirmative action, which largely means "our making aggressive efforts to seek out and identify academically qualified students from particular minority backgrounds . . . , encouraging them to apply, and then encouraging those to whom we offer admission to enroll."
This obviously doesn't mean admitting unqualified minorities over qualified nonminorities. So why is the presence of minority students on college campuses so often challenged by nonminority students and alumni? Perhaps the critics of affirmative action in college admissions, employment, and other areas refuse to believe that a nonwhite person could ever be as qualified as a white person. Instead, they hide behind false charges of reverse racism. By selectively criticizing affirmative action for minorities while ignoring affirmative action for athletes and legacies, they reveal their true prejudices.
I hope I will not have to read any more letters in paw from disgruntled alumni complaining how their children were passed over for admission in favor of some undeserving member of a minority group. As Dean Hargadon made clear, Princeton has more qualified applicants than openings, so not every qualified applicant can be admitted.
Kevin Lynch '85
0006714042@mcimail.com
Silver Spring, Md.

Throughout my career in teaching I have watched young people trying to get into Princeton. I have written hundreds of letters of recommendation on their behalf. Some of my students succeeded in gaining admission, while others didn't. To look good on their applications, many of them presented themselves as something other than they were-a calculated phoniness. Some were smooth enough to get away with it. I wept for them and for Princeton.
So I read your story on admissions with deep sadness. The very process seems to invite deception. Mr. Hargadon and his staff spend time and precious resources judging and comparing and dividing and weighing minutia.
Here is a modest suggestion that would save Princeton millions of dollars, endless headaches, and countless defensive explanations. Cull out the 15 percent of applicants who cannot do Princeton work. Put the rest into a lottery for random selection. Statistically, the result would be a diversely talented group of young people-a class as outstanding as any produced by the expensive and judgmental process now in place. "Non-acceptance" would not be seen as failure, and there would be little of the self-righteousness that almost invariably goes with being among the "chosen." If the university needs to put legacies into a different category, that could be easily done. Princeton would be a richer community in more ways than one.
Howard "Mac" Fish '52
Lake Placid, N.Y.

The story on admissions is persuasive propaganda for the elite universities. Unfortunately, my belief that admission officers should judge applicants from successful families within the context of those families, as well as by the applicants' achievements, carries no weight in this egalitarian age.
One opportunity for improvement would be to set up a clearing house for legacies. It is ridiculous that a Princeton legacy accepted at Harvard should be rejected by Princeton, or vice versa. It would seem relatively easy for admission deans within the Ivies and at academically comparable schools to keep each other informed about all legacy applicants. In this way, for example, a Harvard legacy accepted by Princeton but rejected by Harvard could be "exchanged" with Harvard for a Princeton legacy accepted by Harvard but rejected by Princeton. To the extent that this cross-sorting netted out positively, the percentage of legacy admissions would rise, and the level of alumni anger would subside. Heaven forfend if this were to cause problems in geographical distribution, or in the ratios of men to women or students from public versus private schools.
Let this suggestion in no way be construed as a criticism of Hargadon. I spend a great deal of time talking to undergraduates and staying in touch with the campus. The quality of students since Hargadon's arrival has increased at least 50 percent over the academic whiz kids and social misfits admitted by his predecessors. He's the best in the Ivies.
Charles F. Huber '51
New York, N.Y.

Your profile in the November 22 Class Notes of my son Bill Paul '70, the author of your admissions article and of Getting In, the book of the same title, notes that those in his family who went to Princeton include his father and his brother James '65. However, it fails to mention that his late brother, John '61, was also a graduate.
Raymond V. Paul '33
Lakehurst, N.J.

Gordon Wu's Gift

I was happy to see your December 6 cover story on the teaching of Western culture, but I was surprised and a little dismayed that in the same issue, Gordon Wu '58's $100 million gift received so little attention. Surely his extraordinary act of generosity and the affection for Princeton from which it stems deserved a cover story, not just a news story in the Notebook.
R. B. Partridge '62
Haverford, Penn.

In light of Gordon Wu's $100 million gift, I suggest we rename our school "Princeton Wuniversity."
Michael Jamin '92
MJamin6899@aol.com
Hollywood, Calif.

The Bomb

In response to your article of last June 7 on the atomic bomb, several of paw's correspondents have asked why a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
Those interested in the Japanese side of this story should consult Haru Matsukata Reischauer's Samurai and Silk (Harvard University Press, 1986), which concerns the involvement of the author's family in the Japanese government during World War II. Her last chapter deals with the emperor's decision to end the war and the attempted coup by army officers determined that the nation should fight to the end. She makes clear that Hirohito's decision was forced by an unprecedented split in his cabinet which resulted from the Nagasaki bombing.
If Princeton's contributions to the atomic bomb helped bring peace, its later and even greater contribution to the hydrogen bomb helped keep peace until the Soviets' disastrous defense-spending binge brought down the USSR's economy and ended the cold war. I like to compare the 43-year period between the Berlin blockade (June 26, 1948) and the fall of Gorbachev (December 25, 1991) with the longest previous period (also 43 years, from April 1871 to August 1914) without a major European war. The men and women of the Matterhorn-B Project at Princeton's Forrestal Center, calculating away through nights and days to meet a succession of design deadlines for Los Alamos's H-bomb, won satisfaction when, on November 1, 1952, the Eniwetok test released an amount of energy equivalent to 10 million tons of TNT, a thousand times the output of the Hiroshima bomb. Eight months later the Soviets exploded their first H-bomb. If the order of tests had been reversed, would the cold war have ended cold? Let Princeton take comfort that it responded to Woodrow Wilson's motto, "Princeton in the Nation's Service" when, for the country and the world, it threw its shoulder behind the work of Los Alamos.
John Archibald Wheeler
Joseph Henry Professor of Physics, Emeritus
Princeton, N.J.

In 1938 Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discovered that the transformation of uranium artificially induced by neutron bombardment produces barium. Their widespread publication of this phenomenon, known as fission, led directly to the development of the atomic bomb. As if a starter's gun had been fired, many of the industrialized nations of the world raced to create atomic weapons. Germany, England, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and yes, Japan, all began deadly serious, government-supported programs to create atomic weapons.
In 1965 I was a callow graduate student of history at the University of Arkansas frantically searching for a thesis topic. A chance meeting with chemist Paul Kuroda over a bowl of thin gruel in the student union provided it. A native Japanese, Kuroda had been "imported" from Japan in 1946 by the Department of Defense because of his expertise in plastique explosives. (The mysterious explosions that occurred around the Manhattan Project's Hanford, Washington, facilities toward the end of the war were his balloon-borne creations.) As a doctoral student, Kuroda had as his dissertation adviser Yoshio Nishina, a world-class nuclear physicist who became the Oppenheimer of the Japanese effort. At war's end, Nishina entrusted his former student with the original minutes of meetings between himself and Major General Nobuuji, the Leslie Groves of their program. My thesis became a historical editing of these documents. For a recent and certainly more scholarly treatment, see Japan's Secret War, by Robert K. Wilson (Marlowe & Company, 1995.)
When Hahn and Strassmann fired the gun that began this race, they unknowingly created a historical experiment as close to a scientific system as historians will ever get. In its initial state, all contestants had essentially the same set of constants: equal talent, equal resources, and an equal will to solve Oppenheimer's "sweet problem." Perhaps the Germans had early advantages, but to me the operative variable was how each nation applied its unique culture to the problem.
Heisenberg and the Germans approached it like an inter-university squabble. Important findings were hoarded or imperfectly shared, and everything was kept from the tyrant at the top, lest he demand immediate results. In perhaps the most amazing national effort, the Soviet's Kurchatov and Stalin brilliantly stole what they needed and created the rest. On our side, Groves and Oppenheimer assembled refugee scientists from Europe, fused them with our own considerable talent, and ran the whole mess like a Wharton case study of General Electric. In Japan, Nishina, Nobuuji, and others shaped their program around three cultural realities: a dependence upon German science (the Germans sent them two U-boat loads of pitchblende), the ancient army-navy rivalry (there was scant sharing of findings between the services's rival labs), and the code of Bushido, which assured that any innovations would be ignored.
In none of these documents does there appear a whisper of moral debate about the use of atomic weapons against the enemies of Japan. Rather, recent testimony claims that atomic weapons, had they been available, surely would have been used against Americans on Saipan. Our national debate on the morality of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki is healthy. It grows from the very cultural forces-"a mature plurality of opinion," (to quote John Fleming *63 in your December 6 article "Teaching Western Culture")-that allowed us to build the Bomb in the first place.
Wayne Reagan '58
delphi@forthrt.com
Kansas City, Mo.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings can be justly called a "lesser evil," because the only politically viable alternative-invasion-would have been worse. When one is forced to choose between two evils, it is wisdom to prefer the lesser. But it is folly indeed to believe that the lesser evil is therefore good. History may be written by the winners, but in the end it is read by the survivors.
Nathaniel S. Hellerstein '78
San Francisco, Calif.

Animal Treatment

In her letter in the November 8 paw, law student Michelle Lerner '93 asserts that she is dedicated to the protection of animals. As a veterinarian specializing in nondomestic species and devoted to the welfare of all animals, I dispute her generalizations about the treatment of trained animals, which mix ethical concerns about the use of animals for entertainment with legitimate concerns about the welfare of individual animals.
Ms. Lerner's statements reflect her obviously strong feelings about animal use. But contrary to her assertions, the majority of animals used for entertainment, such as tigers in P-rades, are not treated brutally, beaten extensively, or controlled by fear; animals, especially intelligent ones, do not respond well to physical pain and fear, as individuals familiar with the training of dogs can attest. Negative conditioning is counterproductive. In fact, positive conditioning is most frequently used in the training of entertainment animals, and individual care in many cases is excellent (in contrast to the training of many family pets). While inappropriate and even cruel treatment may indeed occur in this country, in my experience it is rare.
Animals in captivity and those used in entertainment often enjoy much longer life spans than their wild counterparts, which must contend with disease, predation, and a lack of food. Many trained animals that are geriatric and minimally handicapped enjoy excellent care; animals in such conditions rarely, if ever, survive in the wild.
Jill Spangenberg '89 DVM
Bodega Bay, Calif.

Lewis Rebuttal

Hugh M. E. Lewis '41's letter of November 8 cannot go unanswered. Mr. Lewis makes several comments about the operations of Princeton and the activities of its faculty that are mere assertions of opinion. He offers no evidence to back his claims that the faculty is underworked and indulges in trivial research.
Mr. Lewis asserts that a study would "probably show" that most faculty members do not "spend even five hours a week in class," ignoring the good deal of time they spend preparing for their lectures and seminars.
He tells us that the "purpose of a university is to provide its students with a first-rate liberal-arts education." Certainly that is a major objective, but must we ignore graduate education and the concept of service to business and government? What happened to the ideal of "Princeton in the Nation's Service?"
Another of his undocumented assertions is that faculty research rarely touches the lives of average citizens. He doesn't realize that knowledge grows and changes in all fields, and his statement is so sweeping that it lacks any credibility. One person can hardly assess the research output of the Princeton faculty in any meaningful way.
Mr. Lewis's remarks suggest he would like the administration to prescribe much heavier teaching loads for faculty, eliminate sabbaticals, and micromanage faculty research. That is a design for disaster in higher education. Professor-bashing is increasingly popular these days, but that does not mean it makes any more sense than it ever did.
As a member of Rutgers's faculty, I know it better than I do Princeton's, but I doubt that the latter is lazier and less productive than the former. Mr. Lewis and many others do not realize that teaching, research, and service are demanding. Time moves fast in the classroom, and without extensive preparation on the part of the teacher, students do not get much from the lecture or discussion.
Benjamin R. Beede *62
North Brunswick, N.J.

Geezer Game

Tom Pirelli '69's December 6 First Person about last September's alumni-varsity lightweight-football game told it all. It was a weekend to remember.
As the oldest player in that game, I owe a debt to my friend and doctor, John Moses '42, who signed my medical waiver, and to Director of Athletics Gary Walters '67, who allowed me to play.
One play-a quarterback handoff-was designed for me. When we ran it, the middle linebacker stunted and hit me cleanly. I suffered no damage, but felt relief when my teammates slapped me on the back on reaching the sideline. We played 12-minute quarters, and one minute of action and 47 minutes of "breather" were just right.
Princeton should be proud of the spirit and competitiveness of its lightweight players. Slapping palms with the undergraduates at game's end was a special moment. I will be a certain spectator at next year's game.
Paul G. Sullivan '48
Vero Beach, Fla.

Tigerlilies