Letters: May 7, 1997
Eating Disorders
Regarding your February 5 cover story: every year, several psychology students focus on eating disorders, eating concerns, or dieting for their senior theses, using Princeton students as their research population. I myself did this and found that perfectionist attitudes and sociocultural standards of beauty have such an impact that a third of the male and three-quarters of the female undergraduates sampled engaged in dieting behaviors. Additionally, 93 percent of women and 62 percent of men expressed feeling overweight, out of shape, and unattractive, and many used food as an emotional crutch when upset or lonely. Although the majority of women were normal or underweight, 39 percent perceived themselves to be heavier than they actually were, while 71 percent of men perceived themselves to be lighter than they were; every respondent who overestimated his or her weight had an eating concern.
My research led me to believe that eating concerns are rampant on campus and that a very high proportion of women in particular are at risk for developing an eating disorder. Your article profiled three such women, but the writer could have found 50.
Galit Askenazi '94
Cleveland, Ohio
In light of your story on eating disorders, I was disturbed to learn that the administration is deprioritizing its support of the Women's Center. The administration has cut funding of the center and plans to move it from its current location in Aaron Burr Hall (at the corner of Nassau Street and Washington Road) to the far end of Prospect Avenue-not exactly a convenient location for first- and second-year students.
While the Counseling Center addresses the symptoms of individuals, the Women's Center provides a public forum for discussions about why these disorders exist to begin with. The administration argues that the women's center is not a "neutral" student organization because it caters only to the needs of particular students. By taking this stand, it is alienating an organization that works to foster critical discussions about gender on a campus that too often seems oblivious to the issue. The disturbingly high number of eating disorders at Princeton is indication enough that discussions like these are long overdue.
Eric Westendorf '94
Briarcliffe Manor, N.Y.
My own eating disorder, which developed while I was in high school, went away the day I got to campus. In part, Princeton must have been the cure. I remember going to Commons the second or third day I was there, seeing some fried eggs, and thinking, "Those look really good. I think I'll have two or three." And then being really shocked at myself! I don't know what it was about being at Princeton, but I ate joyfully, freely, and plentifully while I was there, and my eating disorder never returned.
There may be some perfectionist behavior and competition at Princeton, but there is also excitement about the marketplace of ideas, freedom of thought and expression, and respect for women's intellects and abilities. I think those things cured me.
Shannon Stoney '76
Cookeville, Tenn.
Palmer Stadium
The "bulldozers" referred to in the article about the razing of Palmer Stadium (Notebook, April 2) are actually track-mounted backhoes. The one in the foreground is fitted with a demolition claw where usually an excavating bucket is mounted. A backhoe can be fitted with a variety of operational accessories, such as that crushing claw, and so is very versatile-more versatile, it seems, than the editors, who in this case were the ones doing the "dozing."
Rocky Semmes '79
Alexandria, Va.
The Pantheon and Palmer Stadium were both made of concrete. The Pantheon, finished about 120 A.D., still stands, but Palmer Stadium was declared unsalvageable and torn down at age 88. Could someone from the engineering or architecture school explain this great leap backward in the durability of concrete?
Charles W. McCutchen '50
Princeton, N.J.
Graduate Students
Jeremy Caplan '97's On the Campus column of March 19 described some welcome breaches in the Chinese wall that separates undergraduates from graduate students. But why, in the name of all that is Princeton, did this column have to conclude with a mention of Dean Andrew Fleming West? The rigid segregation of graduate students was exactly what Andy West wanted and Woodrow Wilson fought to overcome. Wilson believed that intermingling more mature, intellectually serious graduate students with the undergraduates would raise the level of scholarship and purpose among the undergraduates, and it was a dark day when he lost the battle to West over the location of the Graduate College, It has taken the better part of a century for Wilson's vision to begin to come to pass.
John Milton Cooper, Jr. '61
Madison, Wisc.
Snail Mail
I enjoyed your December 25 issue, but please don't put Jimmy Stewart '32 on your cover again! Thanks to him, my issue arrived three months late. Because the cover showed a scene from the 1947 movie It's a Wonderful Life, the Postal Service must have concluded that the magazine had been languishing in some sidetracked railroad car for 50 years and didn't warrant fast delivery via the Central Pacific's coast-to-coast line, which I understand Governor Stanford has now made possible by driving a golden spike at Promontory, Utah.
I can't wait to find out how the basketball team will fare this season as it enters the post-Carril era. Can it make the NCAAs and humble the likes of UCLA once again? The excitement builds out here on the Coast.
Paul Hertelendy '53
Berkeley, Calif.
Donald Stokes '51
I am pleased that PAW chose to publish an obituary on Donald Stokes '51, a former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School (Notebook, February 19). The obit described his career, but I missed any tribute to the man himself. I was privileged to be Don's debate partner at Princeton for two years. In addition to being a brilliant speaker, he was gentle and tolerant, with a wonderful sense of humor and a rare enthusiasm for life. On a summer camping trip we took in the Rocky Mountains he insisted on stopping at every turn in the road, it seemed, for a photo. We must have ended up with 200 pictures of mountains with no identification of where they were taken.
Most of us meet only a few sterling characters in a lifetime. Don Stokes was one such person, and I will miss him.
Davis M. Roach '52
Fall Brook, Calif.
Don Stokes's extraordinary personal qualities included kindness, thoughtfulness, warmth, sensitivity, generosity, and patience, not to mention his dazzling intellect. He was truly a "perfect gentle knight."
Humphrey Taylor
Chairman, Louis Harris & Associates
New York, N.Y.
Fred Almgren '55
I was saddened to read the obituary on my classmate and friend, Professor of Mathematics Frederick Almgren '55, in the March 19 Notebook. Fred's academic achievements were impressive, but there were other aspects to him that should not be forgotten. In addition to being a consistently brilliant scholar as an undergraduate, Fred was a talented musician and a member of the Glee Club for four years; as a senior he led its close-harmony group, known as the Octet. He was also a member of the track team who, I believe, lettered as a pole vaulter.
Raymond F. Fitzsimmons '55
Orange, Calif.
Class Notes on Web
I am horrified to learn that Class Notes is now on PAW's Website and can be widely accessed. I did not know this and am quite sure that a great many alumni who write to their class secretaries with news for their class columns do not know it, either. If they were aware of it, I believe, many would either not provide such information to the secretaries or would alter what they do provide.
Tanya Kazanjian '78
Palatine, Ill.
Community
As a fellow community-development professional, I appreciate your February 5 article on Marty Johnson '81 and Isles, Inc., the nonprofit corporation he founded to help Trenton's poor.
While it is true, as the article states, that "self help" and "empowerment" were rarely heard in the Woodrow Wilson School or politics department when we were on campus, the acquisition and use of power were basic tenets in our liberal-arts education, which taught us to think and to develop strategies for moving or changing an agenda. We learned that power is the tool to actualize that agenda. It is power that many of us strive to create in disenfranchised communities across the United States, wherever people struggle with unemployment, poor education, inferior housing, and lost hope.
Those tenets were part of my Princeton education, but community development was never offered as part of any curriculum. The field-concerned with the generation of jobs, the creation of affordable housing, and the growth of community-based equity-has come a long way in the last 30 years, but our premier academic institutions have barely examined it. I hope "Isles at Princeton" will change that. Here is one Princeton graduate who will be that much prouder for the change.
Roberto Barragan '84
Marina del Rey, Calif.
Honor Code
I was dismayed by Kevin Baine '71's letter of March 5. The Honor Code was originally designed and administered by students, and it seems appropriate that the role of advocate in an honor case be limited to students. When I was dean of students and chairman of the Honor Committee, I found students to be eminently fair and very concerned about reaching just decisions. To introduce an advocate from the faculty or administration would be unnecessary and potentially fraught with issues of control and power which have no place in an Honor Committee hearing.
Andy Brown '69
Skillman, N.J.
History Online
I invite all friends of the university to visit a new Website, the online version of a book titled Going Back: An Oral History of Princeton. Recollections from alumni of every stripe highlight the Princeton experience from World War I to the men's basketball team's NCAA performance of 1996. The first two chapters, now posted, feature stories about admissions and academic life. Other chapters, to be posted in coming months, contain accounts from the university's first African-American trustee, the first female undergraduate to earn a Princeton degree, and the founder of TigerNet.
Both the book and the Website were created by the Princetoniana Committee of the Alumni Council to commemorate the university's 250th Anniversary. The address is www.princeton.edu/~alco/GoingBack/ and is linked to the Alumni Council homepage through "Alumni Online Services."
Cynthia Penney '83
New York, N.Y.
Stock Market
I congratulate Professor Uwe Reinhardt on his clearly written explanation of stock market returns (paw, February 19). Unfortunately, most of the public does not seem to care about the "intrinsic value" of a stock. A survey of newsgroups and chat rooms on the Internet quickly reveals that the public is not looking at dividends at all. Rather, most people seem to be concentrating solely on the price of the stocks they own. Each increase in a price-earnings ratio, while a warning to Reinhardt's "rational investor," is only further confirmation to them that they should continue to invest in the market, lest they miss the boat.
This is the mark of Dutch tulips and chain letters, not of financial instruments.
Andrew Berman '88
New York, N.Y.
Footnotes
I was astonished to note in your story on Anthony Grafton's defense of the footnote (Notebook, April 2) a quote from Professor Grafton to the effect that ". . . today's reading public-huge, amorphous and sharing very little in common [italics mine]-regards the footnote as an obstacle."
I'm troubled that a Princeton faculty member could have committed the blatant solecism1 of "sharing very little in common." Surely you say either "sharing very little" or "having very little in common." But "sharing very little in common?"-never!
Stephen A. Kliment *57
New York, N.Y.
1Solecism: [F. solécisme, fr. L, fr. Gr soloikismos, deriv of soloikos speaking incorrectly, from the corruption of the Attic dialect among the Athenian colonists of Soli (Gr Soloi) in Cilicia.] 1. An ungrammatical combination of words in a sentence, loosely, any minor blunder in speech. Cf. Barbarism, 1. Viz MerriamWebster, New Collegiate Dictionary, 6 ed.
Calling A Cappellas
PhilaCappella, the only all-female a cappella group in Philadelphia, is looking for a first soprano and second alto. We rehearse on Tuesday evenings and perform about once a month. Interested alumnae should call me at 215-657-5786.
Lorraine Lindhult
Huntington Valley, Pa.