Notebook - November 3, 1999


Students face stiffer penalties for serving liquor at parties
Trustees release latest report on alcohol initiative, call on all groups to do their part

This year students will face stiffer

penalties for serving alcohol to or

buying alcohol for minors or purchasing alcohol with a fake ID. They will receive three months probation for a first offense, nine months probation and 50 hours of campus service for a second, and a probable one-year suspension for a third.

Before this year, students weren't suspended or required to perform campus service for violating the alcohol policy, as long as they didn't commit peripheral violations such as vandalism or assault, said Assistant Dean of Student Life Marianne Waterbury.

The penalties are part of a plan outlined in a July report on the trustee's alcohol initiative by the Trustee Committee on Student Life, Health, and Athletics, and being implemented by offices and groups across campus. But they have gotten the most attention from students, some of whom have grumbled in the The Daily Princetonian. Columnist Dan Lips '00 said he fears the new penalties will encourage students to drink off campus.

In the spring of 1998 the trustees charged the committee with oversight of the initiative, calling on the entire university community to join with the trustees in developing an action plan to reduce alcohol abuse on campus.

The report also calls for a marketing campaign to address misperceptions about alcohol use at Princeton; the development of late-night, alcohol-free events; a pilot program providing 29 smoke-free and 10 substance-free rooms for upperclassmen; and a commitment from the selective eating clubs to hold dry bicker.

"I hope [the initiative] will be successful, but I don't know," said Waterbury. "It's hard to know how you change a culture. We're hoping that [the stricter penalties] will be a deterrent," she said. But "it's foolish to think that penalties alone will make the difference." The goal, she added, is education.

Frederick H. Borsch '57, the chairman of the committee, believes that enacting the plan described in the report will change students' attitude toward alcohol, but effecting that change is a long-term goal. The committee and the trustees, he said, will continue talking to groups on campus and will make adjustments along the way.

-Kathryn Federici Greenwood


The Tiger Cal Ripken faces his 450th game

On November 12, 1949, Thacher

Longstreth '41 saw Princeton beatYale at Palmer Stadium to claim the university's third consecutive Big Three title. When the Tigers meet the Bulldogs this November 13, Longstreth will again be in attendance, as he has been for every Princeton football game, home and away, for the last 50 years-a streak of 450 consecutive games.

The longtime Philadelphia city councilman was an honorable mention All-America end as an undergraduate, despite eyesight so poor he could scarcely see the ball. He became an executive for Life magazine in Detroit, and started his streak shortly after being transferred back east.

At 79, he says he still drives to all the games himself, although he no longer tries to get to Dartmouth and back in one day. Do not, however, ask him to recommend a restaurant in New Haven; Longstreth says he has never eaten there.

"I'm usually angry about what happened in the Yale Bowl, so I just get back in the car, cursing all the way home."

The streak has survived bad weather, bad teams, and even the hectic final weeks of his two mayoral campaigns. One who knows its power is Longstreth's daughter, who once made the mistake of scheduling her wedding for the day of the Yale game.

"Oh, Daddy," she said when she looked at the calendar, "you'll have to miss the game."

"Oh, dear," he replied, "you'll have to change the date."

"Oh, Daddy, you must be kidding."

"Oh, no, dear, I'm not."

Needless to say, the wedding date was changed, sparing Longstreth what one assumes would have been an acute dilemma.

"It would have been no dilemma at all," he insists. "I would have gone to the game."

-Mark F. Bernstein '83


Humanities professor helps to refine the art of teaching

Pictured below: Graduate students meet for their weekly seminar dubbed Not for Credit I.

Elaine C. Showalter, the Avalon Foundation Professor of the Humanities, a professor of English, and the former president of the Modern Language Association, last year started a weekly seminar on the art of teaching for nine graduate students who assisted her in conducting precepts for her large undergraduate course on contemporary fiction. This year, thanks in part to funds awarded to her as a Cotsen Teaching Fellow, she is leading two sections of the seminar, dubbed NFC1, or Not for Credit 1.

On an October morning, she spoke about the art of teaching with Kathryn Federici Greenwood over a frappuccino at Starbuck's on Nassau Street.

Is this sort of seminar unusual for Princeton?

Princeton takes teaching very seriously and is full of excellent teachers who have all picked it up on their own. But most of us are not very reflective about why we do what we do and even whether we could do it better.

One defense against addressing pedagogy in a formal way is that it's just jargon and below the intellectual level of Princeton faculty. That it belongs to education and teachers colleges. . . . Another defense is the belief that the genius of teaching comes from above. And some people are just gifted and others aren't. . . . In fact, teaching can be studied, it can be practiced. Teachers are not just born.

What are the graduate students learning?

I'm teaching how to communicate what you know. Graduate students are worried that they don't know enough about Milton or something like that. But what I'm saying is that in teaching, content is only one of many factors. . . . Nobody expects a teacher to know everything. You have to model for your students how you go about answering questions that you don't know the answer to.

Every week, we all post journal entries on an e-mail bulletin board of each precept we teach. . . . As the semester goes on we will move to . . . various problems that have to do with handling and encouraging controversy in the precept.

What resources are out there to help instructors in higher education ?

There is a lot of information available.

I'm trying to make the graduate students familiar with it. Other universities have wonderful Websites with links to all kinds of resources. And our new teaching center opening at Princeton this year will be a great resource.

I bought all the books on university teaching that I could find. And it turns out there are quite a few. My students use two texts: Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership (Harvard Business School Press, 1991) and McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

What is the main message you try to get across in NFC1?

I want them to become more self-reflective about what they're doing in the classroom. And I want to make teaching something that is less private and anxious and more a part of a team and community. I also stress that as teachers we are never in competition with each other. As scholars we are in competition with each other very often. But as teachers we can help each other get better. We can steal ideas from each other. That's very reassuring to them and to me.

Are you still learning about pedagogy?

Oh my gosh, absolutely. This isn't a lesson you learn and then it's over.


Class of '00 will celebrate millennium

The Class of 2000 will leave its mark on the turn of the century by organizing activities, essay contests, and a series of lectures to celebrate and reflect on the coming of the millennium. The prime mover behind the Princeton Millennium Project, Michael S. Bosworth '00, hopes the effort will spark renewed intellectual energy and a commitment to service.

In the first Millennium Project lecture, former president of Poland Lech Walesa spoke on October 8 about democracy in the next millennium. On February 8 presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin will talk about the evolution of American values. The final speaker in the series, Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities Toni Morrison (at left), will deliver an address in Alexander Hall on April 18, Millennium Day, when the project concludes with an outdoor reception for the university community.

Also as part of the project a group of students, faculty members, and administrators will record their thoughts and activities during one week in February and give those diaries to the Princeton University Archives.

-Kathryn Federici Greenwood


GO TO the Table of Contents of the current issue

GO TO PAW's home page

paw@princeton.edu