I'm a proud member of Princeton's
Great
Class of 1978,
cum laude
with an
A.B.
degree in Mathematics.
I can be proud of my own accomplishments
and the accomplishments of Princeton University
and still have doubts and reservations
about the morals and values of the institution.
It is about those morals and values I am writing here.
I have a lot of positive, nice stuff to say
about my alma mater before I get
to the more-negative part.
Click here
if you want to skip directly to the
part about Princeton and all the Trump politics,
my reason for writing this missive.
First of all,
Princeton's classrooms were all they were cracked up to be.
I sat in classrooms with luminary professors and smart classmates
for my four years.
Not only was the intellectual-climate-in-the-classroom part
of my undergraduate education stellar,
the facilities were marvelous, the campus was beautiful,
and the Computer Center was state of the art,
an important part of my life then and now.
On the subject of this essay,
my own educational
experience
was unsullied by concerns
of lapses in values and judgment in the larger organization
of Princeton University.
The Princeton Experience is about having a community.
By the way, they repeat those three words often in
their self description,
"The Princeton Experience,"
to emphasize that a Princeton education and,
therefore, a Princeton degree, represents more than
an accumulation of academic classroom knowledge.
There is a strong push to have as much as possible
of the undergraduate community
housed on campus in dormitories and dining on campus.
Again to Princeton's credit,
this was a positive part of my Princeton Experience.
My college colleagues were my college neighbors
and my life was enriched by their proximity.
If I wanted to see a classroom friend,
then it was simple matter of strolling
to a nearby dormitory and knocking on the door.
There were social spaces, often with a piano,
where music became a part of my life as well.
I even had access to a photographic darkroom.
Finally, again to Princeton's credit,
I saw little sign of any anti-Jewish animus.
(I say "little" instead of "no" sign
as there were loud and intrusive protesters
when Golda Meir came to speak at Princeton,
loud enough that she commented on their noise,
and I would have thought the university
would have protected an important guest
from that sort of abuse.)
When one of my zealously-Zionist classmates
was whining about antisemitism on campus,
I pointed out, once, that I didn't feel any such thing
from the community and, also,
that over twenty percent of our students were Jewish
complete with a Hillel Jewish place of worship in campus center
and a kosher eating club.
Think about that for a second,
Princeton had Stevenson, a real kosher dining facility.
I don't believe any other Ivy institution had anything like that
and it was a center of Jewish life.
I'll point out it wasn't a center of my life
as I don't keep kosher and it was out of my way,
but a lot of Jewish engineering students appreciated
that it was close to the Engineering Quadrangle
where technical, engineering classes were held.
There was significant negative history in this area,
but I sensed none of it during my time there 1974-1978.
As a student, as a math-geek, and as a Jew
I felt welcome at Old Nassau,
the traditional name of Princeton University.
The campus setting was pleasantly pastoral with lovely buildings
that made us feel safe.
I don't recall locking up my bicycle there.
It wasn't entirely safe as Princeton had its first rape
on 1974 November 22, but we didn't have Stanford's
eight rapes in one quarter,
the urban threats of University of Pennsylvania,
or the appalling theft rates of Harvard and
MIT.
The setting outside the campus was idea for a long-distance runner
with lovely farmland in almost all directions,
rolling hills with lovely vista views.
For good or for bad Princeton University took good
custodial care of its student inhabitants.
The drinking age was eighteen and they took care that those
staggering from the pub to their dorm rooms were cared for and,
for those sending their pub-beer bills back home
those charges came from the CHANCELLOR GREEN ASSOCATION
lest Mom and Dad wonder how their sons and, now, daughters,
could spend $400 on beer and pizza in one month.
I'll point out, on a broader scale,
not only was Princeton University
a haven for a bright student like myself,
it appeared to be a haven for quite a range of bright students.
I certainly was different in many important ways from so-called normal
and so were many of my college colleagues,
not only different,
but different in different ways,
and we were accepted and embraced by Princeton.
(I have no idea how graduate students were treated
as they were clearly separate from undergraduates,
but I can speak with praise about my own undergraduate
Princeton Experience from 1974 through 1978.)
Now we get to the not-so-good stuff about Princeton University.
Something was different about Princeton for me.
So many decades later I have friends from
primary and secondary schools,
graduate school,
every company I worked at for more than six months,
music organizations, running groups, hifi-audiophile people,
aviation clubs, et cetera
and the one gaping hole is Princeton
where I have no lasting friendships from people my own age.
One of my professors was a dear friend for thirty-nine years
and I finally made may way to the office of
another
forty-seven years later,
but something about Princeton made it uniquely not-friend-making
in my life.
My Princeton Experience had a serious division between
whites and blacks.
We lived in different rooms in different parts of campus,
we took different courses,
their night-party hours were quite a bit later than ours,
and it was clear the academic standards
were shockingly different.
The Action allegedly Affirmative was quite Extreme
to the point where new courses were provided
for students utterly ill equipped to survive the basic courses
in mathematics,
there was specifically a department of African American Studies,
and the Sociology Department was shamefully preempted
for black students banding together
to denegrate their white classmates.
I saw few black faces in my classes.
I'm told the academic bar in the admissions process
was 200 SAT points, two full grade points,
lower for black candidates
and there was a similar-but-less-severe difference
for female candidates.
One interesting practice I noticed immediately
is my white college colleagues walked on the right side
of walkways while my black college colleagues walked
down the middle.
Princeton vigorously denied there were significant differences,
only an attempt to level the playing field in some way.
Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.
While we were comfortable with all same-sex roomates
after coeducation became a reality in 1969 October,
the fraction of mixed-race rooms was close to zero.
While this may be blamed on roommate choice
for sophomores, juniors, and seniors,
Princeton assigned roommmates to freshman
and claimed energetically these assignments were random by race.
They also claimed similarly-random selection
when my freshman friends recruited
for the cross-country and track teams
found themselves with other team members
as their random roommates.
If we do the math, as I am a mathematics major,
a twelve-percent-black population with random roommates
will have twenty-two percent of its rooms mixed race,
not the near zero we observed.
Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.
Most colleges are proud of their athletic programs
and recruit for their victories.
It gets silly at the big-sports schools,
but we can take Stanford University as an example
where they have a number of paid-by-scholarship positions
for athletes with the understanding
that those may be weaker students than the campus norm
but they are strong enough to attend classes
and to graduate with their non-athlete classmates.
I think that is a reasonable concession for an Ivy-level school
that simultaneously respects excellent athletes as a positive
part of their society and wins sporting events.
The Ivy Group,
which is the name for the Ivy League plus MIT,
has an agreement that not only precludes recruiting athletes
but that requires sports teams to be
representative of the student population.
Not only would following that prohibit recruiting,
it would even disallow taking athletic excellence
into consideration for the value of an admission candidate.
I got some serious heat from students and a dean
when I published a letter in
The Daily Princetonian
expressing my concern at increasing athletic recruiting
when there wasn't supposed to be any at all.
Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.
There was a large suite atop Blair Arch
(see the picture up above)
which had been inhabited by the Rugby Team
for a long time.
They used their majority-underclassman status
to retain the room year after year after year.
They also used the suite's elevated position
to piss out the windows on passers by
and to throw things at people.
Rather than try to control pissing and throwing things,
the University thwarted the room retention by declaring
the room would be female the next year.
The reason was obviously to get these animals out of there
while the admistration's bullshit story
was it made the room available to women.
Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.
I had my own room-draw story.
Let me explain how Princeton room assignment works.
Given the importance of dormatory life at Princeton,
it's important that rooms are assigned in some sort
of egalitarian fashion, hence the room-draw process.
Groups of freshmen, sophomores, and juniors
looking for next-year's rooms are ordered by class
from junior down to freshman and randomly within each class.
(Presumably seniors are graduating and not drawing rooms.)
My two roommates and I drawing a triple in 1975
thought being next to a bathroom
was important to us, so we specifically chose a room next to a
MEN'S bathroom.
We came back next fall to find some enterprising person
had painted WO next to MEN and converted it to a WOMEN'S bathroom
and female residents in the dorm were using it.
There was much fuss, even an article in
The Daily Princetonian about it
(with elipses for the word "not" in quoting me),
and it took until 1976 March to get a hearing in front
of the Dormatory and Food Services (DFS) committee.
When I mentioned "Little Miss Paint Can,"
I was immediately censored and castigated
as this was not to be part of their consideration
in deciding the fate of our bathroom for the three
remaining months of the school year.
I was appalled as I considered that an essential part
of the issue, the inappropriate behavior taking something
like a bathroom assignment from somebody else
rather than selecting a room next to a WOMEN'S bathroom
in the first place.
Again, Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.
The theme for all of this is an amoral hypocrisy,
that it's okay to lie about values and principles,
that's it's okay not to have a moral compass.
Once Princeton decided to be our
in loco parentes
I felt they had an obligation
to live by a moral code in matters large and small.
I felt strongly enough that it tipped my scale
against contributing to Princeton's Annual Giving.
This was a responsibility shirked and,
as Princeton takes great pride in training tomorrow's leaders,
it's an important responsibility.
With the obvious and egregious exception
of their Affirmative Action program,
this is simply amoral behavior.
There's nothing fundamentally wrong
with lying about random roommate selection,
room-draw, recruiting athletes, et cetera,
just that it's a stinky, smarmy way to treat people.
If this is the pattern of values inculturation
at our big-name universities,
no wonder its graduates exhibit such a culture of corruption
in political life.
The trouble is that amoral becomes immoral
and these universities not held accountable for their
behavioral, cultural, and personal values
are eventually going to support things that are
economically, socially, and politically wrong and terrible,
just as their race policy has been before and after
Affirmative Action.
Having flagrantly biased commencement speakers
like Al Gore and Eduardo Bhatia is shameful.
Having grossly anti-constitutional organizations
like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
hailed as defenders of American values at Alumni Day
was similarly shameful.
In 2016 Princeton's president Christopher L. Eisgruber
stood for the massively-corrupt Clintons and
a political party with a river of hate
going back to the Klan and eugenics.
If they took no public money,
then I suppose it would be their right
to do that,
but they did take public money,
a lot of it in fact,
and have stood by the horrific history of their decisions.
Princeton felt comfortable living a lie.
Now we have Columbia blocking Jews having access to buildings
while standing up for so-called Palestine terrorists
in the name of academic freedom.
Academic freedom my ass!
This is horror and these big-name similarly-slimy Ivy schools
should be held accountable.
Of course they should lose all their federal funding
immediately, that part is easy.
Princeton felt comfortable living a lie
and they should pay for it.
Right thing to do is have them give back all federal money
since
Affirmative Action
began at these colleges, at least going back to 1973.
Shame on them, a shanda as we say in Yiddish,
that they energetically supported and continuingly defended
judging applicants by the color of their skin
instead of the content of their character for half a century!
Shame on them every day of those fifty-plus years!
Princeton felt comfortable living a lie
and they should pay for it.
Eric Cohen,
a member of a new Jewish organization called Tikvah, gave a
talk
about the urgency of American Jewry finding a new
collegiate home with its own more-conservative culture.
I'm proud of my Princeton-degree, Great-Class-of-1978 achievement without being happy about Princeton's lack of values at the time and the horror show it has become. By analogy I have a friend who is immensely proud of his Eagle-Scout achievement without being happy about what the Boy Scouts have become. We have to cut off their public funding, all of it, get as much back as we can from morally-bankrupt years past, and find someplace else to send our smart Jewish kids to college.
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