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Monthly Archives: March 2009

Updated: At exactly 7 PM, the University issued a press release that confirms Princeton was the only Ivy League school, aside from Penn (their acceptance rate increased by 0.1%), that saw a higher acceptance rate this year. Janet Rapelye admitted 9.79% of applicants, compared to 9.25% last year. An incredible 1,331 students were wait listed, though only half of them are expected to remain on it. It will be interesting to see how Princeton’s administration will spin today’s news.

It is 7 PM EST, and Princeton is the only Ivy League school that has not yet released its admissions data for the Class of 2013. Although Princeton is notoriously opaque and slow about these sort of things, it could be telling that no one has heard anything.

Mar 31, 2009

UPDATED: Uh…Impending PR Disaster?

By Brian No
Posted in In the news Tagged , , , Leave a comment

monopoly-man

The Times reported yesterday that in the face of shrinking endowments, universities are increasingly choosing wealthier applicants that can foot the full ticket of an education over students that would need financial aid if admitted.

Coupled with the fact that Ivies’ (and other selective college’s) acceptance rates are dropping, high school juniors across the nation have collectively just sighed a massive “fuck my life.”

(image © Hasbro)

Mar 31, 2009

The Economy: Screwing High School Seniors Since ‘08

By Will Saborio
Posted in In the news Tagged , , Leave a comment

torah8huIf the celebration that traipsed its way through Mathey-Rocky this past Sunday afternoon is any indication, new Torahs are a big deal. Chabad, the Jewish center run by the Hassidic Lubavitz movement, got its first Torah on Sunday, and members of Chabad made their jubilation known.

Highlights of the ceremony and subsequent parade:

  • The strange techno-cultural disconnect of seeing old men in strict Hassidic dress busting out new digital cameras
  • Someone lighting their cigarette from the ceremonial candles being passed out
  • Pretty much everything involving Chabad leader Rabbi Eitan Webb, whose highlights of the day included riding on a freshman’s shoulders for a good five minutes and stealing/playing senior Dan Berry’s bongo drum somewhere around the University Place side of the U-Store

Full story here

Mar 30, 2009

IN PRINT: Chabad gets a New Torah, Hilarity Ensues

By Spencer Gaffney
Posted in In Print Tagged , , , Leave a comment

T-minus 18 hours until admissions decisions for the class of 2013 are released. To prospective students: everyone at Princeton is mute!

Mar 30, 2009

Just Plain Weird (and Stupid)

By Brian No
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged , , , Leave a comment
o hai

o hai

Princeton professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman appears on this week’s cover of Newsweek, complete with an adorable (or “whimsical,” as one Press Clubber puts it) picture and a profile penned by visiting journalism professor Evan Thomas.

Though the profile is an interesting look at Krugman’s role as a liberal critic of the Obama Administration, the part that stood out to us was this little passage:

Krugman pointed out that unlike some earlier Nobel Prize winners, he has not asked for a better parking place on campus. (He was not kidding.)

Oooo! What a diss! Krugman is so liberal and such a crazy commie that he’s okay not getting a better parking space because that’s, like, totally for the bourgeois. But whom could he be talking about? There’s been a bunch of faculty who’ve won the physics Nobel Prize since the 1980s, but there’s only been a few who’ve won the economics prize. Aside from Krugman, the most recent faculty member was Eric Maskin (2007) who is a visiting professor. And then there’s Daniel Kahneman (2002) and John Nash (1994). For some reason, I just can’t imagine John Nash demanding a better parking space, but who knows?

(image source: newsweek.com)

Mar 30, 2009

Krugman: LOOK AT ME I’M SO MODEST!!!!!!!111

By Brian No
Posted in Goings On Tagged , , , , Leave a comment

Once upon a time, as recently as this decade, the Princeton Men’s Basketball team ruled the Ivy League. But then we started to suck hardcore, perhaps most notably when, in 2005, Princeton scored just 21 points in the entire game against something called Monmouth University. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, it turned out that scoring the legal drinking age was an NCAA record, but a record in a totally bad news bears sort of way–as in, no other team has ever sucked so much.

Reminiscing about all this makes us pine for the 1980s and 1990s, when the basketball team was totally baller. Exhibit A: In 1996 they defeated UCLA, the defending national champions, in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Watch these couple video clips and you’ll understand why the stands in Jadwin Gym were built for so many:


Mar 30, 2009

What’s March Madness?

By Brian No
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damatoSTUDENT SINGER-SONGWRITER SPITS OUT SOME SNARK

Name: Anthony D’Amato
Age: 21
Major: English
Hometown: Blairstown, NJ
Eating club/residential college/affiliation: Terrace Club, Rockefeller College

Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional?
Jonathan Ames (writer)

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton?
Old World Pizza

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day?
I look for ways to put things off until tomorrow.

What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
I steal from my roommates. Constantly.

Continue reading…

Mar 25, 2009

21 Questions with… Anthony D’Amato ‘10

By Brian No
Posted in 21 Questions, Uncategorized Tagged , , , , , Leave a comment

petraeusGen. David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, will deliver the baccalaureate address to Princeton University seniors, at 2 p.m. May 31 in the University Chapel.

The general’s selection follows that of CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, who was announced earlier this year as the 2009 speaker for Class Day, a June 1 commencement event.

“I felt very honored to be invited to speak at the baccalaureate, and I look forward to the occasion very much,” Gen. Petraeus said.

Gen. Petraeus oversaw all coalition forces in Iraq. After serving as U.S. commander in Iraq for 19 months, he became leader of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees American troops in the Middle East, East Africa and Central Asia.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to offer reflections of a Princeton grad who has been privileged to serve with many wonderful Americans in recent years,” he said.

Read entire article at the Princeton Packet here.

Mar 23, 2009

IN PRINT: Gen. Petraeus to be baccalaureate speaker

By Samantha Pergadia
Posted in In Print Tagged , , Leave a comment

newspaperA study by economics professor Sam Schulhofer-Wohl and Miguel Garrido looked at the impact of closing a newspaper on elections and voting. The case they observed was the Cincinnati Post, which closed after New Years Eve in 2007. Their results found that there was decreased political involvement in the northern Kentucky counties after the Post closed.

“Although our findings are statistically imprecise, they demonstrate that newspapers–even underdogs such as the Post, which had a circulation of just 27,000, when it closed–can have a substantial and measurable impact on public life,” Schulhofer-Wohl and Garrido said in the abstract.

The study found that politics becomes less competitive in terms of the incumbent advantage, decreased voter turnout and the number of candidates running for office after a newspaper shuts down. They believe a similar phenomena will result for larger newspapers that have or will soon go under in Denver, Seattle and San Francisco.

For democracy’s sake, keep buying those papers and getting that ink on your fingers. It could be the most significant vote you cast.

Mar 20, 2009

Newspapers matter!

By Samantha Pergadia
Posted in In the news Tagged , Leave a comment

einsteinJohn Nash gets a lot of the “Eccentric Princeton Genius” attention nowadays, but he was by no means the first world-famous superbrain to grace our campus. Albert Einstein, the Walter Matthau to Nash’s Russell Crowe, ably held down that position until his death in 1955.

More than fifty years on, it’s hard to find authentic traces of Einstein on campus — an unrenovated Frist classroom here, a small off-campus house there, some old letters stored in Firestone. But Einstein’s legacy lives on in the form of Gillett Griffin, his last surviving friend.

Read Griffin’s story – including the strange tale of his first encounter with Einstein (it involves a yellow plastic duck!) – in today’s Star-Ledger.

Mar 18, 2009

IN PRINT: Profile of Albert Einstein’s BFF 4E

By David Walter
Posted in In Print Tagged , Leave a comment

researcherA new study devised by Talya Miron-Shatz, a Ph.D associate researcher in the Wilson School, found that financial security affects happiness more than actual money for the modern American woman.

“Even if you are making a hundred grand a year, if you are constantly worried that you are going to get fired, that you are going to lose your health insurance or that you are simply not sure you are going to ‘make it,’ you are not going to be happy,” Miron-Shatz said in a press release.

This just in. People who worry are less happy than people who don’t. The study seems to be in line with other self-evident conclusions researchers at Princeton are uncovering, at the heels of the groundbreaking discovery that men objectify naked women.

Miron-Shatz hopes to influence President Obama’s financial decisions, ushering him to focus on “strategies that create social and financial ‘safety nets’ over measures that would directly increase income.”

Mar 18, 2009

Researcher: Obama’s policies should create security, not money

By Samantha Pergadia
Posted in Goings On, In the news Tagged , , Leave a comment

muldoonProfessor Paul Muldoon, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, will rediscover his Northern Ireland roots as he spends St. Patrick’s Day with President Obama and 400 other Irish guests for celebrations at the White House. Lets hope the green-dyed fountains and Irish whiskey provide Muldoon with all the poetic inspiration he needs for some more “Moy Sand and Gravel.”

Mar 17, 2009

Muldoon goes green with Obama

By Samantha Pergadia
Posted in Goings On, Politics Tagged , , Leave a comment