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Author Archives: Giri Nathan

madlib_02

Coming to an eating club near you

Good news for all of you who are 1) somewhat hiphop-inclined, and 2) looking for some hope to keep you afloat in these trying pre-Dean’s Date times. Madlib, one of the finest producers alive, will be performing at Terrace on Tuesday night.  A Madlib beat is an odd specimen, radiating the hazy warmth of vinyl, constantly teetering on the verge of a groove before twitching and fracturing and meandering away to explore some other musical thought. He often eschews the typical hook-verse-hook template in favor of weirder, looser song structures, all the while sampling voraciously and multiculturally. Sometimes he raps, too. Maybe we’ll hear some of that at Terrace, but his beats alone will be more than enough to satisfy. Maddeningly prolific, he’s dropped tape after tape of instrumentals (see especially his jazz-inflected stuff), but he might be best known for his collaborations with rappers. Most recently with Freddie Gibbs, most mainstreamly with Mos Def, and probably best of all with MF Doom — their brainchild, Madvillainy, ranks among the top rap records of the last decade, and every time my stomach sinks with the dread of Tuesday 5 PM I just think about prospect of hearing some of those beats live. Hear the flute loop on this song and know that everything will be okay:

Opening acts Shigeto and Dabyre are sure to impress as well. Terrace sets are hard to predict, but I can’t imagine Madlib himself will go on anytime before 12:40 or so. Go listen.

4 weeks ago

Madlib to Deploy Beats at Terrace on Dean’s Date

By Giri Nathan
Posted in Arts, Goings On, The Street Tagged , , , , , Leave a comment

NEWLY MINTED ‘PRINCE’ EDITOR-IN-CHIEF HENRY ROME ‘13 RESENTS ELVES/PRINTERS, BRAVES BOMB THREATS FOR THE SAKE OF JOURNALISM, FEARS GETTING SCOOPED BY US

HenryRome

Name: Henry Rome
Age: 20
Major: Politics (Near Eastern Studies certificate)
Hometown: Strafford, PA
Eating Club/Residential College: Charter/Forbes College (both are worth the walk)

What was your initial reaction when you found out about the position?
Very excited and deeply honored. We have a great publication, and I look forward to leading our team forward over the next year.

Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional?
Sam Seaborn from West Wing.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton?
Forbes always pulled off impressive holiday-themed dinners, and Charter pub nights. Grad College has pumpkin pie to die for.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day?
Lots and lots of email, reading a lot of newspapers (yes, in print!), following the latest trends in terrorism/insurgency and domestic Iranian politics and watching crime shows (NCIS, Criminal Minds, CSI, Homeland). Also going to class and hanging with friends.

What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
Listening to my police scanner at odd hours of the night.

What are your plans for the Prince?
Many of my plans are behind-the-scenes changes to streamline paper operations and leverage the resources of our extremely-talented sections to put out the best paper and website possible. More broadly, I believe we have tremendous potential to fulfill our role on campus as a leader. To do that, we must focus on covering — and uncovering — the most current, compelling and controversial stories in the Princeton community and presenting those stories in new and creative ways, including special print and online packages, videos and graphics.

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21 Questions with … Henry Rome ‘13

By Giri Nathan
Posted in 21 Questions Tagged , , , , , , , One comment
Whitman

This feels strangely CGI

Ah, Whitman, the newest of them all, whose neo-Gothic arches and towers we owe to erstwhile eBay honcho/gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman ‘77. From an aerial view, the college forms a “W”, said to be in her honor (definitely apocryphal). It’s no eyesore from the outside. Though Whitman does seem to be aping the time-earned classiness of, say, Rocky — it’s all like “hay look I’m 4 years old but I can be castle-y and majestic too” — it’s a pretty nice-looking crib overall. And there are some nice things on the inside, too.  I’ll be quick to admit, the Whitman experience is an overwhelmingly positive one. But I’ve still got some pretty serious reservations about the place. It looks good on the surface, but under that perfect veneer there’s something’s just a little … off. If that’s cryptic, good — I’ll take you through the usual tour, and then I’ll explain myself more clearly when we get to the end, because, suspense, or something.

The résumé:

Laundry: Thanks to ridiculously generous laundry room distribution, no matter where you live the nearest washing machine won’t lie more than a hallway’s length away — you’ll be grateful that you don’t have to clamber up and down stairs with a hamperful of misery. But because of the easy access, these rooms are always busy, so to guarantee yourself an open machine you’ll often have to make the arduous (ok, elevator-assisted) trudge to the 1981 basement, where you’ll find a wondrous array of washers and dryers.

Kitchen: Like the laundry rooms, they’re sprinkled throughout, usually two to a floor, and they’ve got all the usual amenities: fridge, stove, oven, microwave, requisite filthy dishes, etc.  Since they’re fairly cramped and devoid of any homey ambiance, the kitchens don’t make for particularly good study or social spaces — I never visited them except to raid someone’s fresh batch of cookies (note: easily sniffed out from afar). Be careful what you cook, though, because air circulation tends to, uh, share your creations with everyone in the vicinity. My freshman year, someone managed to stank up all four floors of 1981 with the thick reek of five-spice. This happened on a regular basis. I will never forgive you, O anonymous purveyor of Asian cuisine.

Computers: Printers on every floor is a godsend, but for usable computers you’ll have to venture to Whitman Library. (We’ll deal with that place in a second.)

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Residential College Review: Whitman Edition

By Giri Nathan
Posted in Student Guides Tagged , , , , , , , , , 8 Comments

More than a year after President Tilghman intimated the possibility of an full-on Greek ban, a few months after the residential and social life working group released their much-discussed report, and with the images of vigorous student/administration debate fresh in our collective memories, the U. has finally announced a policy change. It’s a two-pronged ban: freshman are forbidden from affiliating with Greek organizations, and members of the other three classes are forbidden from conducting rush for freshman. (Meanwhile, the university will continue to withhold official recognition of Greek organizations.) The ban goes into effect in fall 2012, so the upcoming school year will be business as usual. In a letter to returning students, Tilghman justified the decision as an attempt to recenter student life around the residential colleges, the Street, and the “shared experience of essentially all undergraduates living and dining on campus.”

Yet the most interesting ramification of this new policy — exactly how the administration plans to police something as wide-ranging and hazily defined as “rush” — remains to be seen. Later in the letter, Tilghman explained her intention to form a new committee this year, which will seek

to consult widely with interested students; to think carefully about precisely how the prohibition should be described and enforced, and about the penalties that would be imposed for infractions; and to bring forward its recommendations by early in the spring semester so they can be discussed by the broader University community prior to adoption.

The letter also manages to somewhat awkwardly shoehorn in details about an upcoming campus pub, which, although promising, is profoundly benign news, and probably the only one of the working group recommendations that could be deemed completely uncontroversial.

… so we’ll stick with the controversial stuff. To gauge the Greek response to this announcement, The Ink spoke to Jake Nebel ‘13, one of the students most deeply (and publicly) involved in the Greek conversation with the adnimistration. A member of the AEPi fraternity, Nebel spearheaded the Princeton Greek Council and drafted a pro-Greek petition that gathered over 700 signatures.

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Admin Bans Freshman Greek Life

By Giri Nathan
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Our friends at the Daily Princetonian provided an update on the Tony Kadyhrob saga: after incidents at several Mercer County campuses, the 68-year-old has been indicted on one count of second-degree attempted kidnapping and one count of third-degree luring. While many students might recognize the face, fewer are familiar with the peculiar tragedy of Mr. Kadyhrob, who suffers from schizophrenia and was overheard telling himself that he was a 21-year-old graduate of Princeton. No date has been set for the trial.

In an overzealous post-admission shopping spree, this was purchased

We’ll turn now to a less serious, much broader kind of identity crisis, one that has seized many students (or at least the internet-list-reading subset). The past week has given me pause, has forced a more careful interrogation of Princeton’s essence. What are the defining values of this school?* A year ago, you might have looked around and unwaveringly answered: our douchebaggery and our preppiness,  celebrated both as discrete virtues, and also in their sublime union (see left; see also Lawnparties, the general phenomenon of).

This year, you might answer exactly the same way, because neither of those two values appears to have waned in the last year. But the public recognition of them has. Despite our prominent #3 ranking on GQ’s last “Douchiest Colleges” list, we are conspicuously absent from the 2011 edition. Ivy-wise, Princeton and Harvard have been supplanted by Cornell and Yale — which might itself call for some intra-Ivy douchiness, but I’ll let you fill those punchlines in yourself. Princeton did manage a tangential mention on Yale’s page, serving as the “robot” foil to their “passion.” (Incidentally this entire list is excerpted from the “groundbreaking new book” The Rogers & Littleton Guide to America’s Douchiest Colleges. It doesn’t take a Princeton douche to gawk at the fact that this book exists —  maybe we lurk somewhere in its 176[!] pages.)

This news arrives just weeks after another surprising omission: Princeton was left out of The Huffington Post’s “Preppiest Schools” list. Last time we were represented by this somewhat cryptic tableau of not-particularly-preppy-looking silhouettes in a random Whitman arch, but this time, nothing. This is very unfortunate because I was looking forward to an even more confusingly irrelevant photo this year.

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Week in Review: Identity Crisis Edition (July 18 – July 24)

By Giri Nathan
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DID YOU READ…? YOUNG ALUMNI TRUSTEE AKU AMMAH-TAGOE ‘11 TELLS US WHAT’S WRONG WITH PRINCETON, WROTE A KANYE-FUELED THESIS, IS AN “OLD PERSON”

Mail AttachmentName: Aku Ammah-Tagoe
Age: 21
Major: English
Hometown: Silver Spring, MD
Eating Club/Residential College/Affiliation: Terrace/Forbes RCA

What was your initial reaction when you found out about your selection?
It was the Thursday morning of Reunions, and I was sitting on the Dinky platform at Princeton Junction as it slowly filled up with alumni getting off the train from New York. I wasn’t allowed to talk about the results yet, so I couldn’t do anything dramatic, but it was cool to sit there surrounded by so much of Princeton’s past and present, knowing that I’ll get to impact all of their lives now in tangible ways. At that point the election process had been going on for what, two and a half months? So I felt more relieved than anything else. But I definitely got excited as the weekend went on.

Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional?
Adoley Ammah-Tagoe ‘14, my little sister! She actually makes Princeton sparkle.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton?
Dinner at Prospect House at the English Majors Colloquium my junior spring. I don’t actually remember what we ate, but the Majors Colloquium is one of my favorite things about our department, and the company — juniors and seniors in the department, our favorite professors — was perfect.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day?
Read and write (and read and write emails).

What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
Lately, one of my Pandora stations, TLC Radio. It’s so 90s! And you get a lot of girl power, “Independent Women Part I”-style songs that are ideal for, um, cruising through your childhood suburb in your parents’ Toyota.

What do you hope to accomplish as a YAT?
My two main constituencies — the residents of McCosh Hall and the Forbes Addition — have been asking a lot about renovation plans. But mostly I’d like to become the type of person who should hold Princeton in trust; I’d like to listen a lot, learn as much about the University as possible, and make informed decisions that are in its best interests.

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21 Questions With Aku Ammah-Tagoe ‘11

By Giri Nathan
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A bit of shuffling over at the helm of The Daily Princetonian: Ameena Schelling ‘12 was appointed the new editor-in-chief after Gabriel Debenedetti ‘12 resigned for “personal reasons.” Schelling, who formerly served as managing editor, took over as per Prince bylaws, and she’ll hold the position until February 1.

Debenedetti declined to comment, citing the Prince policy that only the editor-in-chief is authorized to speak to the media; Schelling did not respond to requests for comment. In an email to the Prince staff, president of the Prince grad board Richard W. Thaler, Jr. noted that it was a “difficult decision” for Debenedetti, thanked him for his service, and summed it all up as “a painful moment for Gabe, a challenging moment for Ameena, and a hopeful moment for the Prince.”

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This is known as "steeplechase."

Meanwhile, some more literal batons were being passed. While you were trolling Hulu or interning or exploring exotic locales on the Princeton dollar, a handful of your peers were running extremely quickly in Iowa. Donn Cabral ‘12 and Ashley Higginson ‘11 both notched top-10 finishes at the track and field NCAA Championships in Des Moines, and a total of 12 Tigers earned All-America honors. That includes the members of the 4×400 relay team, who were profiled in a fresh NYT piece a while back.

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Week In Review: Passing the Baton Edition (June 5 – June 11)

By Giri Nathan
Posted in Week in Review Tagged , , , , 3 Comments

Last year, we tried to capture the aftermath of the P-rade in all its trashy resplendence, the empty husks of 30-racks, the crushed cans of Bud Light shining like so many diamonds. This year’s photographic evidence of Reunions excess comes from Whitman Library. We’ve already introduced you to the squalor of the thesis hermit, but this is, uh, something else. A Sunday morning tiptoe through Whitman Library revealed the following:

overview

It’s a bad and blurry picture because I struggled to find an angle that could capture it all: more than 50 boxes of Old World Pizza, washed down by several dozen cups of beer in varying states of depletion.

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Requisite Photo of Reunions Excess

By Giri Nathan
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First and foremost, happy Reunions. If you were at all confused about timing, this should help clear up any uncertainty:

I always forget the order of these words.

I always forget the order of these words.

Second, apologies for our torpor over the past week or two — finals are finals, and apparently the term “Dead Week” applies to this blog as well. Bur we’ll be staying active through the summer months, serving up our usual Week In Review coverage, along with a healthy supply of 21 Questions and the occasional dispatches from campus.

As for the nearer future, we at The Ink will make some kind of attempt to chronicle the madness that is Princeton Reunions. You ought to be experiencing it yourself; you can read about it later. So for now, go out and drink a beer with yourself in 30 years.

May 26, 2011

The Ink Does Summer 2011

By Giri Nathan
Posted in Meta Tagged , Leave a comment

O, Lawnparties. For the Street-going masses, it’s been something of a marathon weekend, but provided you get to Sunday in one piece (and with liver intact), you’ll enjoy some solid tunes on Prospect Avenue. You’ve got your usual slew of heinous cover bands, but there are also few gems. Here are the acts to keep an eye on.

Here is the first Google result for Lawnparties.

Here is the first Google result for "Lawnparties"

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Lawnparties 2011: A User’s Guide

By Giri Nathan
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VALEDICTORIAN JOHN PARDON ‘11 LAUGHS AGGRESSIVELY, THINKS BEST NEAR TREES, CAN PERFORM ADDITION

[and check out our previous 21Q with SALUTATORIAN VERONICA SHI '11]

pictureName: John Pardon
Age: 21
Major: Mathematics
Hometown: Chapel Hill, NC
Eating Club/Residential College/Affiliation: Butler College

What was your initial reaction when you found out?
Well, after getting the email asking me to Dean Fowler’s office, it took some time to actually walk over there, so by the time I arrived, I had pretty much figured out that I’d won something.  It was still pretty surprising when she told me I was valedictorian.

Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional?
Probably John Nash *50.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton?
On campus: certainly the Great Chefs of Chicago dinner in the dining halls during freshman year.  Off campus: Mediterra.  I went there at the expense of an electronic trading firm, GETCO.  I’ve gotten lots of subsequent invitations to go to similar such dinners, but I always find it awkward to attend because I don’t actually think I want to go work at a place like that, so I haven’t gone to any more of them.

In one sentence, what do you actually do all day?
There are the usual tasks, homework, etc.  But otherwise, I run, practice cello, and read math papers.

What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
The Sci-Fi channel, though recently I’ve only had the chance to watch it when I’m at home on break.

Could you briefly describe your thesis?
It’s in topology, specifically knot theory.  I wrote about a new link “concordance” invariant.

Do you know all the words to Old Nassau?
No (and I feel like I’m the only one too!  When do they teach everyone these things???)

What is your biggest fear?
Going blind.

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21 Questions With … John Pardon ‘11

By Giri Nathan
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By the grace of the calendar gods, my Princeton Preview weekend happened to include April 24th, the holiday known as Newman’s Day. When I was just a wee prefrosh I watched my host’s roommate scrawl a Sharpie tally on his forearm for every beer he drank, hoping to get to two dozen by the day’s end, as per that (apocryphal) Paul Newman quote: “24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence? I think not.”

So this Sunday was the third time I witnessed (though not observed) this annual Princeton tradition. And despite the ideal weather conditions, it seemed a bit quieter than usual. I heard murmurings on the listservs, saw a spattering of Newman’s Day tanks, read a couple of amusing Facebook statuses. But no one staggering around visibly drunk, and no one sporting more than a modest few notches on the arm. Why so tame?

Beast: now served in pleasantly colored eggs

1. Could’ve just been the unfortunate pairing of holidays — it was Easter, so maybe the resurrection of Christ cast a pall over the beer-funneling fun? Nope, that just forced people to find creative ways to combine the two festivities: at Tower, members hunted down Easter eggs with jello shots inside.

2. Or perhaps people realized that Newman himself was “disturbed” by the holiday in his name? Or they deemed the celebration of excess a bit distasteful in light of his son’s 1978 drug overdose, and had second thoughts right as they were about to shotgun that can of Coors Light? This seems unlikely.

Just as I was walking to the weekly UPC meeting, thinking that the day had not lived up to its usual standard, I spotted a guy peeing on the walkway outside 1901, barely even trying to conceal the act. Public urination, that proud badge of college inebriation. Though I missed out on the obvious signs, the holiday clearly continues to live on: Paul Newman, you may now resume rolling in your grave.

Apr 25, 2011

Newman’s Day 2011: Still Happened

By Giri Nathan
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