Author Archives: Lauren Zumbach

Diana Matheson ’08 celebrates her game-winning goal

The Olympics are now over, but one more Tiger managed to take home a medal: Diana Matheson ’08, who scored Canada’s only goal in the bronze medal women’s soccer match against France for a 1-0 shutout win.

That means Princeton had seven medalists, which, as @PrincetonBetch points out, beats the country that invented the Olympics.

We were slightly less successful in the other Olympics – ahem, Alumpics – taking silver behind Dartmouth (really? Dartmouth?!), with Cornell solidly in third. In case you missed it, this was the Ivy League photo-liking competition – the more people that “liked” a school’s photo on Facebook, the better that school does in the rankings. Dartmouth, Princeton and Columbia were the only schools to actually get any points, and Dartmouth’s overwhelming victory seems to suggest that perhaps no one else really cared, but if nothing else the photos will satisfy some of the summertime Orange Bubble withdrawal.

Moving past the Olympics, we put in a pretty good performance in Newsweek’s college rankings:

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Week In Review: By the Numbers Edition (August 7-13)

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For Steven Liss ’10, Reunions is an orange and black Christmas, and even harder to wait for than the original.

While checking his calendar last night, Liss got the inspiration for the Reunions Advent Calendar – similar to countdowntoreunions.com, but with a daily bonus – videos, cartoons, funny quotes, “anything exalting Princeton, really,” Liss said. It kicks off on May 1st, with the famous Doug Davis buzzer-beater.

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Apparently other Princetonians are just as enthusiastic . The site went live at 3:00am this morning, and got 500 Facebook likes in the first 12 hours.

Since graduating two years ago, Liss has been working for his state and US senators in Boston, researching and writing laws and speeches. He’s hoping to make a career writing in politics, eventually ending up in Washington, but says you’ll be able to find him back in the Orange Bubble every June: “I plan on being one of those guys carrying a ‘This is my 60th+ consecutive Reunion’ sign.”

Liss says he’s got some good stuff saved for later this month, so stay tuned. Just don’t try to sneak an early look:

shame

May 3, 2012

It’s (Almost) Reunions Time

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Princeton circa 1965: poster child for "Ivy Style"

Princeton circa 1965: poster child for "Ivy Style"

Apparently the U Store’s selection of Princeton-themed Brooks Brothers sweaters and ties wasn’t enough to fill our insatiable, stereotype-fulfilling demand for all things preppy. Coming soon to Palmer Square: an entire Brooks Brothers store, scheduled to open September 1st – just in time for Lawnparties. (Coincidence? I think not.)

Of course, given Princeton’s sartorial reputation, it’s probably more surprising it’s taken them this long to get here. Brooks Brothers will move into Banana Republic’s current location (don’t worry, Banana fans, though the Palmer Square shop closes March 24, they’re relocating just up US 1 in Marketfair), meaning the actual change in your in-town shopping choices will be…almost nonexistent.

Mar 7, 2012

Brooks Brothers Hits Nassau

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If you noticed more focus on mental health initiatives in the run-up to this year’s USG elections, there’s a good reason, according to results from the third USG Committee on Background and Opportunity (COMBO).

35.3% of students surveyed report having mental health challenges that they did not experience before coming to Princeton, and certain groups are more at risk than others. Women were significantly more likely to feel depressed, overwhelmed, out of place, or experience new mental health challenges, as were LGBT students, who are also more likely to take a year off from school than the average student. Black students were only 70% as likely as white students to rate their emotional health as “higher than average.”

Life does seem to be better if you’re an athlete. They’re less likely to report stress due to difficulties with friends or relationships and report feeling social anxiety much less frequently, and they rate their emotional health, social self-confidence, and leadership ability above the average Princeton student more often than non-athletes.

Athletes and Mental Health

athlmental

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COMBO III: Princeton Will Drive You Crazy. Literally.

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Still working on the perfect look for formals? Computer science students Daniel Chyan ’14, Angela Dai ’13, Tiantian Zha ’13 and Amy Zhou ’13 might be able to offer some advice.

They took first place at the Facebook Camp Hackathon last weekend, beating teams that qualified at earlier competitions throughout the country. Their creation? Color Me Bold, a program that analyzes a photo and offers jewelry and accessory suggestions. Whether you want to give your outfit an extra splash of color or just want to see what it takes to win a hackathon, you can test it here.

Screen shot 2011-12-07 at 4.41.00

Some tips from Zha:

  • After uploading a photo from Facebook, click and drag your mouse over areas of the photo where the outfit you want to match is. If coloring inside the lines isn’t your strong suit, you can right click to erase.
  • Next choose whether you want jewelry or accessory recommendations – jewelry works best at the moment.
  • Princeton’s network isn’t the speediest, so give it some time.

If you’re skeptical about taking fashion advice from a computer algorithm, well, Facebook’s seal of approval is pretty convincing. It’s even more impressive considering they had just 24 hours to put it together.

Princeton’s team was also the only one with more women than men, which might account for the fashion-forward hack. Zha said she got the idea when thinking about day-to-day problems she’d like to solve – “accessorizing can definitely take up as much time as I have available. The girls were totally onboard–and outvoted our one male team member.”

Check out an interview with the Princeton team and video from the hackathon here – considerably tamer than the Hollywood version, but the Ripsticks do look pretty cool.

Dec 7, 2011

Fashion hack takes Facebook’s top prize

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Rukeyser Lecture 2011 Poster (Final)-2

Whether you’re interested in fine dining and criticism or still have food on the brain after Thanksgiving break, join the University Press Club for the annual Louis R. Rukeyser ’54 Memorial Lecture Series featuring Pete Wells, the New York Times’ newly announced restaurant critic.

Wells, the editor of the New York Times’ Dining & Wine section since 2006 and a five-time James Beard Journalism Award winner, will give his take on food journalism and criticism and the future of food writing.

The details:

8:00 pm Wedneday, November 30

McCormick 101

So excited you can’t wait for Wednesday? Whet your appetite with this cheatsheet with some of Wells’ reviews & writing (and some of his best “zingers”).

The Louis R. Rukeyser ’54 Memorial Lecture Series seeks to promote interest in the pursuit of journalism and to raise awareness of the role of the media in society.

Nov 28, 2011

Future of Food Writing with New York Times Restaurant Critic

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Four Princetonians – Elizabeth Butterworth ’12, Miriam Rosenbaum ’12, Astrid Stuth ’12 and Mohit Agrawal ’11 – were among the 32 American Rhodes Scholarship winners announced today.

Agrawal, a math major and former co-president of Engineers Without Borders, is currently getting his master’s in economic policy evaluation at the National University of Ireland on a Mitchell Scholarship. He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in financial economics.

oxfordButterworth, a classics major interested in arts education, will pursue a master’s in comparative and international education. While at Princeton she founded and directed a music program for children of low-income families, and she has worked on excavations in Greece and Italy.

Rosenbaum, a Woody Woo major with minors in African American studies, Judaic studies, and Near Eastern studies, is the president of SHARE Peer Advisors and the Religious Life Council. She is interested in bioethics and healthcare policy and plans to do a master’s in public health.

Stuth, an East Asian studies major who hopes to pursue a career in diplomacy, went to high school in Hong Kong and has represented the US in debate competitions in China in Chinese. She’s also president of the Tigressions and co-founder of a peace conference for U.S. and Iraqi teenagers. Stuth plans to pursue a master’s in international relations.

Check back this week for more on this year’s winners. But did you notice something unusual about the 2012 Rhodes contingent?

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Four Princetonians Named Rhodes Scholars

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Last weekend, Nobel prizewinning economics professor Paul Krugman took part in a panel discussion on the jobs crisis that’s hit Newark and other New Jersey cities particularly hard. Whether you agree with his views on the economy or not, you have to admit he’s pretty good with metaphors. A few favorites from his talk:

  • On the financial crisis and mounting consumer debt: “It was our Wile E. Coyote moment. We were going along just fine until we looked down and realized we’d run off a cliff.”
  • On Occupy Wall Street: “The state of discussion was so surreal, the emperor had no clothes, yet no one was saying it. And then a fairly ragtag group started camping out in a few parks in major cities, and it’s like the country woke up.”
  • And then there was the whole business with aliens. After explaining that the surge in demand accompanying World War II is what finally ended the Great Depression, he suggested a modern-day equivalent – defense against an intergalactic invasion. Turns out, he’s kind of a fan of the belligerent extraterrestrials metaphor. According to this CNN interview, a massive buildup of outer space defenses could end the current crisis in as little as 18 months.

More on the jobs panel here.

Nov 15, 2011

IN PRINT: Krugman Weighs in on Jobs Crisis

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Remember when you visited Yale? The Gothic architecture (not as nice as here, of course) made you wonder if you hadn’t received your Hogwarts owl after all, just a few years late.

Except then you peeked beyond the iron gates, remembered you were in America’s fourth most dangerous city, and chose our quiet suburban idyll instead.

Based on Public Safety’s 2011 Annual Security Report, you probably made the right choice. Campus crime is the lowest it’s been in a decade, although forcible sexual offenses rose from 11 to 13, arsons went from 3 to 5 (if setting posters on fire counts as arson), and there was an aggravated sexual assault.

But if you want a closer look into the Orange Bubble’s seedy underbelly, skip the report and head straight for the daily crime log. That’s right, you can go to their website and see all the criminal activity reported on campus on this handy calendar, each and every day all the way back to 2006.

But since clicking on each individual day is kind of a pain (especially since literally nothing happened most days) we put together a map showing all 37 incidents reported for the month of September.

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View Princeton September Crime Map in a larger map

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CSI: Princeton

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open accessPrinceton University joined MIT and Harvard in adopting an open access policy for all scholarly publications.

At the most recent meeting of the Faculty of Princeton University, members voted unanimously to grant “The Trustees of Princeton University a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same.”

Translation?

Basically, professors are no longer allowed to give up all rights to their work when publishing, as some academic journals now require – especially in fields like English, history, and chemical engineering. Professors usually publish without expecting compensation, but journals still charge readers around $30 per article, as anyone who’s tried to do research off campus knows. The change would let the university make their work freely available.

While professors can request waivers to the policy if a publication refuses to budge, the faculty hopes that the policy will give them extra leverage to push to retain their rights. Professor Andrew Appel, a member of the committee studying open access, said the Provost is also planning to create a public repository for their work to make it more accessible.

So, why do you care?

It’s a win for the “information wants to be free” camp, but even if you’re not an open access advocate, you can still get excited about never again needing to pay for a Pequod version of any article by a Princeton faculty member.

Appel has the full report here.

Sep 28, 2011

Information Wants to be Free

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HESSLER_ENVIRO_200There are probably a lot of Princetonians who fall on the genius spectrum, but not all of them get official recognition, much less official recognition and a no-strings-attached $500,000 grant.

Then there’s Peter Hessler ’92, one of 22 MacArthur Fellows for 2011. Hessler is a long form journalist who drew on his experience as an English teacher and foreign correspondent in China in three books where he crafts “richly illuminating accounts of ordinary people in such rapidly changing societies as Reform Era China.”

He’s written about Peace Corps projects in Nepal, a Uighur money-trader seeking asylum in the US, the effects of China’s auto boom on industrial centers and nearly-abandoned villages … yeah, pretty much everything. So, what’s next for a genius writer with half a million dollars to burn? Hessler hopes to head for the Middle East in search of more stories – check out his interview for more.

Sep 20, 2011

Genius Jackpot

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Photo credit: cannondialelm.com

All of the eating clubs will be up and running for Lawnparties this weekend – all except Cannon Dial Elm Club, whose long-awaited return has been getting just a little longer since its first planned reopening in the spring of 2008.

But, slowly yet surely, Cannon is prepping for its revival (and praying it will be more Casino Royale than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). Graduate board chair Warren Crane ’62 said they are currently working on the ten residence rooms on the club’s fourth floor, and expect to finish all renovations this fall.

While the club has been getting a makeover, the graduate board has been pouring over applications from the first crop of prospective Cannonites (Cannonians? Cannoners?) and interviewing bicker committee candidates.

In characteristic Cannon fashion, it’s an ongoing process with an uncertain end date, but the 10-20 sophomores ultimately chosen will have the responsibility of selecting Cannon’s first class out of 189 applicants. If they hit the graduate board’s stated target of 110 members, Cannon’s acceptance rate would be between 60% and 65%, about even with Tower’s numbers from last spring. Only Cap & Gown was more selective.

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Cannon to Join Most Selective Clubs – If It Ever Opens

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