Well, that changed for a little while on Friday night, as the “Occupy the Highway” march came through our secluded glen, Washington Post reporter in tow, on their way down to D.C. They were met by erudite, thoughtful students who shared their divergent views on economic theory and philosophy with the protestors.

Just kidding.

The conflagration began after Princeton student Whitney Blodgett started to yell at the marchers as they passed by the bar. “We’re the 1 percent!” Blodgett yelled at them, laughing and making a thumbs up sign. “Get a job!” his friends yelled in chorus.

Alcohol. Freshmen. Pseudonyms. (The reporter was initially given the name “Whetney Brockton.”) Light jeering. Yup, those are all the elements I would want present for the lead anecdote about Princeton students’ views on the Occupy movement. Fortunately, the Post was able to get a different student viewpoint, too. What did this other student, incidentally also a freshman and, according to the Post, the only person to show up in support of the march, have to say about the general sentiment on campus?

“That’s what happens when you come to a campus of ibankers,” the student, who did not give her name, said. “Princeton students are benefitting from this system, so why would they protest?”

In the comments section of the blog post, one commenter mentioned that Blodgett reminded him of the preppy Harvard douchebag in Good Will Hunting. It’s my favorite scene in the movie — a rich, pretentious, ponytailed jerk trying to intellectually bully Ben Affleck, a southie kid who doesn’t belong in his Harvard bar, only to get his ass handed to him by Matt Damon and the fine Boston Public Library system. After Matt Damon proves conclusively that he’s smarter than this first year grad student, the only thing the blonde asshole can fall back on in his sorry self-defense is that he’s going to get a Harvard degree and make boatloads of money while Damon will be “serving my kids fries at a drive through on our way to a skiing trip.” (Damon gets the girl, by the way — how do you like them apples?)

The point is, Princeton students deserve better than to be represented by a caricature. It’s not the Post writer’s fault, of course — she was just reporting what she saw, which happened to be a near-perfect encapsulation of so many of the negative stereotypes levied against Princeton. What’s more, the tensions in the story gesture towards some real truths about Princeton. We aren’t a particularly politically active group of kids; the campus political bent is perhaps more conservative than our peers; a lot of us go into finance; and there hasn’t been the sort of public support for the Occupy movement that other schools have seen.

But those issues aren’t the reason why I cringe when I read the blog post. It’s how much “Brockton” resembles that Harvard kid, in all his smug superiority:

“The fact is, America is a society that values skill,” said Blodgett, after calming down. “If I was in their position and didn’t have a skill or job, I guess I’d do the same thing.”

Like his fictional Harvard counterpart, our impromptu spokesperson seems fluent in projecting his rosy future: the job he’ll have, the skills he’ll acquire, and the money he’ll make. But what makes our preppy douchebags different is that they don’t even pretend to be smarter than the people they disagree with; they just jump straight to the condescending entitlement. And it’s only one kid, or maybe a couple, if you count the chorus of “Get a job!”s being lobbed alongside his opinions. But when no one else seems to have much to say, it’s hard to ignore the yelling.

Oh Hey There New Coach Mitch Henderson '98 Driving to the Hoop On the Cover of and old PAW issue

We’re only a couple weeks away from the start of the basketball season, sports fans! With Doug Davis’ buzzer beater now firmly in the rearview mirror, what’s the year going to look like for the Princeton Tigers?

This season I’m going to be covering the Princeton basketball team for IvyHoopsOnline, and this week I take a look at what to expect from the upcoming edition of the men’s basketball team.

The short version? Harvard’s going to be tough to beat this year – they’re returning all their best players and add a pretty stellar class of freshman. But if Princeton can mesh quickly with the new coach (Mitch Henderson ‘98, former teammate of Sydney Johnson), and if a few of the part-timers and role players of last year, when given a chance, find a way to elevate their game, the team still has a shot to play David to Harvard’s Goliath.

Read the full season preview at IvyHoopsOnline.

The hot dog’s got a lot going for it. No really, it does. It’s portable. Wildly customizable (crazy Chicago with its celery salt and its pickle spears!). Unofficial sandwich of baseball and camping trips.

And it’s cheap. Like, really cheap. And, because Princeton eats can get real expensive real quick, the hot dog can be the perfect meal (or late night snack) hungry students looking to chow down on the cheap (and the success of the Free Food @ Princeton email list seems to suggest that there are plenty).

Now that we’ve spoken to the merits of this noble sausage-in-roll, where’s the best place to get your mitts on one of these bad boys in town? Our committee of one counts down his hot dog rankings, using the massively unscientific method of “thinking about times he’s eaten a hot dog and trying to recall a vague sense of the experience.” Are you as excited as we are? Then without further ado…

DEBATABLE: TOP DOG IN PRINCETON

4. Footlong Dog, Chuck’s Wings

There’s nothing wrong with the footlong at Chuck’s, per se. Basically griddled and stuffed into a normal sized bun, there’s something enjoyably cartoonish about this dog. But the wiener pales in comparison to the other offerings of this Spring St. eatery, and just doesn’t hold up to the competition. Seriously, if you’re going to Chuck’s, you’re there for the wings, or you took a wrong turn.

3. Standard Hot Dog, Studio 34

Mostly I just want to talk about Studio 34, the Platform 9 3/4 of the Princeton on-campus dining world. I have never been able to find Studio 34 in less than thirty minutes, or during daylight hours [Note: I recently discovered that this is because Studio 34 opens at 8 p.m.]. But come late night study sessions (or, you know, other reasons a Princeton student might be out and about after a certain hour), the Studio magically appears from somewhere deep within Butler College. The hot dog is standard – self-serve, cooked on the sort of rotating grills you find at convenience stores, slathered in ketchup and mustard, and eaten in the tinfoil wrapping the buns come in. This one’s all about the journey.

2. Wawa Hot Dog

You never expect too much, and it’s always a little bit better than you thought it was going to be. Plus, chopped onions.

1. Olives Hot Dog

The Olives hot dog is a thing of beauty. Toasted sub roll, a split frank on the griddle, and a world of condiments. Red onion’s nice. So’s hot sauce. Go nuts and toss in some tomatoes if that floats your boat. And it doesn’t cost a whole lot — more breakfast sandwich prices than not-breakfast sandwich prices. It’s a classy hot dog. Grab a seltzer in a glass bottle by the front door or something. Eat it in the courtyard by the library if its nice out, or wrangle a seat at one of the stools along the back wall if it isn’t. A change up? To be sure. But a worthwhile one.

Professor Charles Gross, San Quentin inmates, and a sheep brain!

1. MONKEYS!

Princeton is in trouble again for its treatment of primates in lab research; this time, the university was cited by the USDA for six violations, regarding the feeding and water schedule for the monkeys. New PU spokesman Martin Mbugua, asked about the violations, said, “Princeton’s approach to animal care is based on a commitment … to ensure that our facilities make use of established best practices. Only animals that are well cared for can provide beneficial scientific data and help achieve research goals and outcomes.”

2. POKER!

Matt Hawrilenko ‘04 is the subject of last week’s Trenton Times feature on poker players after the U.S. government crackdown on online poker. Hawrilenko, a wrestler and Woody Woo major, won an online satelite tournament to the World Series of Poker his senior year and has been playing ever since, eventually leaving his job at the trading firm SIG to play poker full time, making millions in the process. Here’s what he had to say about the shutdown of the online site:

“What is particularly grating to poker players is that over and over again, you see anti-internet gaming legislation as a provision in legislation designed to legalize brick-and-mortar gaming. A bill like this has been rejected twice in the last two years in my home state of Massachusetts,” he said.

“It just feels like a particularly hypocritical double standard,” he said.

3. PRISON!

NPR did a feature last week about a program in San Quentin prison in California that allows inmates to go to college, and who should get the dashing pictorial at the top of the online version of the story but Princeton’s own Neuroscience professor Charles Gross! The twist? A quick Google search reveals that some of the professor’s most impactful research came through his study of … wait for it … monkey brains! Which brings our Week in Review full circle!

Until next week …

To: “Lindy Li” lindyli@Princeton.EDU, dpuglies@princeton.edu, jmonagle@princeton.edu

Sent: Sun 24/04/11 12:28 PM

Subject: Fwd: Re: We need a secretary

Secretary Application: ************ 2012

Race: Caucasian

Gender: Male

Here are the questions that we would like you to answer:

1)  Why do you want to get involved in class government?

As a very outgoing and politically involved individual, I have found that my medium of choice, commenting on PrincetonFML and Daily Princetonian articles, can no longer give me the breadth of reach my visionary voice requires. Class government and its mass-email opportunities present a unique opportunity to let everyone know what witty commentary I have to say. Whether it is a simple yet timeless outpouring of “LOLZ” or the more sarcastic and biting “LAWLZ,” the people deserve to know my trifling opinions on the inconsequential news and gossip of Princeton life.

I hope through the extended mass emailing privileges of class government to instigate even more contention between class officers and the incompetent body known as the USG. Dominic Pugliese has done an excellent opening shot, but I believe the vitriol needs to go even further. Why stop at mere pronouncements of the USG’s ineptitude? Personal attacks on members have always proven effective – merely look at the current political climate! Outright lying is the norm of modern American politics – who cares if Yaroshefsky isn’t actually the love child of a midget and a capybara? If you tell it to the masses, some will believe, regardless of any “fact checking” or “correcting” that occurs after it has been said. You may even apologize for wrongfully accusing him of embezzling USG funds to invest in his chain of wee-man designer outfits, but the question will remain “Where did he get the money to design all of those tiny people suits?”

2)  Why are you interested in the secretarial position specifically? (”It’s the only open position in the senior class government” is a perfectly reasonable answer.)

I have always considered myself a natural candidate for the secretary position. While I firmly believe that occupations are very much gender oriented and that a secretary is as female a role as nurse or sandwich artisan, I understand that the modern progressive times call for new ways of looking at the world. With this in mind, I would propose referring to me instead as the “2012 Chief of Notetaking and Logistics.” Adding “Chief” to any position of course denotes the masculinity and power appropriate to the position. The name change would entail the creation of an underbody to serve said Chief of Notetaking and Logistics, specifically several aids and a woman to act as my secretary.

More original ideas, including a push to change Dean Dunne’s name to “Count Chocula,” after the jump!

3)  What ideas do you have for how class government can make our senior year unforgettable?

• Build a giant straw man effigy of Dean Malkiel on Poe Field. Place Dean Malkiel inside and burn said straw man to the ground in a sacrifice to the GPA Gods, so that we might be blessed with our pre-grade deflation GPAs.
• Reinstate the nude olympics. And by “nude” I mean naked and covered in fluffer nutter and by “olympics” I mean a tribalistic orgy of trance-inducing chanting charged with a shamanistic flow of hallucinogen-fueled energy, taking place in Tilghman’s office.
• Rename Nassau Hall to “The Official Residence of Sir Elton John” and have Benny and the Jets playing on repeat throughout the building
• Rename Dean Dunne to “Count Chocula”
• Abolish the USG and in its place have the students elect a series of intelligent animals – dolphins, monkeys, talking parrots, owls, etc, based on a series of panels and debates held in Frist.
• Hot tub study breaks, open to the entire Princeton Community
• Host a panel with Christopher Stalken and the P-Wanker titled “Masturbating Under your Window: An Open Q&A with Figures of Princeton Infamy sponsored by the Anscombe Society and LGBT Center”

Here are the questions that Nick Pugliese, our vice president, would like you to answer:

4)  The Class of 2012 has $100,000 remaining at the end of senior year and we can do whatever we want with it.  What would you do?

Buy $100,000 worth of puppies and set them loose throughout campus on Dean’s Date.

5)  At the last moment, our commencement speaker falls ill and can longer come. As luck would have it, both Will Ferrell and Janet Reno happen to be on campus. Who do you ask and why?*

I know what answer Nick wants, but I refuse to say Will Ferrell dressed as Janet Reno. Rather, I would ask Will Ferrell to host a game of Celebrity Jeopardy and invite Janet Reno, Cornel West, and Shirley Tilghman as Sean Connery to play as the contestants.

Sydney Johnson, in simpler times

I hate Lane Kiffin.

I disliked him at Tennessee, but ever since he jumped ship after a year of SEC football and left for the greener pastures of USC and the PAC-10, I’ve loathed Lane Kiffin. To me, he symbolizes everything that’s wrong with coaches in NCAA sports — phony smiles, good haircuts, no loyalty, and a devotion to winning only as an end to their own means.

So, why am I talking about Lane Kiffin? Just to make it clear that Sydney Johnson is no Lane Kiffin.

Because after a week+ now of having the Tiger sports fan inside me curled up in the fetal position, mourning the loss of our men’s basketball coach, I think it’s starting to all make sense. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think I would have done the exact same thing. Is this the sports fan equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome? Entirely possible! But hear me out anyways.

The Princeton Ceiling

What was Sydney Johnson’s ceiling at Princeton?

Pretty much exactly what he accomplished last year.

Winning the Ivy League tournament, and keeping the first round game respectable in the NCAA tournament, is about as well as Johnson could ever hope for one of his teams to do. Maybe if he stuck around another few decades, he might be lucky enough to have a team upset a higher seed in the first round, like his ‘96 Tigers did so memorably against UCLA.

But he’ll never compete for a national title. And he’ll probably never even make a run like Cornell did, which was built on the backs of 7 foot tall transfer students from big name programs.

He had almost no shot of becoming the greatest Princeton coach of all time; that honor belongs to Hall of Famer Pete Carril*, who coached from ‘67-’96. He could have been great, but not the greatest. Sydney Johnson was the hometown hero who came back and took his basketball team to the tournament. And we couldn’t ask much more of him, because Princeton isn’t designed to give much more.

The Argument for Leaving

If Sydney Johnson was intent on leaving Princeton at some point, then this was his year.

Kareem Maddox and Dan Mavraides are graduating. We’ve still got talent, to be sure, but after winning the Ivy League by the slimmest of margins this year, it’ll be hard to repeat as Ivy League champions.

Without the benefit of athletic scholarships, transfers, and other recruiting tools, Johnson had to hope to capture lightning in a bottle once with his team and parlay that into a better offer.

This was that lightning-in-a-bottle year. And so Johnson cashed in.

A lot of the confusion and hurt of Princeton fans has been Johnson’s choice of Fairfield. If he was leaving for UNC, or Kansas, or another storied program, then we’d be ok with it. But FAIRFIELD?

Well, Fairfield has a few things going for it. First, and somewhat importantly, he’ll make more money, maybe a lot more (hard to find exact figures, but the common wisdom of the internet seems to think he’ll be going from the neighborhood of 200k to more like 600k). More importantly, FAIRFIELD ISN’T PRINCETON. Johnson will have the opportunity to recruit with scholarships, aggressively pursue transfer students, and do all the sorts of things he couldn’t do at Princeton. He’ll have the chance to build a real program, compete in a small conference Fairfield already dominates, and make some runs in the tournament.

And then he’ll leave Fairfield for a major conference school.

If Johnson’s goal was not to be the Princeton coach for the rest of his life, then it makes sense that his goal would be to raise himself to be part of the conversation of other great coaches — to compete for, and possibly win, a national title. He was the youngest coach in the Ivy League when he started coaching Princeton in 2007; he’s still well on pace to be the coach at a serious program by the time he’s 40.

The old coach of Fairfield left for Providence and a shot to compete in the Big East.** If I were Sydney, I’d want to go somewhere where I had a real chance to win it all, too.

But that’s why I don’t hate Sydney Johnson, and why I wish him the best. He gave us what he could. I believe his tears were genuine. And now it’s time for him to become a legendary coach somewhere, down the line. It’ll happen. Just you wait.

*An earlier version of this blog post misspelled former Princeton coach Pete Carril’s name, rather egregiously. Thanks to commenter Hank Moody for the heads up.

**An earlier version of this blog post erroneously suggested that Providence is in the Atlantic 10. It’s not; it’s part of the Big East. The author was probably thinking of Xavier, which he frequently confuses with Providence. This is even more embarrasing because the author’s uncle is a proud Providence College alum. Thanks to eagle-eyed commenter ’05 for the tip.

Randall Munroe, creator of xkcd, will be giving a public lecture Monday, April 11, at 8 p.m. in New Frick (full details here). And to prove Mr. Munroe has some insight into the world of higher education and standardized tests, here are some classic xkcd comics:

My new favorite Princeton basketball image

Now that you’ve watched Doug Davis’ shot from a dozen different angles (instruct me in the Douglas!) and contemplated the cool name of Ian Hummer ‘13 (objective view: fairly cool, but nothing to write home about), it’s time to get serious. NIT? Thanks, but no thanks. CBI? Don’t call us, we’ll call you. We’re talking the Big Dance, ladies and gentlemen. Or rather, the Big Dances. We’re less than 24 hours from tip-off, and the Tigers have not one but TWO teams in the NCAA tournament. We’re breaking down what to watch for, what to expect, and how to savor the sweet, sweet runs of the twin Tiger squads.

Princeton Women’s Basketball

2010-2011 Rec0rd: 24-2

Seed: #12

First Round Game: #5 Georgetown, College Park, MD @ 2:50 p.m. on Sunday

Broadcast: ESPN2 or ESPN3 Simulcast

Yeah yeah, it’s the men and their late season heroics that are getting all the attention, and the SportsCenter Top Tens, etc., etc. But we’re starting with the Lady Tigers because this tournament trip for them is about more than just beating Harvard — it’s about a chance to make a real run and maybe even win a game or two.

This is the second straight year the women have won the Ivy League and earned themselves an NCAA tournament bid, which is pretty remarkable when you consider that they had never been to the tournament before last year. But to make the jump from “great Ivy League team” to just “great team,” period, the women need to prove themselves against five seed Georgetown, playing in what essentially is a home game in Baltimore, just a bit north of their D.C. stomping grounds. And they’ll have to do it without Niveen Rasheed ‘13, who Princeton lost for the season after an ACL injury in December. Still, head coach Courtney Banghart (another cool name!) seemed cool and confident in an interview with The Trentonian: “We are in it to win the game.” The long-term chances might not be great for the women (they’re in the same region as #1 UConn…), but any win would be huge. Go get ‘em!

Princeton Men’s Basketball

2010-2011 Rec0rd: 25-6

Seed: #13

First Round Game: #4 Kentucky, Tampa, FL @ 2:45 p.m. on Thursday

Broadcast: CBS

No matter how the tournament works out, the 2010-2011 season will always be remembered for the Pump ‘n’ Jump that sent the Tigers to the Tourney. The men’s team hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2004. And they face some steep opposition in four seed Kentucky. But harken to the wisdom of Kareem Maddox ‘11, Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year and personal folk hero, speaking on the Tigers’ matchup against the Wildcats: “We’ll be the wildest cats there.” And remember: the last time Princeton was a 13 seed was 1996, when the Tigers — including a sprightly Sydney Johnson, now the coach of the men’s team — stunned #4 UCLA, the defending champions. So don’t lose hope! After all, we’ve got TigerBlood.

And the good news for the Tigers? Well, according to the folks running the Payscale.com bracket, of all the schools in the tournament, Princeton wins when it comes to potential earning after college, defeating Georgetown in the final, $102,000 to $94,900. So, at the risk of pushing the douche-o-meter all the way up to 11, at least we’ve got that going for us.

Savor your victory while you can, Harvard. We're coming for you Saturday.

Classic Ivy League sports debate that no one actually plans on answering: Who is Princeton’s rival?

Some Tiger fans cling firmly to the geographical convenience of the supposed Penn-Princeton rivalry. Back in 2006, a columnist from the Daily Pennsylvanian noted that the rival stems almost exclusively from the two schools’ dominance of Ivy League basketball. But this year, Penn was just an obstacle standing in the way of the Tigers’ Ivy League run — the men beat the Quakers handily to force the one-game playoff against Harvard, and the women (who continue their ridiculously dominant streak, stretching all the way back to last season) absolutely trounced Penn in their final game of the regular season, 78-27 (no, that’s not a typo; it’s a 51 point win).

Aspirational sports fans, meanwhile, will tell you our rivals are Harvard and Yale, although neither school seems particularly interested in us. In a recent Deadspin article , a Harvard fan complained about choice of Yale as a “neutral site,” noting, “How is Harvard having to play at their fiercest rival’s court, where “neutral” fans that show up will automatically root against Harvard?” (Fair point, although the obvious counter would seem to be, everyone hates Harvard, so no where outside of Cambridge could ever be “neutral”.)

But this winter season, the games where we had the most to lose, and the contests we really cared about winning, were against Crimson athletes. And (here’s the shift), it seemed like this season, Harvard cared about us, too.

First and most obviously, there’s the ubiquitous Harvard-Princeton basketball game this Saturday. The New York Times wrote a big feature on the Harvard team last week. The guys on PTI debated the merits of the Ivy League hoopsters. Catherine Ettman has been frantically emailing the student body with information on how to get tickets. This. Is. A. Big. Deal.

But the basketball season has been less a question of historic rivalries and more a matter of who has the top two teams in the league this year. Harvard’s Keith Wright won Ivy League player of the year; Princeton’s Kareem Maddox won Defensive Player of the Year. Both were unanimous first team all-Ivy League; two more Tigers, Dan Mavraides and Ian Hummer, were named to the second team.

Simply put, these are the two best teams in the league — if Dartmouth happened to be really good this year, we’d be talking about potential Princeton-Dartmouth rivalries. Yeah, it’s a little sweeter to get the win over Harvard. But at the end of the day, winning the League and going to the Big Dance is sweeter than beating whomever you had to in order to get there.

No; the real rivalry against Harvard this season was not on the court but rather in the pool. Princeton swimming and diving, the two-time defending Ivy League champions, lost to Harvard earlier this year in the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton tournament. The same day the men’s basketball team lost at Harvard, the men’s swimming team was at the Harvard pool competing for the Ivy League tournament and looking for a little revenge. They won the meet by 5.5 points, a ridiculously tiny margin (for reference, Princeton had 1400 points and Harvard had 1394.5 — a different finish in any of the races could have been enough to turn the tables).

Unlike basketball, where Harvard’s rise is a change from recent years, Ivy League swimming has been dominated in recent memory by these two squads. Harvard and Princeton don’t just care about winning — they care about beating the other team.

But swimming is the rare true rivalry against Harvard. And at the end of the day, does anyone care if Princeton lacks an official, agreed upon rival? We keep competing for Ivy League titles, and keep having to beat the best each year to do it. This year it’s Harvard that’s standing in our way. Next year maybe it’ll be someone different. As long as we’re in the mix for the title, I won’t care who we’re playing.

High school students next year will be able to apply “single-choice early action.” The application is non-binding — if accepted, the student has until the end of the regular admissions process to decide — but students who apply early to Princeton cannot apply early anywhere else.

“In eliminating our early program four years ago, we hoped other colleges and universities would do the same and they haven’t,” said President Shirley Tilghman in an article posted on the Princeton homepage. ”By reinstating an early program, we hope we can achieve two goals: provide opportunities for early application for students who know that Princeton is their first choice, while at the same time sustaining and even enhancing the progress we have made in recent years in diversifying our applicant pool and admitting the strongest possible class.”

Harvard, the other school to eliminate its early admissions program in 2006, also announced today that it would reinstate its early admission program for next year.

Details to follow…