How will the changing landscape of journalism affect this year’s election coverage? How do you stay one step ahead November’s non-stop political news cycle? Mike Allen, chief political reporter for Politico, author of the daily “Playbook,” and “The Man the White House Wakes Up To” will be coming to campus to discuss political reporting in the age of new media in light of the upcoming election. Come discuss politics, journalism, and the daily e-mail that runs Washington D.C. This event is free and open to the public, and is sponsored by the University Press Club as part of the annual Louis Rukeyser ’54 Memorial Lecture Series.
Dates and times:
Rukeyser lecture: 10/2 at 5:30 in McCormick 101
Open houses: 10/2 and 10/4 at 4:30 in Frist 205
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.
You’ve all probably heard the news by now: President Tilghman will be leaving us at the end of the year, ending her 12-year term as Princeton’s first female president. Her announcement yesterday caused a media frenzy and a slew of related commentary. For a visual reflection of this response and of President Tilghman’s legacy, check out this wordle, based on the first two pages of hits for a Google search of “Shirley Tilghman”:
What did you do this summer? I spent a good part of the summer with my family in France, Switzerland, and Prague. We took a long overdue vacation.
What do you think are the most pressing policy issues, domestic and international, that we need to work on? I believe that ensuring public institutions (of all kinds) are structured adequately for our changing population and the increasingly global economy is key, especially as we continue recovering from the Great Recession. I’m thinking of not only of reform of our entitlement programs and provision of education and health care, but also of the various policies in place that affect the business environment.
Who’s your favorite Princetonian, living or dead, real or fictional? There are too many wonderful Princetonians to choose from.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in Princeton? My husband’s chicken with black beans and rice.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day? At the moment, as dean I’m spending a lot of time listening.
What is your greatest guilty pleasure?
Watching bad movies.
What is the one thing you want to change the most about Princeton/WWS?
More places to go for lunch and dinner.
In case you missed the last 5,000 emails about the football tailgate at Frist (um since when does a tailgate include an inflatable obstacle course?), the Princeton vs. Georgetown game was yesterday evening. Here are two videos from the halftime show (because we’re not so into the actual football part either).
Yes, the band did just make fun of Mitt Romney. I think they’re in the formation of a stick figure man. Hangman anyone?
And, of course, no halftime show is complete without “Call Me Maybe”:
You’ve definitely heard her piano, but probably not her voice. (For the record, she has a cool German-British-Chinese accent.) UPC sits down with the Frist piano player again, but this time it’s a girl—Sophie Zhang, a post-year grad student in physics who interrupts your studies plays in Frist every day:
Why do you play at Frist?
Not many people can hear you, or at least they’re not paying attention, so it’s a good place to practice or do anything.
But doesn’t it take a lot of guts to play in one of the most popular places on campus?
Not really. Piano is something I’m comfortable playing in front of a lot of people.
What are your favorite pieces to play at Frist? Do you change up your repertoire according to your mood?
I don’t know that many pieces so it’s the same thing every day.
If you could play anywhere in the world, where would you play?
If I were really good, I’d say something like Carnegie Hall, but I don’t really care. I like Frist because it’s nice playing in front of people, even if they aren’t really listening. Also, you’re taking a lot of notes.
I know, I’m a journalist. Anyway, how do you respond to all the criticisms about “the annoying Frist piano player”?
Really? I’ve never heard anything.
During Dean’s Date, especially, people studying in Frist will complain about it or post something on PrincetonFML… in a joking manner, of course.
Well, Frist isn’t a particularly quiet space, so A) if no one is playing the piano themselves, they wouldn’t mind me taking up the space and B) I’m—hopefully—not really bad and creating excruciating pain to everyone around me.
Welcome back to the land of the Weather Machine! Good thing the Machine was working, since it’s the last of the great outdoors many of us will get to enjoy once classes start and we start holing up in the depths of Firestone. And what a perfect day for the sixth annual Campus Rec Quidditch Tournament between the residential colleges.
The final match was between Butler and Mathey, and ended when both teams made sprints for Cat Lambert ’15, a rugby player acting as the golden snitch. Sara Ronde ’16, a track runner in Mathey, chased Lambert around Alexander Hall and finally caught her, leading Mathey to victory. “I didn’t even know what the seeker was and they were just like, ‘Run!’ and I said, ‘I can do that.’”
Following the capture of the snitch, the Golden Broom was formally passed from Whitman College, last year’s champion, to the Mathey team.
Spencer Caton ’14, Ronde’s RCA, couldn’t have been prouder. “She’s got great things ahead of her,” he predicted. “You grow up watching Quidditch on TV and you try and practice…This match was where practice meets dedication and dedication meets mastery. All together, that makes the Golden Broom.”
“It looks funny to be running around with a pool noodle between your legs,” admitted Matt Frawley, Director of Student Life for Mathey and also the coordinator of the frosh-week Quidditch match. But the games are “a lot of fun” and are great for building college loyalty and for having some good, silly fun before classes begin. While admittedly happy that Mathey came out as the champions, Frawley is still looking for Wilson College to take home the Golden Broom–Wilson is the only college without a title, and he’ll root for them next year so long as they’re not facing Mathey in the finals.
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.
This week has been a big one for Tiger athletes, least of all because of some impostor-Princeton rowers hitting the boats at Lake Carnegie. The much-anticipated Ralph Lauren fall collection photoshoot, which took place on campus in early May, is finally online, so if you’re missing the Dinky or Blair Arch or the courtyard outside the U-Store, just play it on repeat. (We’d also like to let all nervous 2016ers know that real Princeton students are much happier than the models pretending to be Princeton students).
But the Ralph Lauren rowers have nothing on our real Tiger rowers, who have brought in a medal of each color in the past week. Caroline Lind ’06 helped the US women’s eight win their second Olympic gold in a row on August 2, and Andreanne Morin ’06 and Lauren Wilkinson ’11 brought home silver medals for Canada in the same race. The women’s eight gave Princeton its first medalists of the London Olympics. On August 4, Glenn Ochal ’08 and the US men’s four came away with bronze.
Sorry ’16ers, as much as we tried (and boy did we try: liveblog transcript of evidence here), none of you will be able to join a sorority or fraternity this year. As I have no doubt the administration has already alerted you, a full-fledged freshman Greek ban was instated this spring, prohibiting the rush of, and enrollment in Greek organizations during a student’s first year on campus.
Rather, this post is concerned with a considerably more ancient Greek tradition: the quadrennial summer Olympic Games, in which the representation of this notable collegiate institution has not let you down.
"草泥马挡中央": Ai Weiwei's self-portrait holding the stuffed animal to cover his crotch is one in a series of photographs that has brought allegations of "distributing pornography" on to the artist by the Chinese government.
It seems that they Woody Woo building itself won’t be the only marvel in the area this fall, as the university has announced that Scudder Plaza (just in-front of Woody Woo—had anyone heard this name before?) will play host to an installation from the acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads” consists of 12 “monumental sculptures” (approx. 10 feet high) which have toured the world; now, they’ll remain by Woody Woo for a calendar year (beginning August 1, 2012). The location is fitting: Weiwei is well known for his role as a social activist and his commitment to free speech.
Switching gears to athletics: our Princetonian-Olympian superhumans keep popping up in these WiRs, and rightfully so. To give you a quick update on Donn Cabral ’12, the London-bound steeplechase star has been setting personal bests heading into his stay at the USA training camp, shaving over 5 seconds off his 3k and over 3 seconds off his 1.5k. Make sure you stay updated through his fan page!
The reason we are using this potentially controversial meme is to pique your interest in an upcoming post by VC '14, re: yellow fever, Asians, etc. Yeah, STAY TUNED! Also, browsing the Princeton memes site actually makes us really homesick for campus. Aww. Also this comment is fiendishly long. I apologize.
First up, shout out to our incoming freshmen! Princeton 2016 is getting all worked up this week – with good reason, since they’ve received both their res college assignments and chance to flip through the fall frosh seminars catalogue. It includes the classic free trip (!) seminars with promises of fall breaks in Costa Rica or Cyprus – but also a range of gems like “Bad A$$ Asians” (the namesake of this Ink post), a Joyce Carol Oates fanfest, and the chance to literally spend $50,000, as long as it’s philanthropic and approved by Stan Katz. Protip: pay attention to the prof teaching your seminar, not just to the topic. Like, Nancy Malkiel’s “Coeducation” course sounds great, but incoming GPA-sensitive, grade-deflation-fearing premeds might want to do a little background check first…
In any case, we remember those overexcited, over-sharing-on-Facebook days. (Upperclassmen, bored at your internships? Go back and look at the posts your friends made in your class FB groups when you were prefrosh. GUARANTEED LAUGHS.) We think it’s cute! And we welcome you in all your enthusiastic, over-enrolled glory! Case in point, see The Princeton Tiger’s thoughtful suggestions for where to put all the extra frosh:
10. Re-purpose unused Firestone carrels
9. Quad
8. Build a Forbes Annex Annex
7. During Frosh Week, erect large fences around Cloister’s backyard
6. Charter boat, discover new continent
5. All CA groups now focused on building housing for themselves
4. Make OA year-round, Princeton-based
3. Lift the ban on the steam tunnels
2. Rutgers
1. University of Princeton® online
No really though, UPC loves frosh and wants you all to apply for journalistic futures with us. Check out our res college reviews, written last year but very much valid for your incoming lives. Of course you may be placed into what we used to know as Wilcox’s yoga studio and art room, or a Whitman study room, but whatever. Princeton is Princeton and you’ll love it.
Teaser! Click through for the full comic.
Jumping straight from pre- to post-Princeton, our endowment also made headlines this week with the announcement that Aspire, STilghz’ 5-year fundraising campaign, exceeded its $1.75 billion goal by raising $1.88 billion, the highest in Princeton history. Meanwhile, our 2011-12 Annual Giving campaign also broke Ol’ Nassau records by raising $57.2 million. Bad A$$ (more like, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$) indeed.
We leave you with two pieces of Princeton Internet Gold. From a still-undergraduate perspective, we love and identify with this comic from Willa Chen ’13. It was crafted in response to this much-forwarded article on elite education by William Deresiewicz. Agree? Disagree? Comment! Go!
And last, it’s good to see that our former USG president CDY and his Nassoon/Amazing Race BFF Jonathan Schwartz, both favorites of UPC coverage, are still alive and well and contributing great things to society:
This week: the birth of our nation and the validation of our physics. And a couple things of lesser gravity, too, like this picture of John Nash and Tina Fey chatting on Cannon Green.
Still unclear as to why our favorite game theorist is on the set -- could be a nice cameo, though. (image courtesy of the University's Facebook account)
Name: Cecilia Elena Rouse
