Articles filed under “In Print”

“In Print”
is a running roster of published articles written by Press Club members that are available online

Zhan Okuda-Lim is only a college sophomore, but already he’s spearheaded an education reform campaign in his home state of Nevada and won a position in Princeton University’s student government.

But while his classmates may consider him a charismatic student leader, few knew that last spring he contemplated taking his own life — at least until now.

Okuda-Lim is one of 86 Princeton University students participating in the “What I Be” project, in which individuals are photographed with their insecurities literally written onto their skin. Photographer Steve Rosenfield, who has taken his project around the country, was invited to come to Princeton to kick off the university’s Mental Health Week.

“We all want to tell our story, we’re just afraid to do it, and other people do it for us.

That’s where bullying comes in and gossiping comes in,” Rosenfield said during a talk at the university last week. “The ‘What I Be’ project allows other people to tell their story and paint the picture they want to have associated with them.”

Read the full story atThe Times of Trenton.

 

(Disclaimer: As much as I wish I was working for NPR, the audio piece is actually for an audio journalism class and is in no way affiliated with NPR.)

Tilghman bestows the Golden Broomstick to current seniors in days of yore. Ah, to be a freshman again! (Photo credit: Taylor Mallory, 2009).

Minutes after receiving President Tilghman’s email announcing her plans to retire as president, students took to Facebook and Twitter: “Say it ain’t so, Shirls!” wrote one. “But Shirley … NO!” And a contrary view: “This will be known in our history as the end of the Dark Ages, the conclusion of the War on Fun, and the beginning of the Frataissance.”

With her administration’s hard line on grade deflation, the freshman ban on rushing Greek organizations, and policies affecting the eating clubs, Tilghman made her share of controversial decisions. Through it all, her dedication to students, along with a college-friendly sense of humor — will anyone forget how she one-upped Steve Carell during Class Day in June with a “that’s what she said” joke? — have made her an indelible part of the Princeton experience.

Click here to read the full Press Club article about student responses to President Tilghman’s retirement in the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Stacy Schiff spoke about her most recent book, Cleopatra: A Life, last Wednesday. The biography was a New York Times Book Review’s “Top 10 Books of the Year,” one of Time Magazine’s “Top Nonfiction Books” and one of The New Yorker’s “2010 Favorites.”

“As subjects go, they really don’t get much bigger than Cleopatra. She’s part of that exclusive club of historical figures whose names we all recognize but about whom we know virtually nothing,” Schiff explained. “What we do know about her is twisted beyond all recognition.”

Read more at The Princeton Packet.

10821832-standardThe orange and blue tent itself is not that unusual. Made of all-weather canvas and measuring 20 feet in diameter, its geodesic design makes it one of the strongest tents on the market. Scattered around the door flap are sandals and sneakers, assorted metal cooking utensils, tree branches and flannel shirts.

The setup wouldn’t be out of place at a campground or an outdoor music festival. But on the Princeton University campus?

Take a closer look.

Nine undergraduate students, led by guest artist Fritz Haeg and Princeton professor Dan Wood, have temporarily colonized and domesticated a part of the New South Lawn on campus. Calling themselves the “Student Colony,” the group is conducting an outdoor class that is equal parts art, architecture and ecological studies.

Read more at The Trenton Times.

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.

Consider a device the size of a grain of salt that can process information a billion times faster than the human brain. Inspired by animal nervous systems, the “photonic neuron” uses light instead of electrochemical impulses to process information at lightning-quick speeds.

And in the lab of electrical engineering professor Paul Prucnal, it’s becoming a reality. “It’s a way of encoding more information and processing it more quickly,” Prucnal said.

Alex Tait ’12, one of the lab’s summer interns, has contributed a device that acts as the decision-making part of the neuron. It’s called the double ring enhanced asymmetric Mach-Zehnder interferometer. (Thankfully, it makes an easy acronym: They call it the DREAM device.)

But more on that later. Before there was a DREAM, there were meetings — and the occasional free pizza.

Read more at the Princeton Alumni Weekly.

oct3yawnIt’s getting to be that time of the year when classes are finally in full swing, first papers are due, and hours spent in bed are slowly trickling away. If the readjustment to the grind is taking its toll and you’re getting grilled for yawning during that 50-minute lecture, Andrew Gallup, a researcher in Princeton’s EEB department, has a new explanation you can try on your professor.

In a study published earlier this month in Frontiers of Evolutionary Neuroscience, Gallup found that that the purpose of a yawn is to cool the brain. People were shown to be more likely to yawn in winter than summer, and Gallup thinks this might be because an overheated brain gets no relief from taking in warmer air.

Gallup said having an overheated brain could cause feelings of drowsiness, explaining why we also yawn when we are sleepy.

“When you are warmer you are more likely to feel tired. At night when you are about to sleep your body temperature is at its highest point of the day,” he said.

Check out more about the study at the Times of Trenton.

“Wait, we have our own student-run radio station?”  Lindsey-Paige McCloy ’12 gets that question a lot.

The answer? Actually, yeah, we do. Tune your radio dial (if you still own one) to WPRB (103.3 FM) and you may hear that guy in your precept reading the local headlines.

WPRB began broadcasting over 60 years ago from the radiator pipes in this guy‘s dorm room in Holder. Now their multi-room station is located in the basement of Bloomberg, equipped with turntables, LP archives, and a broadcast center. This unique operation is completely student-run and not affiliated with the University, with McCloy as their station manager and James Corran ’13 as the program director.

With music, news, sports, and DJs from on and off-campus, WPRB’s broadcasts can be heard from New York to Philadelphia.

Check out a UPC original behind-the-scenes look at their studio:

Read more about WPRB at AllPrinceton.com.

Xufan Zhang, Eddy Ferreira, Arman Suleimenov, and Bohua Zhan on the way to a 2nd-place finish

Xufan Zhang, Eddy Ferreira, Arman Suleimenov, and Bohua Zhan on the way to a 2nd-place finish

Princeton stole the show at the first-ever New York Google Games last Saturday, which brought 175 students hailing from Columbia, NYU, Stony Brook, Rutgers, Princeton to Google’s NYC headquarters for some head-to-head competition.

It was sort of like a heptathlon, but not one any track fans out there would recognize. Teams vied to be the first to finish challenges like geek trivia, a word association game, coding challenge, and gaming blitz.

Michael Sobin, Alex Ogier, Jeff Hodes, Adam Hesterberg, and Frank Xiao took first  place, crushing Carnegie Mellon’s former speed record while completing an extra puzzle along the way. Hesterberg won the individual title as well, scoring a new tablet in addition to the Android phones each team member received.

Another Tiger team – Xufan Zhang, Eddy Ferreira, Arman Suleimenov and Bohua Zhan, Edward Zhang – took second place, while Columbia ruined a would-be Princeton sweep.

Continue reading…

The second most important lineup this spring (after Lawnparties!) is finally out. Brooke Shields will be the Class of 2011′s Class Day speaker, as announced today. New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg will speak at Baccalaureate on May 29.

Shields, a member of the Class of 1987, is one of Princeton’s most famous alumni, and is known for her starring roles in movies like “The Blue Lagoon” and “Pretty Baby.” This picture is of Shields at her own graduation, where she was escorted by a bodyguard, and surrounded by classmates wearing buttons that said, “Yes, I went to Princeton. No, I never met her.”

Read more at the Star-Ledger.

Princeton University sophomore Ben Levenson still has two years before he gets his degree. But he knows what is waiting after graduation: $50,000 of debt.

Levenson, who wants to be a teacher, said his parents told him he will be responsible for the $50,000 in loans he estimates he will need to cover tuition and expenses at the Ivy League school.

“It’s kind of imprisoning when I think about it,” said Levenson, 20, of Morristown. “I don’t have any money, and I owe money to someone.”

For a growing number of New Jersey students, graduating from a four-year college means accumulating tens of thousands of dollars of debt, according to a Star-Ledger survey of nearly two dozen local campuses.

Read more at The Star-Ledger.