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By David Marcus ’92

Chris Bates was clear in early February about the challenges facing the Princeton men’s lacrosse team. The offense, which was very good last year, would have to be even better, the head coach said, because the squad had to replace a starting defensive unit that allowed a paltry 7.25 goals a game; there was bound to be a drop-off. There has been. Excluding a 15-2 win over Manhattan College on March 12, the Tigers have given up an average of 10 goals a game, putting them in the middle of the Division-I pack. But they’ve scored an average of 12.5 goals a game, up from 11.2 last year and tied for ninth in the country. Thanks in large part to that performance, Princeton enters Saturday’s game against Syracuse with a 6-2 record and a solid chance to defend its Ivy League title and return to the NCAA Tournament.

Princeton and Syracuse have played some of the sport’s most memorable games since they met at Philadelphia’s Franklin Field in the 1992 national championship, a game that the Tigers won 10-9 in double overtime. Ten of their contests have come in the NCAA playoffs, and this year’s regular-season game could have similar importance when the tournament selection committee meets the first weekend in May, since both teams have solid but not overwhelming résumés. Syracuse, also 6-2, has beaten Johns Hopkins and Virginia but lost to Albany and Villanova. Princeton has lost by a goal to North Carolina and Penn and defeated Johns Hopkins, Hofstra, and Yale.

“The Syracuse game offers a great opportunity to get a good win against a traditional rival,” said Bates, who added that the game’s playoff implications “puts pressure on both teams given where we were. It’ll have an air of a big-time game.” The teams are evenly matched, though Syracuse has more depth than Princeton, which in turn has done much better at facing off. The Orangemen have won only 42 percent of their faceoffs this year, while Princeton’s Justin Murphy ’16 is winning 57 percent of his draws, which means more possessions for a potent Tiger offense.

For two years, Tom Schreiber ’14 has been Princeton’s best player on that side of the ball, and he is again in 2013. A first-team All-American midfielder last year, he has 17 goals and 16 assists despite being the focus of every opposing team’s game plan. Schreiber leads the offense, but he hasn’t carried it. Jeff Froccaro ’13 has 20 goals, including four each in a 15-8 win over Brown on March 30 and a 16-15 loss at North Carolina on March 9. His brother, midfielder Jake Froccaro ’16, runs on the first midfield with Schreiber and Kip Orban ’15 and has acquitted himself well with 11 goals. Jake is part of a strong freshman class that includes four starters, among them attackman Ryan Ambler ’16, who is second on the team in assists with 12.

Eamon Carrig '05, left, and T.J. Edwards '06 with an earlier prototype of the Robotboat. (Photo: Courtesy T.J. Edwards)

As any middle-school student can tell you, about two thirds of the Earth is covered by water — a fact that makes studying the world’s oceans a daunting task. But Princeton friends Eamon Carrig ’05 and T.J. Edwards ’06 hope to make that job a little easier by developing an autonomous sailboat (or, ideally, a fleet of them) that would make data collection less labor-intensive and more cost-effective.

Carrig and Edwards work at Autonomous Marine Systems (AMS), a boutique technology start-up in Silver Spring, Md., led by Walter Holemans, founder of the small aerospace firm Planetary Systems Corp. Two other Princetonians, Rob Atkin ’91 and James Nugen ’91, also work for AMS.

The company’s latest prototype, Robotboat Mark VI, has been in the works for a few years, getting a major boost last fall when AMS raised funds using the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.com. “We weren’t quite sure we were going to be a great fit for Kickstarter,” Edwards says, noting that the site’s tech offerings are usually consumer electronics, not scientific-research vehicles. But the company’s pitch — which included catchy lines such as “never send a person to do a buoy’s job” — proved attractive. More than 1,000 donors supported the project, pushing AMS past its $80,000 goal.

Carrig, a philosophy major at Princeton with a broad background in computer programming, works on the boat’s navigation system, setting optimal rudder angles and other orientation details to help it travel from waypoint to waypoint. Edwards, a mechanical and aerospace engineer, works on design features, enabling the boat to right itself when it gets flipped and rolled in rough seas. Both are looking forward to a new round of field testing in the Chesapeake Bay this spring; they hope to demonstrate the technology for oceanographers later this year and eventually send the autonomous boat on a trans-Atlantic voyage. The boat could be used for a range of applications, from measuring pollution to surveying marine life.

Before the launch of AMS, Edwards and Carrig were co-owners in a different kind of start-up: a hostel on an island off the coast of Panama. Running the hostel was an around-the-clock job, Edwards says, with the owners doing “everything from working the desk to quieting the guests at 4 a.m.” But there was downtime, too: Using a computer-aided design program on his laptop, Edwards refined some of the elements now used in the Robotboat prototype.

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Mike Ford '14 (Photo: Courtesy Athletic Communications)

By Stephen Wood ’15

After beginning the season with a 2-16 record in nonconference games, Princeton baseball stands at 3-1 following the first weekend of Ivy League competition, in which the Tigers split a doubleheader with Yale and swept another against Brown.

In the early spring, Ivy teams head south to play strong teams and, traditionally, get beaten up, so the sluggish start was not completely unexpected. But the Tigers have a long way to go if they want to improve on last year, when they finished second in the Gehrig Division.

For a team that lost star hitters Matt Bowman ’14 and Sam Mulroy ’12 to the Major League Baseball draft and graduation (then the draft), respectively, the Tigers are not looking bad offensively. Leadoff hitter Alec Keller ‘14 is off to a great start, hitting .355, and Mike Ford ’14 has already knocked in 15 runs.

Defensively, starter Zak Hermans ’13, last year’s Ivy League Pitcher of the Year, is in good form, as is Ford, who emerged from a March that was hellish for many pitchers with a 1.36 ERA. Kevin Link ’13 looks strong after notching his first win in a complete game against Yale.

“Hopefully, you don’t even need to go to the bullpen when they pitch,” head coach Scott Bradley said.

Bradley was commenting on the longevity of his starters, but he touched on a larger issue – the instability of the bullpen. Princeton’s relievers have an average ERA of 9.00. With Bowman in the starting rotation last year, Bradley could expect to go an entire weekend – four games – with maybe four pitching changes. This year’s bullpen may not be able to handle much more than that.

Starter Mike Fagan ‘14 has had a rough spring and lasted just three outs in his start against Yale March 30. He was relieved by Cameron Mingo ’16, a moment which may have been a sign of things to come. Mingo’s ERA sits at 2.78 and he allowed no earned runs in five innings against Yale, striking out four. The Bulldogs got three unearned runs off of him, but of the five pitchers Princeton used Mingo was the only one to record six or more outs.

Bradley has said that he wants to use Mingo as a long reliever, but he also said, “The game is going to dictate what we’re going to do with our bullpen.” The Tigers are going to need every starter to go deep into the game, and it’s looking like that could mean some changes to the starting rotation.

Mohsin Hamid '93 (Photo: Jillian Edelstein)

Novelist Mohsin Hamid ’93’s name seems to be popping up in the news every week. In February, he headlined the Lahore Literary Festival in his native Pakistan. In March, his new novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, hit the shelves, receiving several positive reviews. And in late April, the film adaptation of an earlier novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is scheduled to reach theaters. (Hamid helped to write the screenplay and consulted on the film).

In an interview with The New York Times India Ink blog, Hamid shrugged off his recent fame — including a Vogue story that placed his new novel among the year’s “13 things to look forward to in culture.”

“I met author Russell Banks at a literary festival,” Hamid told the Times, “and he told me that you don’t really know what your books have done until 10 years after they have been published. That means I will have to wait a decade to see if it has really had an impact.”

The novel, written in the form of a self-help book for Asians striving to get ahead, tells the tale of one man’s journey from impoverished boy to corporate tycoon.

Like many of Princeton’s alumni novelists, Hamid took courses in the University’s creative writing program (he lists Joyce Carol Oates and Tony Morrison among his influences). But the Woodrow Wilson School major took an indirect path into fiction writing, attending Harvard Law School and working in management consulting. When The Reluctant Fundamentalist, his second novel, became a bestseller, he says, “I felt like I could finally become a full-time writer.”

Read more: PAW’s April 11, 2007, feature story about Hamid, “East meets West.”

Do you have a nominee for Tiger of the Week? Let us know. All alumni qualify. PAW’s Tiger of the Week is selected by our staff, with help from readers like you.

Co-captains Niveen Rasheed '13, right, and Lauren Polansky '13 at the NCAA Tournament press conference in Waco, Texas, March 23. (Photo: Beverly Schaefer)

When asked to describe Princeton’s style of play in a March 23 NCAA Tournament press conference, co-captain Lauren Polansky ’13 talked about the team’s depth, defense, and offense before adding a simple summation.

“I think the best way to describe us is very determined, and we’re a bunch of fighters,” she said.

The Tigers, making their fourth straight NCAA Tournament appearance, hope that determination and fight will carry them to the first postseason win in program history.

Led by a talented and dynamic senior class, Princeton earned the Ivy League title with a 13-1 record. The league championship, combined with a 9-5 mark against a very strong slate of nonconference opponents, landed the Tigers in the NCAA field with a No. 9 seed and a first-round matchup against Florida State.

Co-captain Niveen Rasheed ’13 said the team sees the opener as “the biggest game of our lives,” and head coach Courtney Banghart said Princeton is well past the point of being just happy to reach the tournament. But Banghart also stressed the need to keep emotions in check when the game begins:

“We talk about playing with execution first and emotion second, and I hope that after preaching the two that in some way it sticks in their heads. … Part of my job tomorrow is to manage the game and part of that is to manage the emotions that the athletic mortality of my seniors brings.”

Read more about the Tigers and Seminoles below.

Tina Fey plays a Princeton admission officer in her new movie. (Photo: Courtesy Focus Features)

Princeton plays a prominent role in the new Tina Fey and Paul Rudd film, Admission, opening nationwide March 22. The stars were in town last summer to shoot a few scenes for the movie, which is based on a 2009 novel by former Office of Admission reader Jean ­Korelitz. 

Admission is the latest in a long line of films that feature the campus or the University — though the two don’t always go hand-in-hand. In Harold and Kumar go to White Castle (2004), for example, the title characters briefly visit Princeton, but the scenes were not filmed on campus; in Scent of a Woman (1992), on the other hand, real Princeton buildings stand in for a New England prep school. 

Princeton’s film debut came nearly a century ago in the 1915 silent film Satan Sanderson, according to a 1999 PAW feature story by film historian Steven G. Kellman. In the early days of talkies, the University was portrayed as a Roaring ’20s party school in Varsity (1928), starring Charles “Buddy” Rogers. The story did not go over well with administrators — or alumni. One letter to PAW called it “an infantile and unusually moronic screen exhibition.” 

Christopher Clark '87 (Photo: Courtesy Lambda Legal)

Attorney Christopher Clark ’87 has been active on two fronts of the effort to legalize same-sex marriage in his home state of Illinois. He helped to draft and review legislation that has passed the state Senate and now awaits a vote in the state House. He also leads the legal team for a group of 16 same-sex couples suing for the freedom to marry in the Cook County courts.

Clark is a senior staff attorney in the Midwest regional office of Lambda Legal, which pursues civil rights cases and public policy on behalf of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community. He says that each state responds differently to same-sex marriage efforts. In some cases, litigation can stall legislation; in others, it seems to encourage lawmakers to take action. “I think here it’s proven to be complementary,” Clark says.

For Clark, working on behalf of the LGBT population was part of the reason he started law school in the early 1990s, after working in advertising for five years. “I was really motivated by a much better understanding of what it was like to be openly gay in society at that point,” he says. He interned at Lambda Legal and kept in contact with the organization while working in private practice at Sachnoff & Weaver in Chicago, where he became a partner. He left to join Lambda Legal full time in 2007, seeing the move as an opportunity to fulfill the “in the nation’s service” ideal he had encountered as an undergraduate in the Woodrow Wilson School.

Clark’s region stretches from Ohio to the Dakotas, and while marriage equality often captures the headlines, he notes that Lambda Legal has broader goals, pursuing “impact litigation” that will change the world not only for the client but for others in the LGBT community.

To that end, Clark has worked on discrimination cases — including one in which a transgender student was prevented from wearing a dress to her prom — and other suits involving freedom of expression. In 2012, Clark successfully worked on behalf of a gay student in rural Ohio who was barred from wearing a “Jesus is not a homophobe” T-shirt to his high school. “It’s a remarkable experience to go through that process with a 17-year-old as your client,” he says. “It really inspired me.”

Like many of our Tiger of the Week honorees, Christopher Clark ’87 was nominated by a PAW reader. Do you have an idea for a future Tiger of the Week profile? Let us know.

Veterans of Future Wars founder Lewis Gorin Jr. '36. (Photo: Courtesy University Archives)

“The Manifesto of the Veterans of Future Wars” did not look like much — about 250 words of text, tucked in a corner of the March 14, 1936, Daily Princetonian, it could have easily been dismissed as a clever bit of humor and nothing more. Instead, it became a polarizing prank that rallied students, infuriated congressmen, and earned a lasting place in campus lore.

The basic premise was hatched by seniors in Terrace Club who, after reading that Congress had granted an early bonus payment to veterans of World War I, decided that they too deserved a $1,000 bonus, as an advance for future service in the “inevitable” war to stop the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. “It is but common right that this bonus be paid now,” the students reasoned, “for many will be killed or wounded in the next war, and hence they, the most deserving, will not get the full benefit of their country’s gratitude.”

When The Philadelphia Inquirer picked up the story, by way of the University Press Club, the news began to spread nationwide. Campus chapters of the Veterans of Future Wars sprouted like mushrooms — more than 500, reportedly, with a combined membership of 50,000 students — and the group adopted an official salute: the outstretched, itching palm. PAW reported that “the great majority of alumni are proud of the imagination, initiative, and sense of humor displayed by the undergraduate organizers.”

Prominent veterans, politicians, and some alumni, however, were not amused. Notable critics included James Van Zandt, commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Ohio Gov. Martin Davey. In this remarkable April 1936 newsreel footage, Rep. Claude Fuller of Arkansas said, “There is no danger of any of these so-called veterans ever volunteering to defend America. Their actions clearly show that they are yellow.” Fuller went on to blame communism and foreign influence in interviews with other news outlets.

Varel Freeman '71 *74 *77 (Photo: Courtesy EBRD)

After studying engineering and public policy at Princeton, Varel Freeman ’71 *74 *77 expected to work in technology or consulting. But an interview with the World Bank steered him in a “totally different and unexpected” direction. Freeman followed that path and eventually became a leader in the field of emerging-market finance.

Freeman recently stepped down after two terms as first vice president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), which was founded in 1991 to promote growth in the new market-oriented economies of Central and Eastern Europe. Earlier in his career, he worked on investments in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, first for the World Bank and its private-sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, and later with Chase Capital and Baring Private Equity Partners.

In a field where MBA grads were far more common than aeronautical engineers, Freeman said he found his engineering background to be “immensely handy.” Engineers, he said, are trained to evaluate things they don’t fully understand by simplifying them “to the point where you have some analogous experience” and then adding complexity. Freeman applied that approach when learning about new countries and new industry sectors.

At EBRD, Freeman faced new challenges in 2008-09 when the global financial crisis threatened the stability of banks in region where EBRD operates. Freeman and his colleagues pushed to ensure that rescue plans would not overlook Europe’s emerging markets, and as those local economies regained their footing, the demand for EBRD financing boomed. Backed by its shareholders, the bank expanded its efforts and widened its geographical reach to the east and south while maintaining its AAA credit rating.

EBRD President Sir Suma Chakrabarti, in a recent press release, thanked Freeman for his leadership. “With his keen instinct for sound banking, he deftly steered the EBRD’s investments as the bank sharply increased financing in response to the global economic crisis,” Chakrabarti said. The same release announced Freeman's successor at EBRD, who happens to be another Princetonian: Philip Bennett *79.

Freeman plans to return to the United States and spend more time with his family. He also hopes to have more opportunities to fly — for pleasure, not for business. A longtime pilot, he earned his commercial license before beginning his undergraduate studies at Princeton and even flew some charter flights to help pay tuition. Since then, Freeman has flown multiple trans-Atlantic flights, making memorable passes over remote areas of Greenland and Iceland.

Like many of our Tiger of the Week honorees, Varel Freeman ’71 *74 *77 was nominated by a PAW reader. Do you have an idea for a future Tiger of the Week profile? Let us know.

With thousands of alumni and family members on campus for Alumni Day Feb. 23, it would have been easy to overlook the 18 people meeting in the shadows of the University Chapel after the Service of Remembrance. But for Richard Chrisman ’65, that small gathering was the highlight of his day.

The group was there to honor the late philosophy professor Walter Kaufmann, best known as an authority on Nietzsche who translated the philosopher’s works and revived his reputation in the decades following World War II.

As an undergraduate, Chrisman took two courses from Kaufmann and audited a third. He was struck by the professor’s extraordinary knowledge as well as his engaging style. “It was personal with him,” Chrisman said. “This is not a philosopher who labored in the forest of abstract reasoning for the sake of some abstract truth.”

(Photo: Brett Tomlinson/PAW)

Years later, after attending divinity school and entering the ministry, Chrisman came to realize how deeply Kaufmann had influenced him — he calls the professor a “spiritual father.” He wanted to make a lasting memorial to Kaufmann, and mentioned the plan last year in an open letter published by PAW.

About 25 alumni sent supportive replies. Some wondered if Chrisman’s proposed location in the Chapel was appropriate for a memorial to Kaufmann, who was a critic of conventional religion and a self-proclaimed atheist. But Chrisman, a former assistant dean of the chapel at Princeton who now serves as director of religious and spiritual life at Skidmore College, said that doubt and critical analysis have “a proper place” in the Chapel. He also noted that Kaufmann wrote extensively on religion and published a book about world religions a few years before his death in 1980 at age 59.

By Jasper Ryckman ’15

With the possibility of a federal budget sequestration taking effect March 1, the University is preparing for what may be large, across-the-board cuts to its federal funding. 

“Princeton has been participating in efforts with other research universities to argue strongly against the cuts to research and education that would occur under a sequester, and to present the case for robust investment in these areas and encourage a long-term, balanced solution to the nation’s deficit,” University spokesperson Martin Mbugua said in a recent statement.

Though the University recognizes that sequestration poses a threat to certain types of funding, it is not clear what precise impact the sequestration would have on current research initiatives at Princeton. Much will depend on how agencies implement cuts and how long the sequester remains in effect.

“The University has advised its researchers that there are plausible scenarios under which grants could be scaled back, and that uncertainty and tight budgets may be the reality for the foreseeable future,” Mbugua said.

The sequestration would cut more than $1 trillion from the federal budget over the next 10 years. According to CNN, over half of the cuts would target military spending, while the remainder would cut funding to other domestic agencies and services, such as the FBI, federal courts, and scientific research.

The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), which receives federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, said in a recent statement that it has been advised that its “budget will be reduced due to cuts imposed as a result of the combined effects of a Congressional sequestration and adherence to the President’s recommendation for the 2013 budget.”

PPPL Director of Communications Kitta MacPherson said that the laboratory hopes to avoid forced layoffs and furloughs. “Based on discussion with the Department of Energy, we have decided not to take any actions until we receive further guidance,” she said.

An official at the Department of Commerce expects that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — which provides funding to Princeton’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) —  will have to furlough up to 2,600 NOAA employees, leave about 2,700 positions unfilled, and reduce the number of contractors by about 1,400. How these changes would impact the GFDL is not yet known.

John Milton Cooper '61 (Photo: John Cooper k'61)

Historians of early 20th century America are often drawn to one of the era’s two towering figures: Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson 1879. For John Milton Cooper ’61, an emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin, all signs seemed to point to the latter.

Cooper attended a Washington, D.C., high school named for Wilson. He then came to Princeton, where Wilson had studied, taught, and served as president. He even earned a graduate fellowship that bore Wilson’s name. But connecting those dots would be a “historiographical fallacy,” Cooper joked in a recent talk at Princeton. He chose Wilson primarily because of his scholarly interests in World War I and progressivism.

Regardless of the initial motivation, Cooper has made remarkable contributions to Wilson scholarship, including Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, which earned a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 2010. With the 100th anniversary of Wilson’s presidential inauguration approaching, Cooper came to the Woodrow Wilson School Feb. 21 for a public conversation with professor and presidential historian Julian Zelizer.

In two terms as president, Wilson helped to shape important events — perhaps most notably by mobilizing the United States for its entry into World War I. But Cooper said that Wilson also “stands extremely tall” in terms of the skills that he brought to the office.

His first term, for example, brought the passage of an impressive legislative agenda, made possible by Wilson’s knack for influencing Congress.

“Woodrow Wilson went to speak before Congress more than any other president before him or any other president after him,” Cooper said. “This was his way to reach a national audience. … What Wilson was doing is what presidents do now when they go on TV. [Going to Congress] was a way of making sure that he got maximum coverage.”