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Members of the Princeton community were in festive spirits at the Woodrow Wilson School’s sixth annual public service auction Dec. 16. Nibbling on holiday desserts, guests milled around tables in Robertson Hall’s Shultz Dining Room adorned with autographed books, handcrafted statues, and imported silks. For the third consecutive year, the event supported the Greater Donnelly Neighborhood Initiative, a nonprofit organization that runs programs for at-risk youth in the north Trenton area.

 

Graduate student Jennifer Onofrio spearheaded the organizing team of two dozen Wilson School volunteers. Students also donated goods and services, including private language lessons, catered three-course meals with wine pairings, and five hours of chauffeuring. A lunch with Dean Christina Paxson sparked at least one inter-class bidding war. Graduate student Kevin Smith brought his cowboy hat and Kentucky twang to his role as auctioneer.

 

Thirteen Princeton teams were in action over the weekend as the athletic seasons resumed in earnest following the January exam break.

 

Kareem Maddox ’11 continued his extraordinary season as MEN’S BASKETBALL opened Ivy League play with home wins over Brown and Yale Jan. 28 and 29. Maddox sparked a key first-half run in a 78-60 defeat of the Bears and finished with 15 points and 14 rebounds. Against Yale, he scored 17 points and made a key block in the final minute as Princeton (14-4, 2-0) held off the surging Bulldogs, 67-63. Head coach Sydney Johnson ’97 said that Maddox’s success has been aided by a talented and balanced Tiger lineup that can spread out defenders. “Kareem’s put the work in, but so has Dan [Mavraides ’11] and so has Doug [Davis ’12],” Johnson said after the Brown game. “We have a team of guys who are trying to improve everyday, and it’s hard [for opponents] to pick who you’re going to take away.”

 

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL also swept its weekend games to maintain a perfect league record. After coasting to a 70-48 win at Brown, the Tigers faced a challenging matchup at Yale, where the Bulldogs took a 22-20 lead into halftime. Princeton (14-3, 3-0) tightened its defense in the second half, holding Yale to 1-for-11 shooting on 3-pointers, and won by a comfortable 52-37 margin. Addie Micir ’11 scored 18 points in each of the weekend games.

 

MEN’S HOCKEY continued its winning ways after the January exam break, posting a 3-0 record in the last week. The Tigers capped that run with a 4-3 overtime win at Clarkson Jan. 29. Kevin Lohry ’11 scored the winning goal. Princeton (14-6-1, 9-4-1) is third in the ECAC standings, behind Yale and Union.

 

January has been a pretty remarkable month for Anthony D’Amato ’10, a singer, songwriter, and rising star in independent music. He’s rubbed elbows with one of his musical heroes, Bruce Springsteen. He was featured in a New York Times story that explored his relationship with two Princeton mentors, poet Paul Muldoon and composer Paul Lansky *73. He talked with Paste magazine about recording his most recent album, Down Wires, in his Princeton dorm room last year. And one of his songs, “My Father’s Son,” was selected as NPR Music’s song of the day. NPR praised the piece for weaving “a vivid narrative with organic vocals.”

 

D’Amato, whose upcoming gigs include a pair as the opening act for Pete Yorn and Ben Kweller, began seriously thinking about a career in music while he was an undergraduate. He recorded three albums in his time at Princeton, playing nearly all the instruments and enlisting help from a handful of campus musicians. He also refined his lyrics, and the structure behind them, by working closely with Muldoon, a Pulitzer Prize winner and part-time rocker who once collaborated with Warren Zevon.

 

Like last week’s Tiger, D’Amato wrote a senior thesis that had an immediate link to his career. Majoring in English, he examined Springsteen’s music and “the literature of American alienation.” Earlier this month, D’Amato found himself on stage with the Boss, at a benefit show in Asbury Park, N.J., singing a group rendition of “Thunder Road.” It was, he told the Times, “a really magical moment.”

 

Bruce Reed ’82, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, has taken a new job as chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden. [New York Times]

 

Former Fed chairman Paul Volcker ’49 has departed President Barack Obama’s circle of economic advisers. [Bloomberg]

 

Ted Cruz ’92, a Republican and former solicitor general of Texas, announced his plans to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012. [Austin American-Statesman]

 

Former New Jersey Gov. Brendan Byrne ’49 will be one of 13 inductees to the New Jersey Hall of Fame this year. He joins a class of honorees that includes Martha Stewart, Queen Latifah, and Bruce Willis. [Star-Ledger]

 

With star forward Niveen Rasheed ’13 in the lineup, Princeton was a clear favorite to repeat as the Ivy League champion in women’s basketball. Without Rasheed, the Tigers still have the talent and experience to come out on top, but challengers like Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Dartmouth could make the title chase a lot more interesting.

 

Rasheed, who suffered a season-ending knee injury in Princeton’s Dec. 29 win at Davidson, led Princeton in scoring during its perfect 14-0 Ivy season last year and upped her average by a point this year, to 16.4 points per game. Head coach Courtney Banghart said the Tigers will need to take on added responsibility.

 

“She takes 14.6 shots a game, so we need those shots to come from other people,” Banghart said. “Offensively, we have to find a rhythm for 40 minutes without a kid who makes plays like she does.”

 

Princeton has plenty of scorers – Addie Micir ’11, Devona Allgood ’12, and Lauren Edwards ’12 each average 11 or more points per game – and playmaking point guard Lauren Polansky ’13 is in the middle of another solid year, with a 1.67 assist-turnover ratio (second-best in the league).

 

Below, a team-by-team look at the league. (Teams are listed in order of the preseason media poll.)

 

Princeton (12-3 overall, 1-0 Ivy) The January exam break may have been a blessing for this year’s Tigers, who played a difficult pair of road games in late December and then got confirmation that they would be without Rasheed for the rest of the season.

 

“It’s good for our kids to have a mental and physical chance to regroup,” Banghart said. The break also has been good for the coaches, she added, because it gives them a chance to think about any changes that might need to be made to help the Tigers succeed without Rasheed.

 

In December, we introduced the "Where are we?" contest, which tests your knowledge of campus architecture. Through the end of the publication year, The Weekly Blog will continue to post a new contest on the publication date of each printed issue of PAW. 

 

And so we ask, where are we now? Post your answer on PAW's Facebook page or e-mail it to PAW. The first correct response will earn a prize.

 

UPDATE: James Colman '95 is our winner. He correctly identified the building as Chancellor Green. View the rest of this entry to see the image in context.

On the cover date of our special issue dedicated to humor, it’s appropriate that our Tiger of the Week is a television executive who is helping to add laughs to daily cable programming. On Jan. 17, Mitch Semel ’81, a longtime producer and TV consultant, was named general manager of The Onion, the popular satire website and newspaper that is expanding its video offerings with a pair of cable programs – Onion SportsDome, which recently debuted on Comedy Central, and Onion News Network, coming soon to IFC. Variety said that Semel’s hiring is “more proof that the Onion is serious about expanding its TV biz.”

 

Semel, who has worked for a half-dozen broadcast and cable networks, has a history of launching new comedy ventures. In the early 1990s, he was the first programming head at Comedy Central, and he helped the network plunge into topical humor with shows like Politically Incorrect. More recently, he founded and ran Semel Media, a New York-based firm that advises clients on media strategy and content. In a news release, Steve Hannah, president and CEO of The Onion, said that Semel “strikes the rare balance between respecting the creative process and realizing that creativity has to translate into good business.”

 

While Semel may have developed his business skills in the TV world, Princeton can take some credit for providing a launching pad: As a Woodrow Wilson School major, he wrote his senior thesis about “the evolution, programming, and future of cable television networks.”

 

The number of students vying to be Princetonians grew again in 2011. According to a Jan. 19 University release, a record 27,115 students applied for the Class of 2015. Applications have roughly doubled in the last decade, after hovering between 12,500 and 15,000 per year during the 1990s.

 

Part of the change is driven by demographics. The number of U.S. high-school seniors has been rising in the last decade and a half, and a 2008 New York Times story anticipated that the applications would peak in 2009 or 2010. But Princeton’s increase in applicants has continued. Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye credited the University’s financial-aid program and outreach efforts both in the United States and abroad.

 

Above, a graphic representation of the growth in applications from 2000 to 2011 (click graph to view larger version).

Caltech professor Frances Arnold ’79 and colleague Willem Stemmer will share the $500,000 Charles Stark Draper Prize for their pioneering work in DNA sequencing. [USA Today]

 

TV producer David E. Kelley ’79 knows his new show, Harry’s Law, is a long shot, but he’s optimistic that it can find its niche. [Washington Post]

 

Calgary lawyer and former Princeton hockey captain Kirk Lamb ’01 was named the new chairman of the Canadian Junior Hockey League, an umbrella group that oversees Canada’s 10 junior-A leagues. [Calgary Herald]

 

Indiana governor and presidential prospect Mitch Daniels ’71 has received a vote of confidence from an unanticipated group of supporters: Yale undergrads. [Indianapolis Star]

 

Ellie Kemper ’02, a cast member on TV’s The Office, talks about comedy writing and her role in Sofia Coppola’s recent film Somewhere. [St. Louis Magazine]

The destruction and loss of life from last year's Jan. 12 earthquake near Port-au-Prince, Haiti, highlighted a range of challenges that Haitians face, both in everyday life and in times of crisis. One item on that list was the ability to provide reliable electricity to remote areas of the country. David Crane '81, president and CEO of Princeton-based NRG Energy, is working to address that problem by supporting a solar energy project in Boucan-Carré, a village in Haiti's central highlands.

 

NRG has pledged $1 million to fund the collaboration with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), a Washington, D.C., based nongovernmental organization. Solar panels will power irrigation pumps, village schools, street lights, and fish-farming facilities. The project, which is intended to be a model for other areas, earned additional support last week when it received a $500,000 grant from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

 

The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund distributed $3.4 million in new grants, in areas that included cholera prevention, emergency medical care, and lending to small businesses. The grant for the Boucan-Carré project, Crane said in a news release, supports the idea that “solar power can play a pivotal role in helping the Haitian people build a sustainable, healthy, and prosperous society.”

 

Crane, a Woodrow Wilson School major at Princeton, earned a law degree at Harvard and worked in investment banking and the energy sector before taking the helm at NRG in 2003. EnergyBiz magazine selected Crane as its “utility CEO of the year” in March 2010.

 

When Auburn and Oregon kick off tonight’s Bowl Championship Series national championship game, one Princeton alumnus will be able to watch knowing that he played a small but important role in determining the participants: Wes Colley *98, who teaches modeling and simulation at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, created and maintains the Colley Matrix, one of six computer rankings that help to rate BCS hopefuls.

 

Colley started his rankings in the mid-1990s, while studying astrophysics at Princeton. Computer rankings were growing in popularity, and Colley, a longtime football fan, had reservations about their effectiveness. He began playing around with a few models of his own, including the one that would become the Colley Matrix, a comparative system that relies on wins, losses, and schedule strength.

 

“You could do different things – throw in margin of victory, offensive points, defensive points-allowed – but I settled on the system I’m currently using because it did about as well as any other and it was by far the simplest,” Colley says.

 

In the fall of 1998, Colley started posting his weekly rankings on a website at Harvard, where he was working as a postdoctoral researcher. Without making much of an effort to promote his system, Colley found a following – drawing “five times as many hits as any other website at the Center for Astrophysics,” he recalls – and after the 2000 season, the BCS contacted him, asking to include his ranking in the group of computer ratings that account for one third of the BCS formula.

 

How big of a star was Jason Garrett ’89 in his Princeton days? Well, big enough to land on the cover of the Princeton Alumni Weekly. Garrett, officially named head coach of the Dallas Cowboys Jan. 6, was a focal point of “A Season in Seven Days,” which offered an in-depth look at the week leading up to the Princeton-Yale game in his senior year.

 

Led by Garrett’s sharp passing, the Tigers beat the Elis in New Haven for the first time in more than two decades. Garrett won the Bushnell Cup as the Ivy League’s most valuable player, but Princeton fell short of an Ivy title. A year later, brother Judd Garrett ’90, a star running back, would lead the Tigers to a championship.

 

Below, read more about Jason Garrett and his teammates from the 1988 team.

 

By David Williamson ’84 

 

 

FOR A FEW anxious moments late one recent Saturday afternoon, Princeton’s head football coach, Steve Tosches, saw his worst nightmare come true. His Tigers had a three-touchdown lead over Colgate when Princeton’s star quarterback, Jason Garrett ’89, scrambled around left end on a broken play. In similar straits in the first quarter, Garrett had slipped over to the left sideline and scampered for a sixty-one-yard gain. This time, he turned upfield and was promptly hammered by the Colgate safety. Garrett crumpled to the ground and didn’t get up.

 

On the Princeton bench, the players and coaches fell silent. Garrett was the team captain and had been the quarterback on every offensive down during the season, so the Tigers would miss him badly if he were seriously injured. Finally, Jason staggered to his feet, weaving like a punch-drunk boxer. The field judge called over to Tosches: “Hey coach, you gotta get him out of here. He got his bell rung pretty good.”

 

By the time Garrett reached the bench, he was insisting that he was fine, even if he was still a little woozy. “It was a stupid play on my part,” he said later. “I should have slid under the tackle.” Brian Barren ’89, the backup quarterback, replaced Garrett, and the Princeton offense promptly scored on its next drive to push its lead to four touchdowns.