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For some Princeton students, Dean’s Date is a campus-wide marathon of suffering; for others, it was a day for dancing on NBC’s The Today Show in Manhattan.

Millions of viewers watched the Princeton University HighSteppers, a co-ed step team at the University, stomp, slap, and shout live in Rockefeller Plaza on May 14. The team arrived in Manhattan at 5:15 a.m. and had its final rehearsal at 8:30 before beginning to shoot teasers for the live segment.

HighSteppers president Somers Fairchild ’15 called the experience “exhilarating,” noting that many of the group’s members had been eager to participate even though the event coincided with Dean’s Date. “Usually it’s kind of… I don’t want to say ‘pulling teeth,’ but it’s hard to get people to perform because people are busy all the time,” he said. “But I got flooded with emails [saying yes].”

After discovering the HighSteppers from YouTube videos of competition performances, The Today Show staff emailed the group to ask if they would perform for the show’s Varsity Week. “Of course that was a yes,” Fairchild said. After the email, which Fairchild received three weeks ago, the group began supplemental practices for their TV appearance at the same time as they were rehearsing for a guest performance at the BodyHype Dance Company spring show. 

The group arrived back in Princeton at 11:30 a.m., giving some members time to continue working on their Dean’s Date papers to make the University’s 5 p.m. deadline. “I napped for an hour and tried to finish all my work,” said Fairchild, who turned his final paper in at 4:58.

Video: Watch the HighSteppers’ Today Show performance below.

Ryan Crocker *85, career ambassador with the U.S. Foreign Service, cautioned against a shift towards “neo-isolationism” at the Woodrow Wilson School’s annual colloquium May 4. 

Ryan Crocker *85 (Photo: U.S. Department of State)

“I worry about the increasing mood in the administration of ‘pull back, fix our own problems, and if we’re going to do something, pivot to Asia,’” said Crocker. “If you pivot to Asia, you expose a very important part of your anatomy to the Middle East, which is probably going to bite it very hard.” 

This year’s colloquium, on “Challenges to U.S. Policy in the Middle East,” drew 175 graduate alumni and their guests and featured several prominent speakers, including former Sen. George Mitchell, the U.S. special envoy for Middle East peace from 2009-11, who delivered Friday’s keynote. Crocker, who spent four decades in the Foreign Service and served as ambassador throughout the Middle East, most recently in Afghanistan, spoke during the Saturday keynote address. 

Crocker said that his experience left him with two lessons: Be careful what you get into, but be just as careful of what you get out of. “Disengagement can have consequences as great and grave as getting in in the first place,” Crocker said. 

The greatest challenge facing the current administration is Pakistan, he argued, with nuclear weapons, instability, and a government willing to support the Taliban “as a hedge against U.S. withdrawal.”  

Princeton students on one recent Office of Religious Life trip visited an Islamic community center in Dubrovnik, Croatia. (Photo: Courtesy Zach Beecher '13)

Just as the University is encouraging students to go abroad, the Office of Religious Life is pursuing its interfaith agenda on a global scale, according to ORL Dean Alison Boden, who has organized and led five trips since coming to Princeton seven years ago. “We are growing the number of trips,” she said. “It’s complementary to the institution’s overall emphasis on more international experiences for students.”

In June five students will go to Ghana to examine the role of religion in its society by meeting with leaders of civil and religious communities there. Later, 10 students will spend two weeks in Thailand with the International Network of Engaged Buddhists — an organization that integrates the practice of Buddhism with social action — to learn about INEB’s leadership training for social-justice projects, and then travel to Myanmar (formerly Burma) to see how its work is put into action.

Under Boden, the ORL also has expanded its international focus through partnerships with the United Nations Population Council and the Social Science Research Council, a think tank in Brooklyn, N.Y., and last summer the ORL co-sponsored a conference in London that brought together about 25 faith-based and humanitarian-aid organizations to demonstrate how working together can increase their effectiveness.

Although the international trips are “very much interfaith in focus,” Boden said students go for a variety of nonreligious reasons. Some are interested in the environmental issues of the countries being visited. Others may have family that came from the region. Many simply appreciate the opportunity to get a “window into issues in a totally different part of the world,” Boden said. 

No more than 20 students are accepted per trip. Financial aid is available.

The Princeton campus will come alive this weekend with music, song, and dance. From April 25-28, Princeton Arts Weekend will celebrate the ways in which University and community members create art. The weekend will feature performances, exhibits, and collaborative projects. On Sunday, the weekend will culminate with Communiversity, the annual town-gown street festival, and Shirleypalooza, a tribute to President Tilghman’s dedication to the arts.

Some of the art that will be showcased is the product of classroom projects. Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon and singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding taught an Atelier course this semester on songwriting. The students will perform their original songs Saturday night at Small World Coffee.

“It’s been a joy to work with these student writers and musicians,” Muldoon said. “Each and every one of them is remarkable in some way. I fully expect this class to throw up some people who will become household names.”

For some students, Princeton Arts Weekend marks their debut. Performing for the first time at Princeton, Avanthika Srinivasan ’16 will be singing classical Indian songs at Blair Arch.

“To be performing here in Princeton and to have all my friends come support me and learn more about my culture definitely means a lot to me,” said Srinivasan. She added that she also appreciates the University’s “willingness to give platforms for artists like me to share our passion for music, dance, or any other art form, with the community.”

For others, this weekend is the culmination of four years steeped in the arts. Daniel Rattner ’13 is presenting his senior thesis show “O Where Are You Going?” on Saturday and Sunday.

Nick Frey '09, left, and Drew Haugen *12. (Photos: Courtesy Drew Haugen)

Aluminum and bamboo might seem like an odd mix of materials for a bike frame. But entrepreneurs Nick Frey ’09, Drew Haugen *12, and James Wolf believe it may be the next big thing in cycling.

Frey, Haugen, and Wolf are cofounders of Aluboo, a startup that builds on earlier work by Frey, a professional cyclist and mechanical engineer, and Wolf, a craftsman and industrial designer. The two created Boo Bicycles, handcrafting frames from tam vong (“iron bamboo”) rods and carbon fiber joints in a workshop in Vietnam. Boo bikes have competed successfully in a number of cycling and cyclocross races, and Frey contends that “you could race the Boo in the Tour de France.”

Bamboo is actually an ideal material for bikes: The plant’s strong, fibrous structure dampens road vibrations and provides for an exceptionally smooth ride, and it is more sustainable than other popular bike materials, such as steel.

The major drawback is the price tag. Each Boo bike is custom-made and priced between $5,000 and $14,000 — not a bike for the weekend warrior. That’s where Haugen comes in.

Ever have that nightmare where you still haven’t finished your thesis? Former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson *86 has. 

Returning to campus can counteract that “recurring nightmare,” Jackson said, addressing an audience of students, faculty, and community members in Dodds Auditorium April 9.

“I still have that nightmare that it’s the day before my master’s thesis defense. And I haven’t finished it, but I’m really stressed,” she said, the audience laughing. “But every time I’m here, it reinforces that I got the degree.” 

Jackson, a chemical engineer who served as head of the EPA in the Obama administration from January 2009 until February of this year, recounted her personal story of how she came to define herself as environmentalist. 

Noting that the word “environmentalist” has, in some circles, come to refer to environmental activism for political purposes, Jackson provided her own definition: An environmentalist is someone “who cares deeply about and prioritizes the environment — the environment, not as an outside concept, but more for its impact on our health, its impact on our well-being ... and its impacts on our prosperity,” she said. 

Jackson recalled learning about environmental issues during her undergraduate years at Tulane, when she first heard of the “soup of chemicals” in the Mississippi River causing problems downstream in New Orleans as well as the government’s inability to adequately respond to large-scale, hazardous environmental problems like the infamous Love Canal in upstate New York.

Journalists Landon Jones '66, Griff Witte '00, and Jim Merritt '66 shared their experiences with students from the Class of 2016 at a recent reception in Princeton. (Photo: Courtesy Charles R. Plohn k'66)

“I can’t believe they let me do this and pay me for it.” That’s how Landon Jones ’66 described his career in journalism to a group of 20 Princeton freshmen who gathered at his home April 7. 

Jones, a former managing editor of People (and former editor of PAW), said journalism has allowed him to satisfy his curiosity about virtually any subject. His speech kicked off “An Evening of Journalism and Writing,” organized as part of an ongoing effort to create a special relationship between the Class of 2016 and its “grandparent class,” or the class that will have its 50th reunion when the freshmen graduate.

Previous events have included a Campus Club pizza party and an oyster-eating contest at Blue Point Grill (during which Dominique Ibekwe ’16 ate 65 oysters in two minutes). “Tonight’s event will have a somewhat higher intellectual component … but the same spirit,” Class of ’66 president Charles Plohn Jr. said in his introductory remarks.

The evening’s speakers were generally encouraging about the journalism profession, despite its financial challenges. Washington Post deputy foreign editor Griff Witte ’00, son of Michael Witte ’66, said he appreciated the opportunity to be “constantly discovering” as a foreign correspondent. “Your preconceptions about the world are almost always wrong,” said Witte, who is teaching a course at Princeton this semester.

By Cara McCollum ’14

From left, Madeline Cohen '16, Gabriella Rizzo '13, and Gary Fox '13 perform a scene in "It Takes a Village," a thesis musical by Sandra Fong '13 and Emi Nakamura '13. (Photo: David Kelly Crow/Courtesy the Lewis Center for the Arts)

Sandra Fong ’13 sat helplessly in the audience as she watched her creation come to life. “I hope I remember to breathe; I’m probably going to hold my breath ’til the end,” she excitedly whispered to a friend. By the end of Saturday night, she could breathe a sigh of relief after a run of three senior-thesis workshop performances went off without a hitch.

Twelve student performers sat in a semi-circle of chairs in the Marie and Edward Matthews ’53 Acting Studio, their music stands poised between them and the audience. They wore black and white, but the topic they sang about took on a decidedly gray tone.

It Takes a Village, the thesis collaboration between Fong and composer Emi Nakamura ’13, tells the story of a character ambiguously named “M.” as he moves to the town of Standard, USA, and struggles to live a “normal” life — or, as normal of a life as one can lead being raised gender neutral. M. (played by Terrence Fraser ’16), who wears dress-like tunics and enjoys both football and ballet, is confronted by the conservative citizens of Standard and pressured to conform to the stereotypes of his gender.

The topic of gender neutrality first piqued Fong’s interest two years ago when she read a news story about a family that had chosen to raise their child gender neutral, and was both surprised and saddened by the public outcry that ensued.

The struggle to strengthen human rights in China is far from over, dissident lawyer and rights activist Chen Guangcheng told a Princeton audience March 28, and we all have a responsibility to do more.

“In this global society, everything that takes place is closely connected to our lives, and this demands every one of us to take more responsibility, especially when faced with the imperfections and injustices of this world,” Chen said.

Chen, who spoke to more than 200 students, was this year’s recipient of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service, the collegiate debating society’s highest honor.

A blind, self-taught lawyer, Chen has spent decades working to expose human rights violations in China — most famously battling aggressive enforcement of the country’s one-child policy. He organized a class-action lawsuit on behalf of thousands of women forcibly sterilized by family planning officials before he was imprisoned on what supporters say were trumped-up charges in 2006. He drew international attention when he escaped house arrest and fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in April 2012.

PAW blogger Gavin Schlissel '13 checks in with his impressions of the film Admission, set (and in part, filmed) at the University.

Princeton returned to the big screen last week for the first time since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with the release of Admission, a new movie starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd as a pair of star-crossed lovers on opposite ends of the college admissions process.

From left, big-screen admission officers Tina Fey, Wallace Shawn, and Gloria Reuben. (Photo: Courtesy Focus Features)

The film, more of a romantic comedy than a documentary tell-all, follows a college admissions officer with a scattered personal life (Fey) and a high school director (Rudd) with what can only be described as a chronic need to solve other peoples’ problems.

Though the movie is far from documentary, it does invite reconsideration of the college admissions process from the perspective of an admissions officer. Notably, the admissions committee meeting (chaired by a pink-faced, balding admissions dean who could not be more dissimilar from our Dean Janet Rapelye in physical appearance or personal presentation) cast the admissions decisions as some kind of petty political game, in which officers have a personal interest in the fate of individual students and trade favors to secure votes for their favorite applicants.

In a theater full of Princeton undergraduates, scenes like the admissions committee meeting drew awkward giggles from students imagining their own application files in front of admissions officers. As applicants with perfect test scores and umpteen extra-curricular activities were discussed and often denied admission, murmurs of “I know a kid like that,” or “Oh my god, that seems just like bicker” rippled through the theater.

Though the movie was fiction rather than journalism, many students could not avoid watching the movie in the context of their own (successful) Princeton admissions bid. “I still can’t believe how lucky I am that I got in,” said Lauren Piana ’14 immediately after the screening. “The movie makes the whole process seem so arbitrary. I wonder what it’s really like.”

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.” 

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.