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An outbreak of stomach flu that coincided with the start of Intersession Jan. 29 has affected about 100 students so far, but is showing signs of abating, according to University spokesman Martin Mbugua. Typical symptoms for this kind of flu, also known as gastroenteritis, include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and sometimes fever.

 

Students have been treated at McCosh Health Center and a large number returned to their dorms or residences to recuperate, he said. University Health Services (UHS) and the Office of Environmental Health and Safety issued campus hygiene advisories on Feb. 3 and 6, which provided the University community with information on preventing the spread of the illness and asked those students already affected to avoid close contact with others and contact UHS.

 

Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Richard Murphy headlined a Feb. 7 panel discussion on political developments in Syria that drew a standing-room-only audience at Robertson Hall. Woodrow Wilson School visiting lecturer Marwa Daoudy and graduate student Karam Nachar, a Syrian grassroots organizer, joined Murphy on the panel.

Murphy, whom Wilson School professor Daniel Kurtzer introduced as “one of the great practitioners of the art of diplomacy,” opened the discussion of the ongoing Syrian revolution against President Bashar Assad’s regime, which has escalated in brutality since the revolution's inception last March during the Arab Spring.

As a young consulate aide in Syria in the 1960s and later as the U.S. ambassador in the 1970s, Murphy witnessed the rise to power of Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, and the “iron hand” with which his regime governed.

Murphy recounted some of his early experiences to highlight Syria’s present-day situation. He described one consulate party where a skit portraying the king of Jordan as a “dancing monkey on the leash of Western imperialism” caused the Syrian officials to shout with laughter. “Syria has always been a destroyer,” Murphy said, referencing the country’s nearly three decades of occupying Lebanon and its history of cooperating with Iran, Hezbollah, and terrorist groups.

He particularly excoriated Bashar Assad for his nearsightedness and pride. According to Murphy, Assad “did not foresee that the Arab Spring would sweep into his country” and “takes pride in standing alone,” despite being vilified for his use of force against his own people.

Football standout Chuck Dibilio ’15 suffered a stroke Jan. 19, the University said in a statement.

 

He was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, where doctors removed a clot in the main artery of Dibilio’s brain, according to the player’s father, Chuck Dibilio Sr. He said doctors were uncertain about his son’s long-term prognosis or the cause of the stroke.

 

Dibilio suffered the stroke in the evening while studying with a group of people during the University’s finals period, according to The Daily Princetonian.

 

Rob Melosky, who was Dibilio’s football coach at Nazareth (Pa.) High School, told the Allentown, Pa., newspaper The Morning Call that Dibilio has movement in his extremities but is struggling with his speech.

 

Dibilio, a tailback, was the breakout star of the Ivy League during the 2011 season. He rushed for 1,068 yards, the most by a non-transfer student in Ivy League history. He was named the 2011 Ivy League Football Rookie of the Year.

 

Inviting some 90 schoolchildren to join him on the stage in Richardson Auditorium, Moses, who was a key figure in the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project to register black voters, said, “We were able to get segregation out of three areas of the country’s life: public accommodations, the right to vote, and the national Democratic party. But we did not get segregation and Jim Crow out of education, and that’s going to be your job. You are going to have to do that in this century.”

Moses, who holds a one-year appointment as a visiting fellow at Princeton, will co-teach a course this spring focusing on education and labor policies through the lens of race.

 

 

Princeton’s MLK Day Journey Awards were presented to Miguel Centeno, a sociology professor who founded the Princeton University Preparatory Program, which provides low-income high school students with intensive preparation for college; and Sandra Mukasa ’12, who has been a leader in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues on campus and has worked for women’s rights in Africa.

Aesthetics of the University Chapel have benefited as the result of an unlikely state mandate: new fire codes for exiting buildings.

 

As part of an ongoing program to bring its older building into compliance with newer fire safety regulations, the University recently replaced the Chapel’s five pairs of side doors with new doors that accommodate push bars for exiting, fitted the interior front doors with automatic opening devices, and installed lighted exit signs. Additionally, the building’s 11-foot-tall front doors and their elaborate decorative hardware were restored.

 

According to Dan Casey, coordinating architect from the Office of the University Architect, state requirements potentially meant clunky hardware and lots of wires, but care was taken to minimize visual impact. “We wanted not to harm the experience of going through the building,” Casey said.

 

For the final piece in our review of the year at Princeton, we flipped through the magazine to select 2011’s top news stories on campus. Add your picks in the comments section below.

 

 

Princeton returned to an early-admission process in the fall, ending a four-year experiment with a single application deadline that drew ­little support from the University’s peer ­institutions. Related stories: Reversing course, Princeton to offer early-action option; Early admission, take two; More than 3,500 apply for early action

 

The University’s proposal for a $300 million arts and transit center south of McCarter Theatre faced resistance from municipal officials and local residents, partly because of a plan to move the Dinky station 460 feet to the south. In December, the proposal moved ahead, thanks to key zoning approvals (details will appear in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue of PAW). Related stories: After a 'go/no-go moment,' arts center plan in jeopardy; Slow progress on arts center plans; Area residents file lawsuit to block Dinky move

 

Our annual look at the year at Princeton begins with highlights from PAW Online, including stories that sparked the most conversation, features that drew the most readers, and videos that attracted the most viewers.

 

 

Every story, letter, and blog post offers the chance to comment. These five stories were the most popular discussion points for our readers in 2011.

 

1. Pranks for the memories

Gregg Lange ’70’s countdown of campus pranks inspired alumni to reminisce about their own shenanigans.

 

2. Assessing a renewed focus on grad students, alumni

Graduate alumni shared their experiences and tips in letters and comments about the University’s goal of better engagement.

 

3. West *80’s views on Obama stir black-community debate
Valid points or personal gripes? Readers took both sides when examining Cornel West *80’s take on the Obama presidency.

 

One of the Woodrow Wilson School’s most beloved community members, former facilities and services director Agnes Pearson, died Nov. 26 at her home in Levittown, Pa. Pearson had retired in 1997 after working for more than 20 years at the school.

 

Pearson was known for making sure everything ran smoothly in the school, whether that meant carefully planning a foreign ambassador’s visit or making sure the school’s lounge was stocked with coffee — a feature not overlooked by busy students.

 

Over the course of her career at Princeton, Pearson developed a close relationship with Wilson School students, whom she came to address as “kiddos.” They would seek her out if they needed assistance with a task, big or small.

 

“The students will remember her with great fondness as someone who genuinely cared about them and was willing to help them in any way she could, whatever it took,” said Wardell Robinson-Moore, former assistant dean of the Wilson School and the current executive director of Princeton-Blairstown Center.

 

A week after protests and walkouts at on-campus J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs recruiting events, students reflected on their experiences and where they hope the Occupy Princeton movement will go next.

 

“The on-campus reaction was exactly as I expected — it’s going to be controversial,” said Evan Warner ’12, a student involved in the Dec. 7 and 8 protests. “What surprised me a little bit was the amount of coverage it’s gotten elsewhere, including The New York Times.”

 

About 20 students targeted sessions held by J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs last week as part of Occupy Princeton, founded this fall in response to the Occupy Wall Street campaign. The students, dressed in business attire, carried resumés and networked with recruiters who approached them. After directing pointed questions at the recruiters during the sessions’ question-and-answer periods, the demonstrators used the Occupy movement’s “mic check” call-and-response method to air their grievances.

 

Photos by Emily Trost ’13

 

After the onslaught of midterms, most Princeton students headed home or into hibernation for the weeklong break that began after classes ended Oct. 28. While my classmates recovered, I stood in a Swiss quarry clumsily balancing a hardhat on my head, gazing up at massive walls of chalky yellow and white rock.

 

With me stood nine students from my paleontology course, a recent alumnus, a geosciences lecturer, a geosciences professor, a Swiss professor of geology, and his graduate student. Our Swiss guide asked us to examine the massive rock for clues about what sort of environment we would have been standing in over 130 million years ago. Putting our noses close to these chalky surfaces, we could see that these rocks told a surprising story. If we had been here 130 million years ago, we would have been walking on the seafloor.

 

We were looking at the remnants of ancient carbonate platforms, the products of today’s coral reefs that serve as indicators of changing ocean and global climate conditions over time. Our studies of mass extinctions in Professor Gerta Keller’s 300-level course, “Evolution and Catastrophes,” required an understanding of the many global processes that contribute to these severe environmental changes. But to really understand those processes, Keller makes it a necessity that her class travel each year. “The classroom is one thing,” she said. “It’s theoretical. You are shown pictures, given concepts, and explained things — but it’s not real.” Standing on an ancient seafloor in Switzerland, however, is.

 

Four Princeton undergrads traveled to Palo Alto, Calif., last weekend to compete at Facebook’s campus in a national hackathon programming competition. They ended the weekend with top honors for their program “Color Me Bold,” and a head start on a potential future business dispensing algorithmic fashion advice to end users over the Internet.

 

The platform, created by Daniel Chyan ’14, Angela Dai ’13, Tiantian Zha ’13 and Amy Zhou ’13, would allow users to take a photograph of an outfit and upload it a website that then recommends modifications to the outfit based on complementary color schemes.

 

If the idea seems fanciful or trivial, consider the technical obstacles the group overcame: The program first reads the photograph, then normalizes for the lighting, identifies colors and articles of clothing or accessories like ties or jewelry, generates advice based on color coordination algorithms, and finally displays the recommendation in a visually appealing format. And the team designed and built the program in a period of 24 hours.

Seventeen young men and women dressed in button-down shirts and business attire quietly took their seats at a long, narrow table in a conference room just down the street from the white dome of the U.S. Capitol. They opened their binders and began sorting bills and resolutions they planned to discuss for the next few hours. A gavel banged on the table.

 

“The chair will now look favorably on a motion to open the docket.”  

 

A young woman in a white blouse waved her name placard. “Motion to open the docket,” she offered.

 

“Is there a second? All in favor?” asked the chairwoman.

 

Seventeen placards shot up into the air. Gavel in hand, Molly Nacey ’13 smiled at the group from the head of the table. “The chair will now entertain ‘The No-Fly List Notification Act,’” she said. “Please take a few minutes to read it over.”

 

The room quieted to the sounds of rustling papers and pen scratches as 17 high school students from across the country prepared to debate the proposed legislation with Nacey moderating the discussion.

 

For Nacey, it was her first time chairing a committee at the Princeton Model Congress (PMC) conference, a three-day, student-run program held in Washington, D.C.  Designed to be educational, fun, and transformative for high school students, the conference, now in its 30th year, invites students to step into the shoes of U.S. congressmen and women, Supreme Court justices, cabinet members, members of the press, and others involved with the political process.