“She Flourishes:” Chapters in the History of Princeton Women.

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Mudd Man­u­script Library’s new exhi­bi­tion fea­tures women at Prince­ton, from the days of Eve­lyn Col­lege (1887–1897), mainly attended by daugh­ters of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and Prince­ton The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary pro­fes­sors, to the appoint­ment of Shirley Tilgh­man as the first woman pres­i­dent of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity in 2001. For the first time our exhibit is accom­pa­nied by his­tor­i­cal film footage from the archives. This com­pi­la­tion of seg­ments from films and videos, most of which was fea­tured pre­vi­ously in The Reel Mudd, is shown here.

The footage cov­ers forty years of his­tory of Prince­ton women, from the admis­sion of Sabra Meser­vey as the first woman at the Grad­u­ate School in 1961 to Shirley Tilghman’s pres­i­dency. Sub­jects cov­ered include the intro­duc­tion of coed­u­a­tion, stu­dent activism and Sally Frank, and activ­i­ties of the Women’s Cen­ter and SHARE (Sex­ual Harassment/Assault Advis­ing, Resources, and Education).

The com­pi­la­tion opens with footage of the Class of 1939’s junior prom in 1938 (taken from its Class film), which was attended by 606 women (all listed by name in the Daily Prince). Women only entered aca­d­e­mic life at Prince­ton in 1961, when Sabra Meser­vey was admit­ted at to the Grad­u­ate School. The footage at 0:37 shows Meservey’s humor­ous account of her ini­tial con­ver­sa­tion with Pres­i­dent Robert Goheen, who ulti­mately over­saw the intro­duc­tion of under­grad­u­ate coed­u­ca­tion in 1969, and wanted to use Meser­vey as a “test case” at the Grad­u­ate School. (For the full story, see the the blog about the Cel­e­bra­tion of Coed­u­ca­tion at the Grad­u­ate School.)

The only filmed rec­ol­lec­tions about the early years of coed­u­ca­tion were found on the doc­u­men­tary Look­ing Back: Reflec­tions of Black Prince­ton Alumni (1:32), cre­ated on the occa­sion of Princeton’s 250th anniver­sary in 1996. The changes on cam­pus did not please every­body. In 1974 Prince­ton icon Fred­er­ick Fox ’39 reached out to dis­grun­tled alumni in the film A Walk in the Spring­time, point­ing out, per­haps tongue in cheek, that Nas­sau Hall’s two bronze tigers were male and female (3:19). In the fol­low­ing frag­ment, taken from the short Acad­emy award win­ning film Prince­ton, A Search For Answers (1973), women fea­ture promi­nently (3:55).

The last frag­ments fea­ture woman activism and the gains of the women’s move­ment of the 1970s and the 1980s. Two frag­ments were taken from the Class of 1986’s Video Year­book: a speech from Sally Frank ’80, who sued the last three all-male eat­ing clubs (4:18), and a Women’s Cen­ter sit-in in May 1, 1986 (4:45). The last two frag­ments have not been fea­tured yet in The Reel Mudd but will be shortly. The first is a sketch from “Sex on a Sat­ur­day Night,” a the­ater per­for­mance for fresh­men about sex­ual harass­ment, pre­sented by SHARE (5:11), The film ends with the inau­gu­ra­tion of Shirley Tilgh­man (5:11) in 2001, taken from the doc­u­men­tary “Robert F. Goheen ’40, *48; Reflec­tions of a Pres­i­dent” (2006).

The exhibit “She Flour­ishes:” Chap­ters in the His­tory of Prince­ton Women may be vis­ited dur­ing Mudd Library’s open­ing hours on week­days between 9.00 am and 4.45 pm. from now until the end of August 2012.

A Princeton Degree For a Yalie: George H.W. Bush Visits Princeton, 1991

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On May 10, 1991, Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush came to Princeton’s cam­pus to receive an hon­orary Doc­tor of Laws degree and ded­i­cate the University’s Social Sci­ence Com­plex. This $20 mil­lion dol­lar project included the newly con­structed Bend­heim and Fisher Halls, as well as a ren­o­va­tion of Cor­win Hall. This Reel Mudd blog post includes video of both of these events, along with other scenes related to the President’s visit.

Pres­i­dent Bush’s visit was notable for sev­eral rea­sons. This cer­e­mony was Bush’s first appear­ance out­side of Wash­ing­ton DC after suf­fer­ing atrial fib­ril­la­tion while jog­ging at Camp David. In addi­tion, Bush’s speech (begin­ning at 00:50:26) was expected to be a major pol­icy speech, though a report indi­cates that the pres­i­dent rewrote the address en route to Prince­ton in order to tone down direct attacks on Con­gress (Daily Prince­ton­ian, Vol­ume 115, Num­ber 65, 13 May 1991). While still pep­pered with crit­i­cism of Con­gress, the President’s talk was mainly a dis­cus­sion of the Exec­u­tive Branch’s pol­icy mak­ing role com­pared to that of the Leg­isla­tive, and Bush’s per­sonal oppo­si­tion to cre­at­ing new bureau­cra­cies. The speech is also pep­pered with humor about the Princeton/Yale rivalry and the President’s place within it (51:42), as well as Bush’s health(50:39), the Nude Olympics (51:22), John F. Kennedy (52:02), and the Prince­ton alle­giances of Sec­re­taries of State George Shultz ’42 and James Baker ‘52  (52:28).
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Bush Receives his hon­orary degree from Pres­i­dent Shapiro *64.
His­tor­i­cal Pho­to­graph Col­lec­tion, Indi­vid­u­als Series, Box MP2

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Lobby Case Exhibition on Moe Berg

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moeberg.jpgPri­mar­ily known as a Major League catcher and coach, Mor­ris “Moe” Berg was also a spy for the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS) in World War II, as well as a lawyer, lin­guist, and Prince­ton grad­u­ate. As a mem­ber of the class of 1923, Berg excelled scholas­ti­cally and ath­let­i­cally by grad­u­at­ing with hon­ors in Mod­ern Lan­guages (he stud­ied Greek, French, Span­ish, Ital­ian, Ger­man, and San­skirt), and play­ing first base and short­stop for the Prince­ton Tigers. While his bat­ting aver­age was low– Berg inspired a Major League scout to utter the phrase, “Good field, no hit”- he was known at Prince­ton for his strong arm and sound base­ball instincts.[i]

The exhibit high­lights the var­ied roles of Berg in its pre­sen­ta­tion of Prince­ton mem­o­ra­bilia from the class of 1923, Berg base­ball cards, and other mate­r­ial culled from Mudd’s two col­lec­tions on Moe Berg: The Moe Berg Col­lec­tion (1937–2007), and the newly acquired Dr. and Mrs. Arnold Bre­it­bart Col­lec­tion on Moe Berg (1934–1933). Also on dis­play is a 1959 base­ball signed by Berg and other Major League play­ers, on loan from Arnold Bre­it­bart. The Moe Berg exhibit can be located in the lobby of the See­ley G. Mudd Man­u­script Library, and will be on dis­play until August 31.
[i] Dasid­off, Nicholas. The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mys­te­ri­ous Life of Moe Berg. New York: Pan­theon, 1994.

“Princeton: A Search for Answers,” 1973

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Dur­ing a morn­ing ses­sion of the President’s Con­fer­ence in the early 1970s, a mem­ber of the stu­dent panel told the assem­bled alumni that she had come to Prince­ton “not to find a way of mak­ing a liv­ing, but instead to find a way of mak­ing a life.” Film­mak­ers Julian Krainin and DeWitt Sage used this state­ment in their pro­posal in 1972 for a new recruit­ment film for Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity. “It seems that it should be the respon­si­bil­ity of a great uni­ver­sity not so much to answer the ques­tion of how to “make a life,” but to present the stu­dent with at least the tools and courage with which he or she might dis­cover the answer.”

The result­ing film Prince­ton: A Search for Answers won an Oscar  in 1974 for Doc­u­men­tary Short Sub­ject. Film pro­ducer and direc­tor Joshua Logan ’31, who had started his stage writ­ing and direct­ing career in Princeton’s Tri­an­gle Club, was one of the first to see it. “I not only believe that it is a mov­ing, funny, and stim­u­lat­ing account of a Uni­ver­sity I once knew but had almost for­got­ten,”  he wrote to his fel­low mem­bers of the Acad­emy. “It tells about the gleam that flits across the human mind and gives us all some­thing to hope for, to live for. It makes the human race quite a bit more respectable then (sic) we have recently thought it to be.” The film which has recently been remas­tered (2013) is fea­tured here.

In order to write the film treat­ment and script, Dewitt Sage spent sev­eral months on cam­pus, attend­ing classes and sem­i­nars, and talk­ing with stu­dents, fac­ulty and staff. Once the film treat­ment was approved, Julian Krainin took over to super­vise the actual cam­era work. Dur­ing 1972 and early 1973 four­teen and a half hours of 16mm color footage was shot for the thirty minute film. The out­takes are kept in the Uni­ver­sity Archives. To accom­pany the film, the Office of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­duced a hand­some brochure with quotes and infor­ma­tion about the fac­ulty fea­tured (see SearchForAnswers.pdf).

As already sug­gested by the title, the film’s main empha­sis is on edu­ca­tion, schol­ar­ship, and student-instructor rela­tions. The film includes footage of tuto­ri­als and lec­tures by physics pro­fes­sor and Dean of the Fac­ulty Aaron Lemon­ick (1:50, 9:11), and pro­fes­sors Edward Cone (Music, 3:01, 29:48), John Wheeler (Physics 7:05), Daniel Seltzer (Eng­lish, 12:39), and Ann Dou­glas Wood (Eng­lish, 25:02). Wheeler is filmed dur­ing a lec­ture about the impli­ca­tions of black holes (he is cred­ited with coin­ing the phrase in 1967), while Dan Seltzer teaches a Shake­speare act­ing class and lec­tures about Henry IV (Part 2). Addi­tional footage fea­tures Prince­ton pres­i­dent William Bowen dur­ing a ques­tion and answer ses­sion with alumni and under­grad­u­ates (9:55, 26:11, 27:49) and the work of two grad­u­ate stu­dents: Niall O’Murchadha (Physics, 5:10, 26:51) and Maury Wolfe (Archi­tec­ture, 16:11).

Pro­duced only a few years after the intro­duc­tion of co-education in 1969, at a time when diver­si­fi­ca­tion of the stu­dent body was a pri­or­ity for Prince­ton, women and African Amer­i­can stu­dents fea­ture promi­nently in cam­pus scenes (9:40, 20:56, 24:36) and in the class rooms. There is lit­tle empha­sis in the film on extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties. In addi­tion to footage of the Glee Club singing Bach in Alexan­der Hall (directed by Pro­fes­sor of Music Wal­ter Noll­ner, 17:47), sport scenes are lim­ited to marathon run­ning and row­ing (23:25). Addi­tional footage includes stu­dents shar­ing their views of Prince­ton in a pub (19:45, the legal drink­ing age was still eigh­teen!) Some his­tor­i­cal pho­tographs and footage is shown at 22:27, includ­ing a frag­ment of a chem­istry lec­ture by the famous Hubert Alyea (pre­vi­ously fea­tured) and the Tri­an­gle Club.

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Reunions, reunions, 1915–2009

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Princeton’s reunions are almost as old as Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity itself, going back to the days when the uni­ver­sity was still known as the “Col­lege of New Jer­sey.” In today’s blog, posted dur­ing the Reunions week­end of 2011, we are show­ing you the old­est reunion footage in the Uni­ver­sity Archives: an anno­tated film of the Class of 1895’s 20th and 30th Reunions in 1915 and 1925, fol­lowed by footage of the Class of 1915’s 40th Reunion in 1955, and the Class of 1944’s 65th Reunion in 2009, the most recent reunion footage in the Uni­ver­sity Archives. The films may be com­pared with reunion footage fea­tured in pre­vi­ous blogs, includ­ing the Reunion of the Class of 1921 in 1923 and 1926, and the Reunions and P-rade of 1928, of 1960 and 1961, and of 1986. A com­pi­la­tion of this footage to wel­come return­ing alumni in 2011 can be found here.

The Class of 1895’s 20th reunion footage is the first of its kind, and would well have been the very old­est film in the Uni­ver­sity Archives, if not for the news­reel footage of the inau­gu­ra­tion of Pres­i­dent John Grier Hibben in 1912. The film was made by the Con­necti­cut Film Com­pany, which had two men fol­low the class around cam­pus on Reunions Sat­ur­day, then return the fol­low­ing Mon­day to show the film at the Class Din­ner. As Class Sec­re­tary Andrew Imbrie put it in a let­ter to class­mates in advance of Reunions, this would be “a stunt never before attempted at any Prince­ton reunion.”

The anno­tated film opens with alumni and their sons dis­em­bark­ing from the train (which is still in front of Blair Hall). We then see mem­bers of the Class of 1895 pass by their place of lodg­ing, the Hill Dor­mi­tory at 48 Uni­ver­sity Place (0:48). Next we watch the class as they pro­ceed through FitzRan­dolph Gate accom­pa­nied by Klingler’s Allen­town Band (1:07). Class mem­bers have been instructed to wear straw hats, white trousers and a dark coat. Hat bands, but­tons and white umbrel­las were pro­vided for the class. “Umbrel­las keep hot sun off bald heads,” wrote Imbrie, “and when used en masse dis­pel the silly feel­ing which one has when one car­ries one by one’s self.”

Back at head­quar­ters at the Bachelor’s Club, we see a crowd of men and chil­dren gath­ered around class mem­ber Howard Colby’s “‘sar­sa­par­illa auto­mo­bile,’ built, dec­o­rated and pro­vi­sioned with thought­ful con­sid­er­a­tion for the small army of sons and daugh­ters” of class mem­bers (2:23). As the film winds down, the cam­era pans over the 136 class mem­bers who returned for 1895’s 20th along with their sons (3:53). The D.Q. Brown Long Dis­tance Cup is pre­sented by Dick­in­son Brown to his class­mate Henry “Spi­der” McNulty, who trav­eled the far­thest, from China, to attend the reunion.

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Residential Colleges and Wu Hall

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In this short video from around 1983, Pres­i­dent Bowen dis­cusses Wu Hall, the then-new din­ing facil­ity for But­ler College. The video high­lights three ele­ments that played increas­ingly sig­nif­i­cant roles in shap­ing Prince­ton over the fol­low­ing decades: the sup­port of alum­nus Gor­don Wu, the res­i­den­tial col­leges sys­tem, and the archi­tec­ture of alum­nus Robert Venturi.

We don’t know the exact pur­pose for which this video was cre­ated, but it may have been part of the pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial for A Cam­paign for Prince­ton, the fundrais­ing cam­paign that offi­cially ran from 1982 to 1986. As pre­vi­ously dis­cussed on this blog, A Cam­paign for Prince­tonwas enor­mously suc­cess­ful, bring­ing in an aver­age of $1,000,000 per week at its height.The Sup­port of Gor­don Wu ’58

In 1981, before the cam­paign even offi­cially began, alum­nus Gor­don Y.S. Wu donated $1,000,000 to it. Wu earned a Bachelor’s of Sci­ence in Engi­neer­ing from Prince­ton in 1958 and sub­se­quently returned to his native Hong Kong. There, he founded Hopewell Hold­ings, a firm whose notable projects have included high­ways, hotels, rail­roads and power plants through­out Asia. Wu has been described as one of the wealth­i­est busi­ness­men in Hong Kong and as one of the most influ­en­tial engi­neers and busi­ness­men in the world.
As A Cam­paign for Prince­ton was offi­cially being launched in 1982, Prince­ton announced that Wu had donated an addi­tional 25 mil­lion Hong Kong dol­lars in honor of his class’s upcom­ing 25th anniver­sary reunion. The funds, then equal to approx­i­mately USD $4.3 mil­lion, were used pri­mar­ily to con­struct a din­ing facil­ity for the then-new But­ler College.
As gen­er­ous as these dona­tions were, they rep­re­sented only a small frac­tion of what was to come. In 1995, Wu made a his­toric pledge to the With One Accord fundrais­ing cam­paign, which was held as part of the University’s 250th anniver­sary. That year, Wu pledged to donate USD $100 mil­lion, the largest gift ever by a for­eigner to a U.S. uni­ver­sity, with the last pay­ment sched­uled to coin­cide with his class’ 50th anniver­sary reunion in 2008. Wu is cur­rently serv­ing as a Trustee of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity, with a term end­ing in 2012.
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The Vision of William Bowen *58

Although dwarfed in mag­ni­tude by his later dona­tions, Wu’s 1982 dona­tion has impacted the lives of lit­er­ally thou­sands of Prince­to­ni­ans. It gave phys­i­cal form to Pres­i­dent Bowen’s aspi­ra­tions for the res­i­den­tial col­lege sys­tem, which has defined the Prince­ton under­grad­u­ate expe­ri­ence for every class since.
Pres­i­dent Bowen (right) formed the Com­mit­tee on Under­grad­u­ate Res­i­den­tial Life (CURL) in 1978. Made up of admin­is­tra­tors, fac­ulty and stu­dents, the com­mit­tee was charged with address­ing the inter­twined issues of Prince­ton stu­dent hous­ing, din­ing and social­iza­tion. Although some of the pro­pos­als in the committee’s final report – par­tic­u­larly those relat­ing to eat­ing clubs – did not come to pass, its pri­mary pro­posal, the estab­lish­ment of three new res­i­den­tial col­leges, came to fruition within a few short years.
Two of the three new col­leges, Rock­e­feller and Mathey, were estab­lished in extant build­ings in Princeton’s tra­di­tional col­le­giate gothic style. But­ler Col­lege, how­ever, was housed in the “New New Quad,” which the Daily Prince­ton­ian defined for incom­ing fresh­man as, “Group of five newer dorms located on the lower-lower cam­pus, fondly known as “The Sticks,” “New New World,” or “Brave New Quad.””
The con­struc­tion of Wu Hall trans­formed this “group of dorms” into a true res­i­den­tial col­lege. As the first Mas­ter of But­ler Col­lege, Emory Elliot, said near the end of the first semes­ter that Wu Hall was open, “It’s enabled the spirit of the col­lege to come into full blos­som.” He also described the new servery and din­ing facil­ity as hav­ing a “friendly atmos­phere con­ducive to hav­ing peo­ple come together.” Footage about But­ler Col­lege and Wu Hall after the 2009 ren­o­va­tions can be found here.

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Being Jewish at Princeton: from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s days to the Center of Jewish Life

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“The Prince­ton of today is not the Prince­ton of Scott Fitzger­ald. And by that I mean you can feel com­fort­able being Jew­ish, you can feel com­fort­able being Asian, you can feel com­fort­able being African Amer­i­can. And while this might not always have been true (…) it is def­i­nitely true today.” The speaker is Erik Ruben ’98 (1:46), one of the stu­dents fea­tured in the pro­mo­tional video below about the Cen­ter for Jew­ish Life, which opened in 1993. Today’s entry takes a brief look at the his­tory of the admis­sion of Jew­ish stu­dents at Prince­ton since the 1920s.

F. Scott Fitzger­ald’s 1920 debut novel, This Side of Par­adise, was set at Prince­ton and reflected the atmos­phere of the eat­ing clubs and of the uni­ver­sity itself, which (not to Princeton’s lik­ing) he described as “the pleas­an­test coun­try club in America.” Fitzgerald wrote his book at a time when some north­east­ern col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties, par­tic­u­larly in urban areas where many East­ern Euro­pean Jew­ish immi­grants had set­tled, per­ceived they had a “Jew­ish prob­lem” in that if they admit­ted too many Jew­ish stu­dents, Protes­tant mid­dle and upper class stu­dents would be dri­ven away. Colum­bia, which had the largest Jew­ish enroll­ment at 40%, was the first to impose a quota in 1921. Prince­ton, how­ever, always claimed not to use quo­tas. As late as 1948 Rad­cliffe Heer­mance, Princeton’s first direc­tor of admis­sions from 1922 to 1950, vehe­mently denied a claim that Prince­ton used a quota to keep Jew­ish stu­dents under 4%. “We’ve never had a quota sys­tem, we don’t have a quota sys­tem, we will never have a quota sys­tem” he told the Daily Prince­ton­ian.

Hutchins121770.jpgA let­ter from for­mer Uni­ver­sity of Chicago pres­i­dent Robert Hutchins, who vis­ited Prince­ton Pres­i­dent John Grier Hibben in the early 1930s, indi­cated oth­er­wise. Hutchins wrote Prince­ton senior Steven L. Buen­ning ’71 In Decem­ber 1970, as Buen­ning was seek­ing infor­ma­tion for his senior the­sis, a biog­ra­phy about Hibben. In the let­ter Hutchins recalls how he had asked Hibben about the num­ber of Jew­ish stu­dents at Prince­ton. Accord­ing to Hutchins, Hibben claimed that the num­ber just hap­pened, where­upon his wife exclaimed: “Jack Hibben, I don’t see how you can sit there and lie to this young man. You know very well that you and Dean Eisen­hart get together every year and fix the quota.”
This anec­dote has been quoted in sev­eral books, and in their foot­notes the authors refer to Buenning’s the­sis only, which includes quotes from the let­ter. Above we repro­duce the orig­i­nal let­ter, which is found in Hibben’s pres­i­den­tial papers in the Office of the Pres­i­dent Records (AC117, Series 14, Box 65, folder 6). The first para­graph, in which Hutchins recalls Hibben’s pro­fessed igno­rance about the rea­sons why black stu­dents did not come to Prince­ton, is remark­able in itself. Unlike Yale and Har­vard, Prince­ton did not admit African Amer­i­can stu­dents  until World War II (the first four African Amer­i­cans were in the Navy V-12 pro­gram).  For more infor­ma­tion about African Amer­i­can stu­dents at Prince­ton, see our pre­vi­ous blog.

Heer­mance lim­ited Jew­ish enroll­ment by devel­op­ing an admis­sion pol­icy that put an empha­sis on “char­ac­ter,” which, how­ever sub­jec­tive, was still regarded as defen­si­ble in pub­lic. Cri­te­ria like “man­hood,” “lead­er­ship” “par­tic­i­pa­tion in ath­let­ics” and “home envi­ron­ment and com­pan­ions” were assessed by using inter­views, let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, and a social rank­ing sys­tem. A pow­er­ful dis­in­cen­tive to even apply was the anti-Semitic rep­u­ta­tion of Princeton’s eat­ing clubs, which con­sid­ered most Jews “unclubbable.”

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Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, An Overview

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Since 1951, the Prince­ton Plasma Physics Lab­o­ra­tory (PPPL) has con­ducted research aimed at devel­op­ing con­trolled nuclear fusion as an energy alter­na­tive to fos­sil fuels. Founded by Lyman Spitzer *38, the PPPL is a joint project of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity and the US Depart­ment of Energy, located on Princeton’s James For­re­stal Cam­pus. This 1989 pub­lic­ity film high­lights the PPPL’s his­tory, projects, and progress toward its mis­sion of devel­op­ing sus­tain­able nuclear fusion.

The film’s focus is the PPPL’s main exper­i­ment in the 1980s and 1990s, the Toka­mak Fusion Test Reac­tor (TFTR). This device used mag­netic fields to con­tain a plasma made of hydro­gen iso­topes which were heated to a tem­per­a­ture so high that their nuclei fuse together into a new mol­e­cule, gen­er­at­ing energy as a byprod­uct. TFTR’s goal was to develop a process of gen­er­at­ing more energy through the fusion than the amount of elec­tric­ity required to power the reac­tor con­tain­ing the plasma. By 1989, TFTR’s suc­cesses included achiev­ing a then record-temperature of  200 mil­lion degrees Cel­sius and con­firm­ing exis­tence of a so-called “boot­strap cur­rent” within plasmas.

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Dean Fred Hargadon on Princeton admissions, circa 1990

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Today’s post was writ­ten by Lisa Dunk­ley ’83, Project Ana­lyst at the Office of Devel­op­ment, who worked under Fred Har­gadon from 1988 to 1994.

“Yes!”  Those of us who knew, or knew of, Dean Fred Har­gadon can­not hear that excla­ma­tion with­out think­ing about the blunt, wel­come way suc­cess­ful Prince­ton appli­cants (and Stan­ford stu­dents before them) learned their admis­sion results.  The phrase became so strongly iden­ti­fied with him that Har­gadon Hall, the Whit­man Col­lege dor­mi­tory that was an hon­orific gift from sev­eral anony­mous alumni, has the word engraved in stone at the build­ing entrance.  The sim­plic­ity of the mes­sage belied the long hours and deep expe­ri­ence that led to those decisions.

I worked in Princeton’s under­grad­u­ate admis­sion office from 1988 to 1994, and was one of the first three peo­ple the Dean hired. I first met Fred at my interview—he is a tall, unas­sum­ing and often endear­ingly rum­pled man. I was work­ing in book pub­lish­ing, and he is a vora­cious reader. We talked at length and with ease about books, and on occa­sion he would inter­ject a question. I was a lit­tle tense, wait­ing for the “real” inter­view to begin. After about 45 min­utes or so Fred stood and thanked me for com­ing: that was the inter­view. In ret­ro­spect I was impressed at how my answers revealed much more than I real­ized, an expe­ri­ence I found as dis­con­cert­ing as it was fascinating. When Fred offered me the job a few weeks later, there was only one answer: Yes!

An admis­sion neo­phyte, I was clue­less about how dif­fer­ently the office oper­ated under his watch com­pared to his pre­de­ces­sors, but I didn’t par­tic­u­larly care. Fred’s approach seemed right to me: admis­sion was all about the appli­cant: our respon­si­bil­ity was to pay very sharp atten­tion to all details and to make the play­ing field as even as pos­si­ble for every­one, from the child of itin­er­ant migrant farm work­ers to the off­spring of roy­alty, both real and conferred. Our job was to ren­der a rea­soned opin­ion about how well each stu­dent took advan­tage of what­ever resources were at his or her disposal. “Children don’t choose where they grow up,” he once told me.

Fred was very open about how he ran the annual process and dis­cussed it with audi­ences on many occa­sions over the years (of which this video­tape is one). When he was asked how he man­aged to bal­ance all of the com­pet­ing inter­ests at play in each year’s appli­cant group—a fre­quent question—he said that his goal was to leave every spe­cial inter­est group only slightly unhappy.
Staff train­ing was unlike any­thing I’d known before. During the admis­sion sea­son, “first read­ers” like me passed our fold­ers to more senior officers. Later we would review the finer obser­va­tions they had added to our sum­maries: it was the best kind of one-on-one tutor­ing we could have. Summers are tra­di­tion­ally slow in admis­sion, when most of us either meet with cam­pus vis­i­tors or take vacation. In this “off sea­son,” Fred’s strong pref­er­ence was for us to read books of all kinds. He had a list of rec­om­men­da­tions (from On Excel­lence to The Phan­tom Toll­booth), but there was sound rea­son­ing behind this exer­cise: it was our respon­si­bil­ity to have a wide, deep and flex­i­ble vocab­u­lary to describe each appli­cant with as much accu­racy as pos­si­ble. “There is a right word for every­thing,” he told us.

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“Princeton Football, the Winning Way,” 1975

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Today’s blog is writ­ten by Mark F. Bern­stein ’83, author of Foot­ball: the Ivy League Ori­gins of an Amer­i­can Obses­sion (2001). A pre­vi­ous entry from him about Prince­ton foot­ball can be found here.

The title of this video notwith­stand­ing, Prince­ton foot­ball fell on hard times after the deci­sion to aban­don the sin­gle wing offense in the late Sixties.
In 1973, hop­ing to revive their for­tunes, they hired Bob Cas­ci­ola ’58, a for­mer All-Ivy tackle, as head coach. Casciola had been an assis­tant coach under Robert Col­man and is cred­ited with per­suad­ing future All-American Cosmo Iacavazzi ’66 to attend Princeton. The team fin­ished last in the Ivy League in Casciola’s first sea­son, but improved in 1974 as Walt Snick­en­berger ’75 won the Asa Bush­nell Cup as Ivy League Player of the Year. That raised hopes that the Tigers could return to the top of the stand­ings in 1975.
Those 1975 Tigers had sev­eral good play­ers, includ­ing quar­ter­back Ron Beible ’76, a civil engi­neer­ing major who set sev­eral Prince­ton pass­ing records.       The film reflects the chang­ing university. In addi­tion to the long hair and flam­boy­ant ’70s clothes (includ­ing Beible’s white shoes), there were African-Americans on the team and female cheer­lead­ers on the side­lines (0:15). Several inter­views were filmed out­side Jad­win Gym­na­sium, which opened in 1969. Casciola refers to the lack of spring prac­tice, a rule for Ivy foot­ball teams that dates to the early 1950s and pre­dates the for­mal cre­ation of a league.
The film also shows dif­fer­ent hel­met logos. Princeton exper­i­mented with sev­eral designs dur­ing this period, includ­ing the abstract striped tiger tail and the car­toon run­ning tiger. Not until 1998 did they revert to the clas­sic “Michi­gan” hel­met design that coach Fritz Crisler had inau­gu­rated at Prince­ton dur­ing the 1930s.
Unfor­tu­nately, the high hopes for the 1975 sea­son were not realized. The team won its first three games but fin­ished 4–5 and fifth in the Ivy League. Casciola con­tin­ued as coach until 1977 and later served as chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of the NBA’s New Jer­sey Nets.
Nine­teen seventy-five was, how­ever, a more suc­cess­ful year for Princeton’s men’s bas­ket­ball team, which won the National Invi­ta­tional Tournament.
–Mark F. Bern­stein ’83
This 16mm film is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 0218)