Since it was posted on Princeton’s Cam­pus Life chan­nel, “An Under­grad­u­ate View of Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity,” pro­duced by the Orange Key Soci­ety in 1962, has received unex­pected atten­tion. In the film, which is staged as an instruc­tional meet­ing for Orange Key guides, Charles W. Green­leaf ’63, vice-president of the Key­cept Pro­gram, dis­cusses what dis­tin­guishes Prince­ton from other uni­ver­si­ties, with empha­sis on teacher-student rela­tion­ships and oppor­tu­ni­ties for indi­vid­ual growth. Cre­ated sev­eral years before rebel­lion and reforms swept the cam­pus, the well-scripted film is an inter­est­ing artifact.

The film includes exten­sive footage of fac­ulty and cam­pus. Sub­jects dis­cussed are: fac­ulty and the pre­cep­to­r­ial sys­tem (with pro­fes­sors John Turke­vich (chem­istry) and Eric Gold­man (his­tory) 3:30); inde­pen­dent research projects (with Pro­fes­sor D.C. Hazen (aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer­ing) 6:52); research at Fire­stone Library (9:13); fresh­man advis­ers (11:29 and 13:44); the honor sys­tem (15:33); finan­cial aid (17:23); dor­mi­to­ries (18:02); extracur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties and sports (19:30).

Doc­u­ments within the Uni­ver­sity Archives reveal very lit­tle about the con­text in which the film was pro­duced. We there­fore are call­ing on alumni who par­tic­i­pated. Can you tell us any­thing about the mak­ing of the film? Who wrote the script? What was the audi­ence, and how long was the film in use? We look for­ward to your comments!

This 16mm film is part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (item no. 0091).