On the Campus: October 23, 1996

MALEFACTORS AND MEN OF HONOR
A relentless skewering of reknowned alumni
BY DAVE ITZKOFF '98

[Editor's Note -- In the spirit of the 250th, PAW offers the following facetious sketches of famous former Princeton students. WARNING: Do not attempt to read the following without a properly adjusted sense of humor. Failure to do so may result in injury, when your furious letter to the editor forces you to engage in serious foot and mouth gymnastics. These profiles originally appeared in the Class of 2000 Student Guide to Princeton.]

James Madison 1771: Despite his central importance in the maturation of America, from coauthoring The Federalist Papers to sponsoring the Bill of Rights to serving as the United States's fourth president (not to mention finishing the university's four-year curriculum in just two years), James Madison will always be overshadowed by his wife Dolly's invention of ice cream.

Aaron Burr 1772: Will history best remember Aaron Burr as a Revolutionary War hero and the third vice-president of the United States, or as the man who killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel and fled to Mexico in hopes of founding his own empire? Probably neither -- from now on, he'll be forever known as "that guy from the milk commercial." (Sorry, but TV's Perry Mason was played by Raymond Burr. Minus 10 points.)

Woodrow Wilson 1879: In the annals of Princeton history, Thomas Woodrow "Woody Woo" Wilson is the standard by which all other graduates are judged. He was a writer and editor at The Daily Princetonian, returned to the university as a professor of "jurisprudence and political economy," served as Old Nassau's president, created its preceptorial system, and was elected governor of New Jersey. But it was all downhill from there: his only notable accomplishment after this was leading the country through World War I as the 28th president of the United States.

Jimmy Stewart '32: During his salad days, Jimmy Stewart was the star of many Triangle Club shows and Princeton's head cheerleader. Noted for his unique style of delivery, Stewart has gone on to star in dozens of motion pictures and even won an Oscar for his role in 1940's The Philadelphia Story. Still, he will certainly be best-loved for his sentimental lead performance in that Christmas-time classic, Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Charles "Pete" Conrad, Jr. '53: Besides the fact that he calls himself Pete when his first name is Charles, what's really cool about this guy is that he was the third man to walk on the moon, and while he was there he planted a Princeton flag in the lunar soil. Let's see the kids at MIT try to top that.

Ralph Nader '55: A tireless advocate for the rights of consumers, Ralph Nader first caught the nation's attention in 1965 with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, which attacked the American auto industry and GM's Corvair line in particular. Nader recently followed this up with a sequel, Unable to Achieve Any Speed, about the Geo Metro.

Bill Bradley '65: This man was probably delivered in a pair of Nikes, clutching a basketball in his newborn hands. In his Princeton basketball career, Bradley led the team to three Ivy League championships and was named all-America in each season. He played the U.S. Olympic team in 1964 and won the gold medal, then deferred a post-graduation offer from the NBA to study at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. When he did finally return to play for the New York Knicks, the team won two NBA championships, in 1970 and in 1973. These days, Bradley is looking for new worlds to conquer after finishing up his stint as a U.S. Senator from New Jersey or something.

Brooke Shields '87: Actually, Brooke Shields was famous before she even got here, having already appeared in a steamy series of commercials for Calvin Klein and starred in that masterwork of American cinema, The Blue Lagoon. Since her days with the Triangle Club at Princeton, Brooke's been a little choosier about her projects, turning up in such noteworthy films as Brenda Starr and Freaked!, getting billed just above Marcel the Monkey in an episode of NBC's Friends, and resurfacing every so often at Andre Agassi's tennis matches. Oh yeah, she also has a sitcom called Suddenly Susan.

Dean Cain '88: Having broken record after record while playing football for the Tigers (and dating Brook, according to rumor), Dean Cain went on to a blink-and-you-missed-him career in the NFL. He then turned to acting, becoming the first Princetonian ever to guest star on Beverly Hills, 90210. Princeton's heartthrob emeritus now appears regularly on ABC's Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Guess which character he plays?

Then, of course, there's Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who once remarked, "Princeton sent me a rejection letter so elegantly worded that I still think of myself as an alumnus." Okay, Mr. Speaker, whatever you say -- but you're still not getting into Reunions.

INFAMOUS DROPOUTS
Eugene O'Neill: Though he may have abandoned Princeton for "life experience," he still did the univeristy proud with a playwriting career that won him four Pulitzer prizes and, the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature. His oeuvre includes the subtly religious The Iceman Cometh, the autobiographical Long Day's Journey into Night, and the classically-inspired Desire Under the Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra, which both deal with incest. Eeeeww.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: I'm sick and tired of everybody going easy on this guy. I don't care if he wrote such indispensible works as This Side of Paradise, Tender is the Night, and The Great Gatsby -- the guy flunked out of Princeton. What good is your reputation as a seminal author of American literature if you can't even pass Geology 101 (familiarly known as "Rocks for Jocks")?

John F. Kennedy: Despite any other college's claim to him, our nation's 35th president began his undergraduate career at Old Nassau. However, Kennedy come down with jaundice and had to withdraw from Princeton before he even finished his freshman year. After this embarrassing showing, the only university that would deign to take Kennedy back was a tiny school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose name has been lost to the ages.

Lyle Menendez: Yes, he went to Princeton. Yes, he was probably kicked out for violating the Honor Code. Yes, he conspired in the double-murder of his mother and father and tried to have them buried in Princeton Cemetery. Yes, he wears a really bad hairpiece and had a cell next to O.J. Simpson's. Now can we all just get over this and move on?

Alexi Indris-Santana: It seemed like Cinderella come true. Alexi Indris-Santana described himself as a self-educated Indian orphan, and his articulate application had won him a place at Princeton and in the hearts of the admissions officers. But boy, were their faces red when their carriage turned back into a pumpkin: this wunderkind was revealed to be a 30year old art thief named James Hogue, whose phony application had already been rejected at Yale. In case you're curious, Hogue was subsequently expelled and charged with several counts of fraud.


Dave Itzkoff interned at MTV in New York City this summer.
OPTIONS FOR STUDENTS ON "THE MORNING AFTER"
McCosh Health Center provides emergency contraceptives and birth-control counseling
BY JULIE RAWE '97

GUEST LECTURES and departmental meetings weren't the only things being advertised in The Daily Princetonian this September. On the first Monday of classes, Princeton University Health Services purchased a small advertisement to inform students of the availability of emergency contraception pills (ECPs) at the McCosh Health Center. The ad described ECPs as "a relatively safe and effective method for the prevention of unplanned pregnancy after unprotected intercourse or failed contraception (e.g., condom breaking)." McCosh runs such notices periodically throughout the academic year. This proactive advertising has resulted in "virtually universal" awareness of emergency contraception among undergraduates, according to Professor James Trussell *75, an emergency-contraception expert who is also director of the Office of Population Research.
ECPs-popularly known as "the Morning-After Pill"-are elevated doses of regular birth-control pills that can be taken up to 72 hours after unprotected intercourse and are 75 percent effective in preventing pregnancy, according to Trussell's research. Students can obtain ECPs around the clock at McCosh. Although statistics are not made public, Brian Zack, director of the Sexuality Education Counseling and Health (SECH) program at McCosh, says emergency contraception is "a fairly common request."
Students are familiar with the availability of ECPs, but are less certain of how they work. When I asked a few of them how the "Morning-After Pill" prevents pregnancy, replies ranged from "interference with the uterine lining" to "a hormonal overload that kinda spits it out." The latter description's purgative imagery touches on both the pill's primary function and its common side effects, nausea and vomiting. When I pressed the student to define the "it" that is spit out, he replied, "A fertilized egg or an unfertilized egg. You have no way of knowing, do you?"
This uncertainty is perhaps the only common ground between ECP advocates and opponents. One cannot determine at which stage the pill prevents pregnancy, according to Trussell. The pill's hormones can intervene during ovulation, egg-fertilization, the fertilized egg's passage to the uterus, or implantation, depending on where a woman is in her menstrual cycle.
Mark Cunningham '97, president of Princeton Pro-Life, is particularly concerned with the semantics of emergency contraception. Medical science defines the starting point of pregnancy as the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. Because ECPs prevent implantation, they are classified as contraceptives, not abortifacients. Cunningham, who believes that conception begins at fertilization, asserts that any intervention occurring once sperm and egg have joined should be considered pregnancy termination, not contraception. He considers the ads in the Prince to be misleading, and says his group will approach McCosh and request that it clarify the wording of its ads and other materials. "Most people's intuitive sense is that contraception prevents conception," says Cunningham. "With ECP, you do have that window between fertilization and implantation."
To preclude uninformed decision-making, McCosh provides an information packet to women who request ECPs. The packet raises moral issues and carefully defines medical terminology: "ECPs may not prevent fertilization (union of egg and sperm) but do prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus." Women can opt for emergency contraception only after discussing it with a clinician. They are also asked to speak with a SECH counselor to discuss the potential need for ongoing birth control. According to Trussell, exposure to emergency contraception can serve as a stepping stone to a regular method of birth control. "You go into SECH for emergency contraception," he says, "they provide literature and ask you to think about birth control. It's an ideal counseling opportunity."
Physicians have prescribed birth-control pills as emergency contraceptives since the 1970s, though they aren't approved for that use. According to Zack, however, prescribing an approved drug for an unapproved application is "very, very common." (For example, birth-control pills are used for such off-label purposes as regulating menstrual cycles and controlling acne.) Because ordinary birth-control pills are not labeled as ECPs, many women remain unfamiliar with this form of contraception. Until manufacturers relabel the pills, which were deemed "safe and effective" for emergency contraception by an FDA advisory panel this summer, ECP information will only be available through alternate means.
ECPs have been featured in Time, Cosmopolitan, and Rolling Stone magazines, and on the cable channel MTV, raising awareness from collegiate to national levels. Trussell helped implement a toll-free hotline (800-584-9911) and a web site (http://opr.princeton.edu/ec/ec.html), which offer information about emergency contraception and provide names of local doctors who prescribe it. The hotline has received over 30,000 calls and the web site over 67,000 "hits" since Valentine's Day. Women are learning that when regular contraception fails, nonsurgical options are still available. As one Princeton student said of the emergency contraception pill, "I hope I never have to use it, but I'm glad to know it's there."

Julie Rawe is an English major from Charleston, South Carolina.

paw@princeton.edu