Letters: December 11, 1996
ATHLETICS AT PRINCETON
Doug Lederman '84's article about Princeton athletics has created much discussion on campus, among both athletes and nonathletes.
As a graduate of a Southeastern Conference school, I have to laugh when I read such articles. Professors at my alma mater also used to cry foul about athletics. Most athletes go to state schools only for the scholarships. They accept athletic scholarships for the status that society confers on top collegiate athletes, or because of the pressure they feel from their parents' financial status. Anyone who thinks that a family would turn down a full scholarship to pay $30,000 a year to send its kid to a school like Princeton is crazy. Why are we not applauding Princeton athletes for having their priorities right? Education is for life!
Regarding disciplinary problems, I question whether athletes as a group get into more trouble than other students at Princeton. As a society we hold collegiate athletes to a higher standard. Because of their prominence, when a collegiate athlete does get into trouble, the media and the public in general take more notice of it than they would in the case of a nonathlete.
I also take issue with any implied criticism of the admission office. Anyone who has met Dean of Admission Fred Hargadon understands that this man knows his job. He is the last person who would compromise this institution and what it stands for. Athletics has long proven to provide self-esteem, leadership, and structure to a young person's life. One should not criticize or be prejudiced against people who choose to better themselves in an arena other than academics. Princeton can be proud of the incredible achievements of its scholar-athletes at every level, whether academic or athletic. If anything gets compromised at Princeton, it's one's athletic talent for the sake of being a better student. Perhaps that is a point that got left out of the article.
Susan Teeter
Head Coach, Women's Swimming and Diving
Princeton, N.J.
To those who have raised questions about Princeton's current athletics policies, I say "Amen." I was one of those who objected to the abandonment of wrestling at Princeton. But the responses of the university gave me even greater pause. Voices in the administration stated that Princeton's objective was to have fewer, but higher-quality, teams; that Princeton was having trouble recruiting wrestlers; and that nobody was interested in wrestling except the wrestlers (this is what I thought college sports was all about).
I believe in college athletics-in the satisfaction that comes from representing your university, in the lessons learned from winning and losing, and in the old concept of a sound mind in a sound body. But those interests are best served when they are broadly distributed among undergraduates and are not primarily made available to admittees preselected to assure superior teams.
There are, of course, universities that need nationally ranked teams just to keep the school's name in the newspapers and to attract applications. Princeton, thank God, does not need that. And the process itself is a slippery slope.
Not long ago I attended a luncheon for lawyers. The speaker was the recently retired president of Stanford University. When I suggested asking him how Stanford justified its athletics program, my tablemates pointed out that he was our guest and we should not ask questions that would embarrass him.
Let's not raise the athletics bridge, fellows; let's lower the river.
Hamilton Carothers '44
Washington, D.C.
As a studentathlete, I was greatly disturbed by the article on Princeton athletics. The portrait painted of athletes here was unjust and shameful. Some of the hardest-working people at this university are athletes. They have to constantly balance the rigors of academia and athletics throughout the entire school year. This is a daunting task, and the majority of athletes do it well. In addition, athletes, along with members of other extracurricular groups, help make Princeton's student body more diverse, dynamic, and exceptionally driven. The university should applaud and support its studentathletes. It should not question their success, but rather be proud of their hard work and the unrivaled contributions they make to this great university.
Casey Coleman '97
Princeton, N.J.
This letter addresses what I believe to be holes in Doug Lederman's article about athletics at Princeton. The cover of that issue ironically bears the subtitle "What Price Excellence?," which suggests that excellence in athletics may be harmful.
I graduated in the 1960s with high honors in English, a very competitive course of study then, and during my years at Princeton I was an athlete (sort of). I was also Class Poet. In my early years at Princeton I experienced firsthand a bias against athletes in the classroom. I attributed my grade-point improvement, later on, in large part not to working harder or to any intellectual epiphany but to the injury that cut short my athletic career.
During my maturing years I have felt that the education I received on the playing field was at least as valuable to me professionally and in terms of human awareness as the one I derived from burying my mind in the shroud of words and papers in isolated corners of Firestone Library.
It may be hard for the academic purist to understand the dimension one gains from the integration of the mental challenge of the classroom with that generated within the dynamics of a competitive athletic situation. The texture of that matrix is lush, the vision that it promotes is crisp and exciting, and the awareness of life that it fosters comes closest in my judgment to the humanistic end point that higher education is all about.
An educational institution such as Princeton which wishes to maintain its claim to excellence must pursue just those high athletic standards it has been achieving, for it is my view that athletics provide the clinical microcosm of life necessary to put the intellectual abstraction of the academic aspect of education into perspective. In this way the truth that such an education claims to pursue can be palpably perceived rather than indulged in like an opiate.
This is not a new idea. I believe it dates back at least as far as ancient Greece.
Thus, at least from the viewpoint of one who has seen both sides of the coin, far from endorsing a contrived proportionate reduction in athletes at Princeton, as some faculty members are advocating, I would urge the university to promote a requirement that candidates for admission possess and independently pursue some measure of athletic experience, that sportsmanship be a curriculum requirement as much as math or French, and that programs be added to the curriculum that will allow students to experience that aspect of school life that comes closest to reality. Those who might not choose to be so educated should have grades that are quite fine indeed.
In short, bravo to what Gary Walters '67 and his predecessors have achieved, for it is, in fact, in the finest tradition of liberal-arts education.
Jan Andrew Buck '67
Princeton, N.J.
Doug Lederman strives mightily and mostly successfully in covering all bases fairly in his article on Princeton athletics. Nonetheless, the weightiest and most convincing arguments that come through confirm the judgment that athletics now play too prominent a role in undergraduate life.
As a student at Princeton who was active in football, tennis, boxing, and squash, I know that varsity sports take an excessively large share of student time. They can also distort athletes' perspectives, as suggested by John Haller '97's comment that he never misses water- polo practice, but "will miss a class if I have to."
Edward T. Chase '41
New York, N.Y.
CLINTON'S VISIT
There has been much debate in PAW concerning the selection of President Clinton as the 1996 Commencement speaker. Most of the letters have either praised or condemned the President for his politics and his character, but few have actually questioned the nature of his address. Notably absent is commentary on this subject from the group most affected, the Class of 1996.
I am not a supporter of President Clinton's politics, and I strongly question his character. However, I respect the office of the President, and on that basis, I considered it an honor that he was chosen to speak at my graduation. However, it would be an understatement to say that I was disappointed by his address.
June 4 was a special day for my class. It celebrated our hard work and achievements over the last four years. It also signaled the beginning of another era in our lives, full of new challenges and expectations. I naively expected the Commencement address to reflect the nature of this event by recognizing our accomplishments and providing inspiration for our future, but it was less about celebrating the graduating class than about the President's patting himself on the back. I was treated to a speech that used the motto "Princeton in the Nation's Service" as a segue to a laundry list of President Clinton's contributions to the nation as a politician. Any lingering doubts that the speech functioned as part of his bid for reelection were erased when I heard sections of his speech at the Democratic National Convention which appeared to have been taken almost verbatim from the Commencement address.
Before I am accused of criticizing the President along party lines, I should mention that Bill Bradley '65, another Democrat, did a fine job of speaking directly to the concerns of the class during the Baccalaureate service. But choosing for Commencement a politician campaigning for reelection deprived my class of what should have been our moment. Instead, my graduation became just one more stop on the campaign trail. No future graduating class should be subjected to the same disservice.
Kathryn Wildrick '96
Washington, D.C.
Editor's note: Henry F. McCreery '37 has informed us that our editing of his October 23 letter about Clinton's appearance mistakenly left the impression that he approves of the university's granting an honorary degree to the President. He emphatically does not.
BIRTH CONTROL
The term "emergency contraception" is an Orwellian misnomer. The October 23 On the Campus correctly points out that this form of birth control can operate after fertilization, a detail of extreme importance to women who might practice contraception but who abhor the thought of destroying incipient human life. Hence, the term "contraception"-commonly understood to refer to preventing fertilization-is misleading when linked to "emergency."
But in this context, the word "emergency" strikes me as bizarre as well. Could there be such a thing as "emergency intoxication," "emergency adultery," or "emergency child abuse"? These phrases jar for the simple reason that there cannot be an urgent need to perpetrate an immoral act.
To those who believe there is nothing wrong with artificial birth control (leaving aside whether the method acts as a prefertilization contraceptive or a postfertilization abortifacient), I offer the following:
Birth control is rebellion against God. It is the intentional obstruction of the awesome procreative potential divinely instilled in the conjugal act.
Birth control is a lie. The conjugal act cries out with intensity, "I am entirely yours," but birth control adds, "except my fertility."
Birth control is sexual exploitation: "I want your body, but I don't want any commitment."
Birth control discriminates against women. Virtually all forms of it treat a woman's fertility as a disease to be "cured" by bombarding her system with chemicals, foams, and foreign objects.
Birth control is a voluntary disease. The healthy state of the body is fertility. To deliberately induce infertility (whether temporary or permanent) is to prefer the very lack of health that countless anguished, infertile couples strive to overcome.
Birth control increases the spread of venereal disease. Some methods, like the pill, actually raise the rate of transmission of infectious diseases. Other methods, like condoms, marginally decrease the risk of transmission but create a false sense of security ("safer sex") that encourages conduct jeopardizing health and even life itself.
Obviously, a full treatment of the subject would require much more than a letter to the editor. But the above considerations may lead readers at least to entertain second thoughts about birth control. Then maybe "emergency contraception" will cease being "a fairly common request" at the campus health center.
Walter M. Weber '81
Alexandria, Va.
JESUS' DEATH
The October 23 letter from William T. Galey '38 on Jesus' death illustrates one of the fundamental challenges faced by the Christian Church today. For centuries, many of its sacred texts have been interpreted in a manner that denigrated Judaism and the Jewish people, thus playing a foundational role in the tragic history that has marked the relationship between the traditions of our two faiths.
Mr. Galey quite rightly rejects holding Jews of today responsible for Jesus' death. But, relying upon a selective and uncritical use of Mark's gospel, he proceeds to place the blame for the death of Jesus squarely upon the shoulders of the Jewish leaders and the crowd who shout "Crucify him." Unfortunately, history has taught us all too clearly that one cannot have it both ways. And we are finally learning that an uninformed reading of sacred text can lead to serious distortions of the central message, in this case, of the Christian faith.
The Gospels have as their intent the promotion of the Christian movement and the proclamation of Jesus Christ. They are not intended to be read as historical documents; each evangelist had a theological purpose that he tried to fulfill through dramatic narrative. This helps to account for the fact that, with regard to many of the details of Jesus' arrest, trial, and death, we have not one but four distinct versions.
For example, was Jesus arrested by the chief priest, scribes, and elders, as Mark says, or by a Roman cohort, as described in John? Was there a full Sanhedrin trial, as indicated in Mark and Matthew, some kind of morning hearing, as indicated in Luke, or no Jewish hearing or trial, as in John? How do we know that Jesus was treated "shamefully" before a Sanhedrin trial if all of his disciples fled and there were no Christian eyewitnesses? And how can one ignore the reality that, quite understandably, a small and threatened community might find it wise to exaggerate the complicity of a competitive adversary and diminish the involvement of its brutal Roman rulers?
As for Pontius Pilate, Mr. Galey repeats the traditional view of his being an innocent bystander carried along by events. But extra-Biblical historical sources paint a different picture of this major figure of the trial. Both Philo and Josephus describe him as "naturally unbending," stubborn, and cruel. The Roman historian Tacitus affirms that Jesus' death was a matter of execution by the Roman governor of Judea. Dr. Eugene Fisher of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in reviewing the evidence today, asserts it constitutes "the virtual whitewashing of the role of Pilate."
These are but a few of the difficulties scholars face in trying to reconstruct the exact events of Jesus' death-difficulties that stand in marked contrast to the "detailed" and presumably clear Gospel accounts cited by Mr. Galey. Dr. John Pawlikowski, a Catholic theologian, sums up the consensus among scholars: Jesus was put to death by the Roman government, on a political charge, with some help from the priestly elite, with whom the bulk of the Jewish people shared nothing in common.
All of which takes us back to the fundamental challenge we face today as believing Jews and Christians. Sacred texts have enormous power to influence behavior for both good and evil. It is absolutely essential that they be read with care, responsibility, and always within the larger context of the loving concern for "the other" which undergirds each of our traditions.
Owen Daly '47
Baltimore, Md.
Editor's note: This letter was cosigned by Redmond C. S. Finney '51, Robert D. H. Harvey '42, LeRoy E. Hoffberger '47, Charles F. Obrecht '56, and John Peter Sarbanes '84. All are trustees of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies, in Baltimore, Maryland.
Regarding Mr. Daley's letter on the subject of who should receive "blame" for Jesus' death, the real question is whether anyone needs to be blamed at all. Jesus incurred the wrath of the Jewish authorities of his day because he caused a schism within the Jewish community. For the same offense, Christians have frequently executed other Christians (witness the Thirty Years' War and other religious conflicts). Religious tolerance has been the exception in world history, not the rule, and murder in the name of God continues to be commonplace.
Ronald A. Wiener '76
Bradenton, Fla.
William Galey's letter is disconcerting, but PAW's decision to publish this nasty screed is truly alarming. Is the magazine now a forum for such preposterous claims as deicide? Through the centuries, this libel has instigated horrific violence against the Jewish people, and it is disingenuous of Mr. Galey to warn that the "blame" held by the "Jewish authorities" is not to be imputed to their modern descendants. The editors should be above obliging outlandish canards long laid to rest.
Bradley S. Hames '90
Towson, Md.
POLITICAL APATHY
I'd like to provide perspective on Jeremy Caplan '97's article "Is There a Politician in the House?" (On the Campus, November 6). I attended Princeton during a national period of tremendous student political activity, and while I loved my undergraduate education, I was tempted at one point to spend a semester or two at the University of California at Berkeley, then a hotbed of student unrest. While I agree with Caplan that students should get involved with politics, I never did take the time to do so.
Ironically, my wife spent her undergraduate years at Berkeley. This was in the late 1960s, and one of her regrets is the lack of class time she had there due to the continuous political disruptions on campus. As Caplan suggests, Princeton probably is more isolated than Harvard or Yale, but that very isolation provides students with an atmosphere that allows them to concentrate on academics. Students should participate in as many activities as they can, but they should also cherish the academic opportunities at Princeton. It is unlikely they will ever again have so much intellectual stimulation in a four-year period.
Jeffrey Bourne '68
Edison, N.J.
VINCENTE LLORENS
If one follows the Jucar River inland 100 kilometers from its mouth on Spain's Mediterranean coast, one comes to Jalance, a village of some 2,000 souls. It is the family seat of Vicente Llorens, a late professor of Romance languages and the subject of the poem "Desterrado, Late 1960s," read by its author, Reginald Gibbons '69, at the 250th convocation on October 25.
Like most Spanish scholars and intellectuals, Llorens, who was born in 1906, was forced into exile by the vengeful spirit that prevailed after the defeat of the Spanish Republic in 1939 by General Franco. Years later, after the harsh triumphalism of the Franco government subsided, Llorens began spending his summers on the family farm on the outskirts of the village, happily accompanied by Amalia Garcํa, a young jalancina who became his wife in a second marriage. It was on such a summer sojourn that he died, on July 5, 1979, seven years after his retirement.
It has been the remarkable fortune of the little village-all but lost on the edge of La Mancha-to have its good name heard in the many institutions of learning to which Llorens's career took him: the Center for Historical Studies in Madrid and the universities of Cologne, Marburg, Genoa, Santo Domingo, and Mexico, as well as Johns Hopkins, SUNY at Stony Brook, and Princeton, whose faculty he joined in 1949.
Acknowledging the honor reflected upon it by the life and works of its most illustrious son, Jalance has now built its first library. Dedicated to his memory last July 18, it bears, in accord with Spanish practice, his full name: La Biblioteca Vicente Llorens Castillo. So, with his good name, Don Vicente has linked his two pueblos, Princeton and Jalance.
Edmund L. King
Walter S. Carpenter, Jr., Professor in the Language, Literature, and Civilization of Spain, Emeritus
Princeton, N.J.
FUTURE BUREAUCRATS?
I suspect there may be a connection between the overwhelming preference of Princeton students for Clinton over Dole (Notebook, October 23) and Beth Elise Whitaker '93's First Person account in the same issue on her experiences with Rwandan refugees. "In those two brief days," she writes, "I registered births, arranged adoptions, performed divorces, facilitated marriages, and granted head-of-family status. I rewarded some and disappointed others." She also observes that "I moved freely around the center, going in and out of tents, huts, and enclosures without question. . . . People went wherever I asked them to go."
For the last four years, the executive branch of our government has tried to get more and more control over the lives of citizens-witness, for example, Clinton's ill-fated health-care plan. It is amazing to see how the exercise of power like that entrusted to Ms. Whitaker delights those in a position to wield it. I can only assume that pro-Clinton students are convinced that they will one day be in control of an expanding bureaucracy, and not the other way around.
Thomas B. Hunter '56
Vero Beach, Fla.