• Commitment to Honor Code Tenets Shaky

• Blairstown Dedicates Cabins, Infirmary

• Faculty File: Mixing the Sacred and the Secular in American Holidays
  (Associate Professor of Religion Leigh Eric Schmidt *87)

• Alumni Elected to Congress

• In Memoriam: Harold Gullicksen

• In Brief (teaching award, PPPL, comings and goings)

COMMITMENT TO HONOR CODE TENETS SHAKY
Students show reluctance, in theory, to adhere to responsibilities

According to a poll conducted by The Daily Princetonian on October 16, 60 percent of students would not report a close friend whom they saw cheat on an in-class exam. But about 62 percent would report someone they didn't know well. The Prince administered a six-question survey to 2,002 students to find out how students would react to the two main tenets of the Honor Code: not cheating on in-class exams and reporting those who do cheat.
About 7 percent of students polled said they had seen someone cheat but had not reported it. Two percent admitted to cheating. About 92 percent said they wouldn't turn someone in if they only suspected, but weren't sure, that the person had cheated. And 52 percent said they thought expulsion was an appropriate punishment for cheating. The poll's margin of error was 1 percent.
According to the Honor Code's constitution, a student found guilty by the Undergraduate Honor Committee of violating the Honor Code would be suspended for one, two, or three years. A second offense would result in expulsion.
The Prince conducted the poll because its editors suspected students may be unwilling to turn in Honor Code violators, said editor-in-chief Malena F. Salberg '97. Last year, said Salberg, some students expressed reluctance to turning people in for cheating after reading in the Prince about arts editor Maria Burnett-Gaudiani '98's unpleasant experience as an accuser. An alleged cheater whom she reported was found guilty, appealed the verdict, and was granted a retrial by President Shapiro. During the retrial, Burnett-Gaudiani was questioned by an administrator acting as the accused student's defense advocate who, she has said, made her feel as if she were on trial. (The student was acquitted.)
Prince editors debated the purpose and relevance of the Honor Code in a recent issue of the newspaper. The editors' opinions ranged from a call to implement a proctor system to catch violators to a belief that the Honor Code is working well, since 98 percent of those surveyed said they have never cheated on an exam.
Neysun A. Mahboubi '97, the chairman of the Honor Committee, wasn't concerned with most of the results of the poll, but only with the 60 percent of students who said they wouldn't report a close friend.
Next semester the committee plans to look at ways to make the Honor Code more influential in students' lives. Ideas the committee will discuss include implementing a referendum every four years in which students would affirm the code, expanding the code's jurisdiction to take-home exams, and adding more elected members to the committee.
Despite the need to tinker with the Honor Code from time to time, Mahboubi believes the code has "always been a good institution, but it is fragile."
Independent of the Prince's poll, said Mahboubi, the committee is working to change some procedural flaws in the code's constitution that became apparent after Burnett-Gaudiani's experience last year. The committee will seek to exclude administrators and faculty members from acting as defense advocates, limiting that role to students. The committee will also seek to better define how the appeal process works and to clarify the role of the defense adviser. Mahboubi expects these changes to be made this semester.

BLAIRSTOWN DEDICATES CABINS, INFIRMARY
Hendricks S. Davis (left), executive director of the Princeton-Blairstown Center (PCB); Peter T. Smith (center), president of the Blairstown Board of Trustees; and Donald H. Roberts, Jr. '70 (speaking), president of the Princeton Club of Philadelphia, dedicated newly renovated cabins and an infirmary at the center on October 13. The Princeton Club of Philadelphia and the classes of 1939 and 1941 paid for the construction. The PCB, a 250-acre summer camp facility located 65 miles north of Princeton just outside Blairstown, New Jersey, works year round with urban youths, their families, and communities to improve their lives through outdoor, adventure-based education that builds self-confidence, self-direction, and leadership and conflict-resolution skills. This fall, the PCB entered into a partnership with Outdoor Action, which will continue to provide its current programs for undergraduates while offering students opportunities to work with inner-city youths. The partnership, said Davis, has brought together two organizations that share a similar mission of offering individuals experience in the outdoors, teaching them to respect nature, and opening up their "interior world."

FACULTY FILE: MIXING THE SACRED AND THE SECULAR IN AMERICAN HOLIDAYS
(Associate Professor of Religion Leigh Eric Schmidt *87)
'Tis the season for Christians to check off their gift lists, trim the tree, hang the stockings, and bake cookies. Everywhere Americans turn, they are bombarded by Christmas: wreaths lining main streets, displays in store windows, Santa Clauses in department stores, advertisements in magazines and on television. If you're like me, you might feel both disenchanted with the commercialization of this most significant of Christian holidays and joyous in the midst of holiday celebration and rituals. It is this tension that Associate Professor of Religion Leigh Eric Schmidt *87 explores in his latest book, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (Princeton University Press, 1995).
In his study, Schmidt found that Americans have a deep ambivalence about holidays. They think that holidays were concocted by Hallmark and Macy's. "But they are also very much drawn to this modern holiday spectacle," says Schmidt. Through examining diaries, advertisements, trade magazines, and movies, Schmidt explored the history of American holidays in the 19th and early 20th centuries and how the connection between commerce and celebration in American culture was forged. He focuses on the major gift-giving holidays of Christmas, Easter, St. Valentine's Day, and Mother's Day. And he ponders the complex relationship between Christianity, commerce, and the home.
The story Schmidt tells is not that of good churches versus bad merchants. Indeed, religious folks in the 19th century, he writes, helped foster a new consumer culture. And churches benefited to some degree from the cultural prominence that the market gave Christmas and Easter. At the same time, churches produced critics of the commercial exploitation of the holidays. "The dalliance with the marketplace was always problematic," he argues. "The commercial culture sought to redefine Christianity and its feasts in its own promotional image."
In Consumer Rites, we learn that Christmas and Easter were not always the American institutions that they are today. New Year's, not Christmas, was the original gift-giving season in winter. Protestant reformers viewed saints' days, the festivals of the Virgin, and other holidays as impediments to work and economic growth. They were contemptuous of Catholic and Anglican holy days and desacralized them by treating them as any other day. It wasn't until the mid-19th century that Protestants came to value Christmas as a religious event. At the same time, merchants found Santa Claus and the religious symbols useful in pushing their goods. Also, Christmas was seen as safer and more refined by middle-class standards than the reveling associated with New Year's celebrations.
Commerce and religion also mixed at Easter. By the late 1860s and early 1870s, churches in New York were elaborately adorning their interiors and organizing parades. It took a decade for merchants to catch on to Easter, but by the late 19th century, church flowers, ornaments, and Easter fashions found their way into store windows and displays. "The sacred and secular have often reversed themselves," Schmidt writes, "the marketplace becoming a realm of religious enchantment and the churches a site of material abundance and promotional gimmicks."
Schmidt pays special attention to the role women played in the buying and selling of holidays. Women, he found, were "crucial in fashioning these modern forms of celebration," and merchants encouraged this female initiative.
In Consumer Rites, we also learn how St. Valentine's Day was rejuvenated in the 1840s from being an almost forgotten Old World saint's day to a not-to-be-missed American holiday. Marketing had much to do with this, of course. The success of Mother's Day, too, owed much to the systematic and sustained campaign of commercial florists, argues Schmidt. Without it, the holiday, which started as a religious event, may have eventually withered away, as Children's Day and Temperance Day did.
The commercialization of holy days reaches beyond explicitly Christian holidays, says Schmidt. For example, Chanukah and the African-American celebration of Kwanzaa have adopted the gift-giving and card-sending traditions of Christmas, albeit with their own distinct forms.
Schmidt also touches on several holidays that didn't survive, such as Friendship Day and Candy Day. There is a limit to how many holidays people can bear, he says. The holidays that seem to endure, he observes, strengthen family life.
A Protestant with Methodist roots, Schmidt, who earned his B.A. from the University of California, Riverside, and his Ph.D. in American religious history from Princeton, admits that the bourgeois holidays he describes are his own and that he, too, feels ambivalent about them. The tension between cynicism and joy, between the marketplace's emphasis on worldly fantasy and abundance and Christianity's focus on otherworldliness and self-denial, he says, will likely continue. If that friction dissipated, it would "probably mean that Christianity and the family had been wholly absorbed into the other," he says, so it's probably good that the tension endures.
-Kathryn F. Greenwood

ALUMNI ELECTED TO CONGRESS
The Princeton delegation to Congress shrank to five members in the recent elections, despite a raft of alumni candidates. With the retirement of Democrats Claiborne deB. Pell '40 and Bill Bradley '65, only three alumni remain in the Senate. No alumni contested a Senate seat this year, but Christopher S. "Kit" Bond '60, William H. Frist '74, and Paul S. Sarbanes '54 continue a Princeton presence in the upper chamber. Pell, who is 78 and suffering from Parkinson's disease, retired from public life after representing Rhode Island in the Senate for 36 years and chairing the Foreign Relations Committee. Bradley, a threeterm senator from New Jersey, is still mentioned as a possible candidate for president, and has said he will continue to play some role in public policy.
Bond, a Missouri Republican, chaired the Small Business Committee in the 104th Congress and is expected to continue in the 105th. Sarbanes, the ranking Democrat on the Banking Committee, has represented Maryland in the Senate since 1976. Frist, a freshman Republican and Tennessee heart surgeon (profiled in the October 25, 1989, PAW), won an upset victory in the GOP landslide two years ago.
Two alumni were reelected to the House of Representatives. Republican James A. S. Leach '65 has represented Davenport, Iowa, in Congress for 20 years. As a member of the House Banking Committee (and its chairman since 1994), Leach was one of the first to call for a probe into President Clinton's Whitewater investment. One of the most moderate congressmen in the House leadership, Leach will continue to press for various reforms of federal banking law. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. '79, a Maryland Republican, first won a seat in the House two years ago by beating Princeton classmate Gerry L. Brewster. He easily won reelection to a second term.
Three alumni ran as Democratic candidates for the House without success. Jeffrey H. Coopersmith '82 challenged firstterm Republican Rick White in a suburban Seattle district and lost, 52 percent to 48. Judith L. Hancock '73 ran for an open seat in Kansas, losing to Republican Vince Snowbarger by 5 percentage points. In the Hudson River Valley area, W. Stephen James '74 challenged New York Republican Gerald Solomon, a longtime incumbent and committee chairman. James lost by nearly 20 percentage points.
Democrat Walter R. Tucker III '78 was elected to a second term from California's 37th District in 1994. In December 1995, however, he was convicted of tax evasion and taking a bribe while serving as mayor of Compton, California, and resigned his congressional seat.
Lawyer and consumer activist Ralph Nader '55 campaigned for the White House on the Green Party ticket. He qualified for the ballot in at least 21 states, garnering nearly 600,000 votes (mostly in California) to finish fourth.
-D. W. Miller '89

IN MEMORIAM
Harold Gulliksen, a professor emeritus of psychology and a retired research adviser with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), died of congestive heart failure at his home in Princeton Borough on October 27. He was 93. Gulliksen was an expert in psychometrics, particularly in the areas of test theory, psychological scaling, and mathematical models of learning. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1926 at the University of Washington, Seattle, and his Ph.D. in psychology in 1931 at the University of Chicago, where he later was an associate professor of psychology. In 1945, Gulliksen was appointed research secretary of the College Board and a professor of psychology at Princeton. He joined ETS in 1948, the year it was founded, and retired in 1974. Gulliksen retired from Princeton in 1972.

IN BRIEF
Teaching award: Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology James L. Gould was selected as the 1996 New Jersey Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. This is the second year in a row that a Princeton faculty member has won the award. Last year Professor of Engineering David P. Billington '50 was selected. The award recognizes "extraordinary dedication to teaching and commitment to students."

PPPL: Professor of Astrophysical Sciences Ronald C. Davidson *66, who has served as director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory since 1991, will step down as director on January 1 to resume research and teaching in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences. During his tenure, the lab experienced both scientific milestones and financial pressures. As the lab's fourth director, Davidson strengthened the lab's graduate and postdoctoral programs and enhanced its educational programs for school children and the public.

Comings and goings: Professor of Politics and Dean of the Faculty Amy Gutmann will step down as dean on July 1. Appointed dean in 1995, she will return to scholarship and teaching in the politics department and the University Center for Human Values. Eva R. Gossman, associate dean of the college, retired in September. She had held the post since 1987 and had worked on curriculum development, restructuring requirements, designing new certificate programs, and developing the Freshman Seminars program. After 15 years at the helm of the University Store, Don Broderick retired in October, handing the reins over to Jim Sykes of North Carolina. During Broderick's tenure, the store's revenue base more than doubled, while returning a rebate to the store's members each year. Before coming to Princeton, Sykes was a divisional merchandise manager for the Belk Department Store chain.