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On the Campus: April 16, 1997
"Tigers in diapers" need 4-year colleges, a new calendar, and a new theater BY Jeremy Caplan '97 Four-year residential colleges: Students need an alternative to the eating clubs. There is nothing wrong with the clubs, per se (well, there are some things wrong with them, but I'll leave that for another day), but there aren't enough options for those who don't fit into the club scene. About three-quarters of sophomores join eating clubs, many grudgingly, following the tide of campus culture. A lot of upperclassmen might prefer not be a part of "the Street," but feel they have no alternative if they don't want to cook for themselves or join a cooking cooperative (in which students prepare meals collectively). If juniors and seniors retained membership in their college, they could still choose an eating club, but they'd also have the option of dining at their college without living there. They could take part in college events, participate in intramurals, and be peer advisors for sophomores and freshmen. In the current system, the handful of upperclassmen who return to each college are isolated from their class peers. It's not as much an issue of where people eat as one of social integration. Expanding college membership over four years would encourage greater interaction between underclassmen and juniors and seniors. Take a quick survey of freshmen and you'll find out-as I did-that most of them know only a handful of seniors. The same holds true for seniors, who by and large know but a few freshmen. Colleges with upperclassmen would also promote student-faculty interaction, since most professors shy away from the clubs, but dozens serve in the colleges as faculty fellows. Finally, four-year residential colleges would combat campus segregation. If we hope to have a truly diverse campus, we should acknowledge that once on campus, students tend to separate themselves by race, region, and even class year. Several of the clubs have relatively few minority members; the colleges include a broader mix of students. The academic calendar: As one of only a handful of schools still holding exams after winter break, Princeton ought to stop and consider why virtually all other schools end their fall terms before the winter break. When exams and papers loom in January, the so-called "vacation" becomes an extended work session. To address the problem, why not start a week earlier and finish exams in December? Princeton might also consider whether 24 weeks of classes constitutes a full academic year. To lengthen the teaching semester, we could shorten reading period (which should really be called writing period, because that's when most papers are crammed in). Exam periods should likewise be abbreviated (and made more flexible, so students can space out their tests), so that professors can complete the syllabi they now often rush through. In-depth courses don't really fit into 12 weeks. Why must Princeton have one of the shortest teaching semesters in the country? Theater: Princeton needs a real theater. We have several terrific drama and dance groups, from the Shakespeare Company and the Triangle Club to the Princeton University Players and Bodyhype. All these groups desperately need (and deserve) adequate space on campus for their productions. The current stage, in Murray-Dodge, seats less than 200 people. There are several small performance spaces ("black-box" theaters) in the residential colleges, but none were designed as playhouses. Theater Intime shows at Murray-Dodge are regularly sold out because there just aren't enough seats for everyone who wants to see the shows. We need a theater on campus with a real proscenium stage, wings, and fly space so that dramatic creativity is not constricted by space limitations. Sites behind McCarter Theatre, inside the new student center, and behind 185 Nassau Arts Center have been discussed, but as of now nothing has been settled. By the time a new theater is built, perhaps we'll have revised our dinosaur of an academic calendar and made residential colleges a four-year option for students. Princeton's social scene is dominated by a collection of eating clubs that leave a lot of students (and professors) wishing for an alternative. Expanded colleges would serve that function, improving the campus social scene; a new theater would enhance the campus's culture; and a new calendar would help fit those social and cultural elements into an academic year that makes more sense. Without these changes, Princeton would remain a terrific university. But these adjustments would make a great place still greater. Jeremy Caplan, a senior in the Woodrow Wilson School, just finished his thesis on the effects of income on well-being.
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