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Web Exclusives:
Under the Ivy February
11, 2004: Pleasure
in the webs that bind I am fascinated with back issues of PAW. (Cue the groans of my former coworkers at the magazine, overly familiar with my tendency to leap up from old volumes chortling, "You will not believe this...") Much of my interest stems from the webs that wind round, over, and through 20th-century Princeton, connecting generations of alumni with spooky frequency. I open a volume — any year, trust me — and I find a person or story I recognize. I once stumbled across the birth announcement of one of PAW's longest-running class secretaries -- in his father's Class Notes column. But the other allure of the fragile, aged pages lies in their ability to bring the past to life. The real-time concerns and interests of students, faculty, alumni, and administrators reflect the reality of their times in a way that no retrospective can approach. One of the volumes currently on my bookshelf, from the 1968-1969 academic year, illustrates this particularly well. What were the hot topics of the day? Women's rights: The very first PAW issue of the year carried the Patterson Report, which recommended that Princeton admit women undergraduates and provided news fodder for the entire year. Race relations: Football coach Dick Colman was forced to resign after five black players accused him of racist tendencies, discrimination, and exploitation. (PAW wrote that not only did Colman's replacement, Jake McCandless '51, need to repair the damage done by the controversy, but also that he was "faced with the decision to be made about the single wing.") The February 11 issue featured a photo essay called "Summer '68", featuring student participants in a program for " 'affirmative action' to provide 'meaningful experience' in summer jobs for Negro youths 16-18." In the same issue, the On the Campus column reported criticism of the Daily Princetonian over its coverage of the changing campus, but cited the feature "A New Era for the Negro at Princeton?", which was named the best college newspaper story of 1968. Finally, there was student activism, among the hottest of hot-button topics. In a supplement to PAW that ran regularly, called University, editor William McCleery conducted an extensive interview with President Robert Goheen, entitled, "How Student Activism Affects the College President's Job." Goheen's thoughtfulness, straightforwardness, and compassion come through very clearly in the piece. He describes the student body as a majority who are more interested in traditional concerns of college students — "courtship and calculus, modern linguistics, sophisticated historical analyses"; a "significant minority" who are actual or potential activists — "They tend to be highly idealistic, purposeful and constructive in intent"; and the radicals. About this last group, Goheen says, "we want to be careful not to distrust all of their motives. But we must not go too far in the other direction, either, and lose sight of the fact that some of these radical are real political provocateurs... One can't simply turn the institution over to them. This would produce a very short-lived tranquility." As for cobwebs binding Princeton generations, glancing at a few
month's issues, I ran across: the announcement of Landon Jones '66
as PAW's new editor (he would hire me to the same post some 30 years
later); a quote by Paul Sittenfeld '69, whose daughter Jo '02 would
take photos for PAW as a senior; and a news item on George Shultz
'42 becoming Secretary of Labor. Geoff Petrie '70 (now general manager
of the Sacramento Kings) and Chris Thomforde '69 (president of St.
Olaf's University) were leading the basketball team, while future
NL baseball president Len Coleman '71 was one of the black players
upset about his treatment by football coach Dick Colman. The award-winning
Prince article about race on campus was written by Robert Durkee
'69, now vice president and secretary of the university. Finally,
a cover photo of the new Jadwin Gym was taken by the (wholly) legendary
Joe Oznot '68, Oznot who was not, one of his class's most famous
mates.
Jane Martin ’89 is PAW's former editor-in-chief. You can reach her at paw@princeton.edu
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