<p>I’ll be clear: something very weird is going on at Princeton now. No one has a clue what happened to Prof. Calvo or knows why he was suspended/forced to take leave/whatever. The working group that recommended the ban on freshman rush has made a lot of people angry, not necessarily because of the recommendation (which itself has polarized a lot of people: Greeks who think the recommendation was very shortsighted and proponents who think we should get rid of the Greeks altogether because they apparently add nothing to the undergraduate life here), but because of the way the administration went about implementing the working group. The group had five students (no freshmen, oddly), and the Greeks say they weren’t accurately represented in the group’s findings. </p>
<p>I’m not sure what the deal is, but to me it seems like the administration is scared to death of something right now. I don’t know if it’s a lawsuit or an alcohol-related death or a drop in the USNWR rankings, but what students seem to be most unhappy with right now is that the administration is making decisions very hastily and without enough student input or actual data. And it very well may be that the University strongly dislikes the presence of selective groups on campus. University VP Bob Durkee recommended changes to the bicker process that would prevent hosed students from getting their feelings hurt (calling for the end of traditional hosings and pickups), WWS just went non-selective, and now it looks like the University is trying to kill the fraternities and sororities in favor of a (hopefully) stronger residential college life. I don’t get why the administration doesn’t think we can handle being rejected from things - we are adults - unless they’re actually motivated to try and destroy Princeton’s image as an elitist school where people with money refuse to associate with people who don’t.</p>
<p>And as a student body, we’re starting to get a little bit scared too, because the administration isn’t telling us what we think we ought to know. What’s scary about the possibility of the ban on freshman rush isn’t so much that freshmen wouldn’t be able to rush, it’s that rush isn’t clearly defined (and since fraternities sororities don’t technically exist, I’m not sure how they would define it), so it’s possible that the University could just throw around suspensions for participants who weren’t exactly aware of what they were doing.</p>
<p>^Yes. I read the entire report today as well as some of the comments in the Prince. I had the same thought. If “rush” is really just a matter of hanging out with friends and playing basketball as these fraternity members claim, then really this is going to be a nightmare to enforce. </p>
<p>I am NOT a fan of the Frats, but I don’t see how this is a working solution.</p>
<p>In reading the report however, overall I really liked how the University seems to be making an honest attempt to create a better experience for ALL its students. It tried to identify areas which needed improvement and recommended solutions.</p>
<p>Here is a link to the report. It’s long, but an interesting read.</p>
<p>Every school has issues and concerns, no school is free from problems and I suspect that reading newspaper opinion pieces and comments at most schools in the country would lead you to conclude that colleges are filled with unhappy, negative and sometimes even vulgar students.</p>
<p>For example, here is a paragraph in a piece in Monday’s Harvard Crimson</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow–Harvard must be filled with unhappy kids right, because it looks like there’s a lot of smoke.</p>
<p>However, I don’t believe that most kids at Harvard are unhappy and I know that most kids at Princeton are extremely happy, so I would suggest that you should read these opinion pieces with a healthy dose of skepticism. Most students who actually attend Princeton are either quite happy with Eating Clubs or somewhat neutral and I think that rather than adding to stress level, the clubs decrease stress by giving all students a place where they know there will be a party or where they will find a group of their friends on a Thursday or Saturday night. Grade deflation is not a popular policy, but I don’t think most students walk around thinking about it on a daily basis and I believe that it probably doesn’t have a negative long-term effect on students (although frankly, I would like to see the policy changed myself).</p>
<p>Princeton students are generally extremely happy and intensely loyal. The educational experience is one of the best in the country, the students are great and it’s a wonderful school, albeit not perfect.</p>
<p>I have had a child at Princeton continuously since 2005. I have seen waves of issues come and go in the Prince. That’s what newspapers like to do, campus papers as much as any others, try to unearth problems. The stuff about the frats is ongoing. Professor Calvo’s tragic situation is another thing altogether.</p>
<p>From where I sit it doesn’t look like anything new or worse is going on. It does look, and has looked for a while, as though the administration wants to nudge the school’s culture away from the somewhat clubby and towards the more nerdy, to put it bluntly. I think some of that is good, and some misguided. </p>
<p>It’s also true that culture change is never very easy.</p>
<p>I think at any University you will find inherent conflict between the short term perspective of the students and the long term vision of the administration.</p>
<p>I was a student at Princeton in the '80s…the last class to graduate which did not belong to a residential college. I remember students were irate at the prospect of the new system. It was going to ruin Princeton. We would never give a penny.</p>
<p>I have been thinking that, too, XRCatD. Lots of scrambling going on at the top privates has made me wonder that.</p>
<p>Maybe the Federal Gov has been itching to find a way to get some taxes from them, given the huge budget deficit… Wouldn’t surprise me, but I have no solid reason to think this, just a speculation.</p>
<p>I do not think that either performersmom or XRCatD (who is a high school senior by the way) have any particular information about the fear of a loss of tax exempt status at Princeton or any other school.</p>
<p>The current Princeton administration has tried to limit the influence of Greek life and to make the Eating Clubs only one of a number of choices for many years. You can agree or disagree with this stance, but none of this is particularly new. </p>
<p>All of that is quite different from Professor Calvo, but no one outside the administration appears to have any precise knowledge of what the charges were against him.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>No one’s going to lose any tax exemptions.</p></li>
<li><p>That report on student life is certainly interesting. I can see why the greek stuff has people freaked out – it seems like a return to the worst old days of exclusionary preppiness at Princeton, but boosted by social media. On the other hand, if they aren’t officially recognized, and they don’t have an actual rush, it is a little scary to be talking about harsh disciplinary measures for activities that could be deemed to be soliciting freshmen. But, yes, the university administration probably wishes the greeks would go away and not come back, and it also probably hopes it can facilitate that decision.</p></li>
<li><p>Wow. That Calvo thing is really, really sad. It’s none of my business at all, and I certainly wouldn’t presume that Princeton didn’t have ample cause to act as it did. But I sympathize with the students who are upset about this, and I wonder why every time an institution talks about privacy it seems like the main concern is shielding the administrative decisionmakers from second guessing. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Still, if Calvo had wanted a public debate about his firing, a lot more people would know a lot more details. It would be nice (for the community) if there were a friend who could come forward to say “he wanted to keep this private” rather than leaving it to the people who were essentially deporting him to pretend to defend his privacy all too conveniently.</p>
<p>This commentary by p’10… very heartfelt and with a little perspective.</p>
<p>Posted by P’10 </p>
<p>As a recent graduate, I thank Brandon for this article. “It” is a really important issue and was a real problem for me when I was here.</p>
<p>For me it was a sense of competition – sometimes it felt like a race, like everyone was constantly being judged against one another, and that you were a failure if you didn’t do well – even if you were learning a lot and doing your best. Grade deflation definitely fostered this, 100%. Normally, getting a B is lame, sure, but isn’t necessarily the worst thing ever. It just means that your work might not have been the best thing ever. Grade deflation means that getting a B that boldfacedly tells you “You are not as good as 30% of your class. even if your work was great, the best thing you’ve ever done, it wasn’t good enough. Not compared to X, Y, and Z’s work.”</p>
<p>Worrying about doing well enough --how to write a paper that scores <em>above the curve</em> and better than everyone else, rather than just write a good paper that investigates a point you found interesting in class and wanted to think more about — makes it hard to focus on the joy of learning. It’s stressful. It’s lonely, because you aren’t working in tandem with others, you’re working against them. It makes you try to hunt down adderall so you can get a leg up and work twice as hard as everyone else. </p>
<p>Some part of this is due to the fact that every student is used to being the best and the golden child before they come here. But it’s also possible to appreciate oneself and others on individual merits, without pitting everyone against each other. But for some reason, that’s hard to do here.</p>
<p>I loved Princeton, and miss it, and would like to relive it. But that’s <em>in spite of</em> the sometimes terrible experiences. I think that part of the reason i would like to relive it is because I think i’d be better at tackling “it” and would enjoy my time here much more.</p>
<p>Yes. I do believe that anyone who believes that they always have to be in the top 30% of a very brilliant group of students is going to struggle with “it”.</p>
<p>Folks, as the parent of a freshman for the class of 2015, should I be worried?
Yes, S is used to being at top of the class, but also is a happy, generous, enthusiastic, and curious kid as well as a loyal friend.
Can he be all those adjectives at Princeton? He did love Preview…</p>
<p>This thread does have me a bit freaked out! The grade deflation thing does worry me. As an educator, I believe that grades are based on performance, not on comparisons on a bell curve. If all the kids earn an A (or whatever) they should have it! When I was in a notably rigorous graduate school, most of us got B’s…because the material was hard and we earned B’s. No contrived curve.
Getting worried here…</p>
<p>My daughter is a freshman at Princeton and is very happy there. She chose Princeton over several other outstanding universities, and she has not regretted her choice for a moment. She tells me often that she has never been happier in her life. She also finds it extremely demanding academically, and she was valedictorian at a good private school.</p>
<p>My child said to me around the beginning of junior year, “everybody says these are the best four years of my life. I’m half way through and I’m still not having fun. When does it start getting fun? I study all the time and when I’m not, I’m thinking about how I should be. I’m driven by my lists of all the things I need to do. I have to have a list to keep it all straight and I never seem to get to the end of the list.” </p>
<p>For all four years, my child never achieved above a 90 (out of 100) on a test yet got a mixture of A’s and B’s. It was summarily demoralizing to get a 60 out of 100 and have it be “above average.” THere was always somebody who achieved the 90+ always reminding everyone that it WAS possible. “You doubt yourself all the time” was a remark even though professors called my child “extraordinary” at graduation but not before.</p>
<p>I have another child at a different Ivy League school getting the A’s earned and is proud and confident and academically and intellectually adventurous. Makes me feel good to spend $200,000+ and have a confident young adult.</p>
<p>My daughter is also proud and confident and academically and intellectually adventurous. Again, she loves Princeton and does not regret turning down other ivy league schools to attend Princeton. paragpon, please feel free to send me a private message.</p>
<p>My son has loved his first year at Princeton. He has worked very hard, but has made some amazing friends and also had a lot of fun. He knew going into it though, that he was going to have to let go of the idea of being the straight A student. His first term he got two As and two Bs. He was thrilled. He does not compare himself to the others in his classes. He does not see the environment as competitive at all. </p>
<p>If your son has a healthy attitude then he will be fine. As parents we should all support healthy attitudes toward schoolwork. I would say this about any school, not just Princeton. It’s a great lesson in life to know that you won’t always be the best and sometimes you may be even be at the bottom end.</p>
<p>Many others have posted about the great experience their children have had. Many students have posted about their great experiences. </p>
<p>I suggest looking at the user names in the Princeton Parents thread and PMing some of them if you are concerned.</p>
<p>Tigermom’s daughter did not have a good experience at Princeton it seems. There will be students at Princeton that do not, but many more that do.</p>
<p>parapgon, grades are given with respect to performance on a bell curve (in relatively large classes, at least) at every top-notch university in the country; I’ve watched Yale OYC videos, and it’s typical for the professor to give the projected grade distributions (normally something like 1/6 A, 1/3 A-, 1/3 B+, 1/6 lower than that) in the first lecture. Princeton’s curves are just flattened a bit and perhaps translated a little to the left. In smaller classes, there is no precise quota for each class. And it’s good not to have so much pressure to hit 90% to get an A, because tests here are difficult enough to challenge the very best of us.</p>
<p>As long as your son learns to set reasonable goals toward his academics - i.e. doesn’t plan on being valedictorian or expect to be in the top 5% without a lot more work than nearly anyone puts in and would be okay with potentially being below average - he’ll be fine.</p>
<p>My daughter just graduated in 2010 and was extraordinarily happy at Princeton. She’s an active, fun-loving and generally kind and happy person and she made many similar friends at Princeton. Her grades were not that impressive for her first two years, but she had a strong upward trend her final two years and she felt that she grew enormously academically while she was there. She got three excellent job offers, took the one that appealed to her most and is quite happy in her current job.</p>
<p>Did she like grade deflation? No. Did I like it? No. Did it consume her? Not at all. Did she feel like her fellow students were competitive and not sharing notes and things like that? Not in the least. She thought the students were collaborative and supportive and overall wonderful and she is looking forward to going back to reunions in a few weeks.</p>