Princeton suffers in online ratings
By Princeton resident Ann Waldron Neumann
Arriving in 1933, Albert Einstein described Princeton as “a quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts”: “The people who compose what is called ’society’ enjoy even less freedom than their counterparts in Europe. Yet they seem unaware of this restriction, since their way of life tends to inhibit personality development from childhood.”
Unfortunately, Princeton’s ceremoniousness was shaped partly by our university. Else Ladenburg, wife of German physicist Rudolf Ladenburg, told my mother that, when she arrived in Princeton two years before Einstein, she received a list of instructions for faculty wives. The instructions included a dress code — stockings, hat, and gloves — for Nassau Street, and they also required Else to call on the dean’s wife, perhaps Mrs. Luther Eisenhart, “the social director of Princeton high society,” according to Freeman Dyson. When the dean’s wife said, “My dear, won’t you stay for tea?” that was Else’s signal, the instructions explained, to say, “Thank you so much, but I am, alas, unable to stay for tea.” In other words, an invitation to stay was really a signal to leave.
Princeton University’s welcome may have seemed ambiguous even in 1985, when Michelle Obama wrote her senior thesis: “My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ’blackness’ than ever before. No matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus. … It often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second.”
And today? Student reviews of Princeton online are hardly scientific evidence. And my selection is even less scientific. But some reviewers still doubt the university’s welcome: “There is a distinct culture of exclusivity here that will never change, no matter how many first ladies write theses about lack of diversity,” writes one reviewer. “The much touted ’diversity’ is a myth,” says another; “American and international students barely ever interact.”
Wait. Diversity means international students? A third reviewer agrees: “I was surprised by how diverse Princeton is, especially for an Ivy League. There are so many people here from so many different countries.” The greatest “taboo,” this reviewer adds, is “economic background”: “Several students … come from lower-income families,” but most undergraduates are “students of privilege, and if you’re not one of those students, it could be easy to feel left out.”
This may be because “social life at Princeton is dominated by the eating clubs, which are a combination of country club and sorority/fraternity,” according to another reviewer. Some undergraduates adapt swimmingly to this sink-or-swim system. “My biggest piece of advice,” writes an economics major, “is to start thinking about eating clubs … early on. Certain student groups ( … athletic teams, performance groups, newspaper, etc.) feed into certain clubs, so if you know that you like Ivy for example, it’s probably best to join an activity … that feed
in.” Another student is more succinct: “If you are a guy and you are going to Princeton, buy a tux.”
A Virginia student finds Princeton’s social scene “scary” and “depressing”: “almost every student I met was from the south, and tons were from Virginia … not to say we are bad but the school
quite conservative” and “has an extremely homogeneous student population.” The eating clubs “are everything they sound like,” she continues, “elitist, snobby and exclusive.” Yes, “everyone can be in an eating club” because “there are less posh ones that you can just sign up for.” But “the sign-up eating clubs are
poor kids and minorities. … Basically, the school lives up to the title of being the ’northernmost southern school.’ ”
“Almost everything they tell you about Princeton is a lie,” another student writes: “Something happens to people when they come to Princeton: they become wholly preoccupied with getting the perfect grades (because people here don’t learn for the sake of learning, they learn in order to become successful investment bankers).” Therefore, students get “hammered on
every single Thursday and Saturday night (because getting black-out drunk keeps one from dealing with the fact that they’re stressed, miserable, and sleep-deprived). This place doesn’t foster intelligent discourse or love of learning, it fosters competition.”
Meanwhile, how do Princeton students rate us and our town? We’re “dead”: “boring and obnoxiously bourgeois.” At best, students hold Einstein’s view that one can work here without distractions. Luckily, “NYC is a train ride away, and the school provides insanely discounted tickets to Broadway plays, professional sporting events, and museums/shows.”
How sad that Princeton students think we residents are socially regressive, while we suspect they are. Given our long history, Town and Gown still seem to hold each other back rather than forge ahead together. Why aren’t we as politically progressive, socially liberal, economically inventive, and environmentally advanced as Austin, Berkeley, Seattle, Portland, Ann Arbor, or Madison? How would you explain it?
Ann Waldron Neumann is a Princeton resident.