Princeton president will step down

September 22, 2012 7:38 pm Leave a Comment

Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman announced Saturday that, after 11 years leading Princeton, she will step down in June.

During her tenure, Tilghman oversaw the addition of a residential college and a $1.88 billion fundraising campaign. Tilghman announced her plans to leave at the Princeton Board of Trustees Friday meeting; in a Saturday email to the student body, Tilghman said she plans to take a year’s sabbatical and then return to teaching.

“There is a natural rhythm to university presidencies,” Tilghman wrote. “With the major priorities accomplished or well on their way to being realized, and the campaign successfully concluded, it is time for Princeton to turn to its 20th president to chart the path for the next decade and beyond.”

University President Richard Levin made a similar statement in late August, when he announced his reasons for stepping down after 20 years. With the end of the $3.88 billion Yale Tomorrow campaign and the imminent launch of Yale-NUS, Levin said he saw himself in between major projects.

According to a Princeton press release, the team choosing Tilghman’s successor will include nine members of the Board of Trustees, four members of the faculty who will be elected by the faculty, two undergraduates, a graduate student and a member of the staff.

Correction 9.22.12

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of retiring Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman.

26-year-old woman pretends to be Columbia freshman

September 10, 2012 6:08 pm Leave a Comment

Check your friends’ ID cards, Elis — you never can tell who’s eating pancakes next to you in Commons.

For the past few weeks, a woman calling herself “Rhea Sen” has been pretending to be a freshman at Columbia University, the Columbia Daily Spectator reports. Her real name, according to authorities, is Briva Patel, and she’s not a freshman. She’s 26.

Claiming to be a student from Philadelphia, Patel attended freshman orientation events for two weeks before she was removed from campus for trespassing. Students got suspicious when she gave inconsistent dorm room info and wouldn’t provide a student ID. A Facebook page for Rhea Sen only has nine friends.

This isn’t the first time in recent memory that impostors have tried to lie their way into an Ivy. Esther Reed duped her way into Columbia as a grad student five years ago, and Yale’s own Akash Maharaj was caught falsifying his previous academic records in 2008. And who could forget Adam Wheeler, who faked his way into Harvard?

Because we know everyone’s thinking it:

She doesn't even go here!

Watch this video on YouTube

Princeton moves to keep freshmen away from Greeks

March 27, 2012 11:36 am Leave a Comment

Princeton freshmen are now prohibited from attending all Greek formal and semiformal events, the Daily Princetonian reported.

Last August, Princeton administrators announced that Princeton freshmen cannot rush fraternities or sororities. But on Sunday, a committee of students and administrators charged with outlining the specifics of the ban released a report stating that freshmen students who “knowingly” rush or pledge a Greek organization, Greek members who plan events for this purpose and freshmen who attend Greek-sponsored formal and semiformal events will be suspended from the university.

“We agreed that the intention of the policy is to allow freshmen a full year of exposure to the social and residential aspects of University life without the distraction of fraternity and sorority activity,” the report states.

Yale announced a ban on fall rush for freshmen earlier this month, though University administrators have not yet hammered out the ban’s specifics.

Princeton gets its own version of Yale Lunch

February 19, 2012 8:10 pm Leave a Comment

A spinoff of YaleLunch, which is itself a spinoff of HarvardLunch, is headed to Princeton, according to the Daily Princetonian.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to break up the routine and get out of your comfort zone and potentially develop really great friendships from that,” said Princeton freshman Austin Jackson. He said he contacted the founder or Harvard Lunch and asked him to set up a Princeton version of the site.

Just in case you forgot how this all works, users of Yale Lunch (or Princeton Lunch, or Harvard Lunch) enter their name and email address. The website then sends them the contact deets of a rando on campus who’s also interested in getting lunch.

“The Yale Daily News caught wind of it, published an article that was very critical of it, citing it as a reason why Harvard sucks,” Seth Riddley, the Harvard senior who started the website, said in the Princetonian. “Today, Yalelunch.com is even more popular on Yale’s campus.”

As for Princeton Lunch, Princeton’s student government is evidently packaging the new site in its new program “with the goal of promoting unity and fun” among Princetonians. We wish them the very best.

Yale raised $580 million in 2011, report says

February 17, 2012 3:48 pm Leave a Comment

An annual report released by the Council for Aid to Education on Wednesday showed that 14 Connecticut universities raised a combined $746 million in 2011, with Yale receiving more than three quarters of all donations.

Spurred by the end of the Yale Tomorrow fundraising campaign, the University’s $580 million total was the third largest in the country, falling short of Stanford’s $709 million and Harvard’s $639 million. According to the report, national fundraising totals exceeded $30 billion in the 2011 budget year, an 8.2 percent jump from 2010.

In Connecticut, Yale’s fundraising far outpaced the second place University of Connecticut, which raised $38.6 million. Other top fundraisers included Wesleyan University with $36.5 million, Trinity College with $24.7 million and Fairfield University with $16.2 million.

Five other Connecticut institutions raised over $5 million, the report said.

[Via Hartford Courant]

CORRECTION: Feb. 20, 2012

An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the Council for Aid to Education as the Center for Aid to Education.

Former Yale provost will step down as MIT president

February 16, 2012 10:07 pm Leave a Comment

Former Yale Provost Susan Hockfield announced today she will leave her position as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During her seven years as president, Hockfield has helped maintain the university’s strong research activities through the depths of the recession, according to an MIT press release. But in a letter to the MIT community on Thursday, Hockfield said it’s time for a new president to take the reins of the university as it prepares to launch a significant new fundraising drive.

“A campaign on this scale will require the full focus and sustained attention of the Institute’s president over many years,” Hockfield wrote. “I have concluded that it would be best for the Institute to begin this next chapter with new leadership.”

Hockfield joined Yale’s faculty in 1985 as a professor of neuroscience. She later became the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences before serving as provost from 2003 to 2004. When Hockfield’s appointment as president of MIT was announced in August 2004, current Yale Provost Peter Salovey, who was Yale College Dean at the time, said he thought she would fill her new position “more perfectly” than any other candidate.

After the MIT Corporation appoints her successor, Hockfield will stay at MIT as a member of the school’s faculty.

Gross Dartmouth hazing leads to outrage

February 7, 2012 10:52 pm Leave a Comment

Outrage over accounts of hazing published in Dartmouth’s campus newspaper has led to action from professors.

In late January, Dartmouth senior Andrew Lohse wrote an opinion article in the paper describing various disgusting hazing practices among the university’s fraternities. As a pledge, Lohse said he was made to drink a full cup of vinegar, swim through a pool full of bodily excrement and perform a number of acts too disgusting for Cross Campus report. (Just read the op-ed if you want the gory details.)

In response to Lohse’s piece, more than 100 Dartmouth professors signed a faculty letter late last week condemning hazing and calling on the university’s administration to take a stronger stance against hazing on campus.

“[Hazing] degrades their ability to learn and our ability to teach,” the letter reads. “It breaks down their understanding of right and wrong, of decency and indecency, and the lines between healthy sexuality and sexual assault.”

Harvard, Princeton investigated for discrimination

February 5, 2012 4:28 pm Leave a Comment

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint that Harvard and Princeton discriminate against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions, Bloomberg reported late last week.

The complainant is an anonymous Asian-American applicant who says that Harvard and Princeton rejected him on the basis of his race and national origin. The student’s father told Bloomberg that his son was among the top students in his California high school, and that their family originally came from India.

Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal said Harvard does not comment on the specifics of complaints under federal review, but added that it “does not discriminate against Asian-American applicants.” Sixteen percent of Harvard undergraduates in the 2010-2011 academic year were Asian-American, a two percent dip from the number of Asian-American undergraduates in 2005-2006, according to the university’s website.

At Princeton, meanwhile, Asian-Americans now comprise 17.7 percent of undergrads, up from 14.1 percent in 2007-’08.

Harvard sees drop in applications

January 26, 2012 5:35 pm Leave a Comment

Harvard College saw a 1.9 percent drop in applications this year, the Harvard Crimson reported Thursday.

All told, 34,285 students applied for admission to the College, down 665 applications from last year. This is the first time in five years that Harvard has seen a drop in total application numbers.

Harvard College Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons told the Crimson that the reinstitution of early action programs by Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia this year may have led high school seniors to apply to fewer colleges. Harvard also received fewer applicants from the Northeast, Fitzsimmons said..

Applications dropped 1.7 percent at the University of Pennsylvania and 8.9 percent at Columbia University, while Stanford University experienced a 7 percent increase in applications. This year, Yale received 5.8 percent more applications than last year, for a total of 28,870 applications.

Columbia drug dealers face varying sentences

January 18, 2012 9:55 am Leave a Comment

Just over a year after five Columbia students were busted for running a drug ring out of the school’s dorms and fraternities, the last of the five has pleaded guilty, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Starting in July 2010, an undercover police officer purchased over $11,000 in drugs from the students over a five-month period in a sting operation called “Operation Ivy League.” All five plead guilty and received sentences of varying severity. One, convicted of dealing cocaine, spent six months in jail; another, accused of selling Adderall, will be allowed to plea to a drug misdemeanor in a year if he completes 300 hours of community service.

Adam Klein, the last of the students to plead guilty, is expected to receive five years of probation at sentencing on Feb. 28.

[via HuffPo.]

New Harvard admin focuses on global strategy

January 15, 2012 10:45 pm Leave a Comment

As Yale-NUS College prepares to open in fall 2013, Harvard has created an administrative position that will examine the university’s “global engagement.”

Harvard Business School Professor Krishna Palepu was named President Drew Gilpin Faust’s senior adviser for global strategy on Wednesday, the Crimson reported. Palepu will work to implement the recommendations of Harvard’s International Strategy Working Group, which in October 2011 delivered its findings to the Harvard Board of Governors, the school’s highest governing body. The findings have not yet been released to the public.

“I am delighted that Harvard has, with this appointment, underscored its commitment to global engagement,” Jorge Domínguez, Harvard’s vice provost for international affairs, told the Harvard Gazette.

Palepu will also work on international fundraising and alumni outreach, in coordination with Domínguez.

Harvard’s International Strategy Working Group was formed in 2010 weeks after Yale first announced plans for Yale-NUS college.

Tag Archive: Ivy League