In Response to: Quest for Meaning

In the Oct. 8 issue I found a great disconnect between the minority admission statistics for the Class of ’18 in the On the Campus section and the Varsity Club ad on the inside front cover. Purportedly showing the University’s 67 team captains with the athletics director, I counted only three apparently minority students. That’s less than 5 percent of the team captains and, I’ll bet, not more than 10 percent adding in Hispanics, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, etc., who may not be easily identified in the photo. 

Why does Princeton bother to keep publishing statistics on minorities, boasting that they are close to half the freshman class, if leadership groupings include so few of them? I’m sure much more than 5 percent of the intramural team members are black, Asian, or Hispanic, but the captaincies seem to remain overwhelmingly white. This group picture isn’t any more diverse than my entire class’s group shot would have been 54 years ago. Who’s kidding whom?

John Gartner ’60