Box-Ban Debate

By Allie Wenner

Published Dec. 26, 2018

1 min read

Students are stepping up their call for the University to stop asking undergraduate admission applicants about their criminal histories, while President Eisgruber ’83 expressed reservations about such a move.

Members of Students for Prison Education and Reform (SPEAR), which has been pushing to “BAN THE BOX” from admission applications since 2012, presented their case to Eisgruber at a meeting of the Council of the Princeton University Community.

Eisgruber said he was “unlikely to eliminate the question entirely,” citing campus safety and the consideration of “values and leadership characteristics” during admissions. He suggested that SPEAR consider reformulating the question in a way that “mitigates some of the determinants that [SPEAR] referred to.”

In an op-ed in The Daily Princetonian later that week, SPEAR president Micah Herskind ’19 argued that “by keeping the box — regardless of its form — we communicate our willingness to use racist and classist data in our admissions process.”

SPEAR members said they plan to generate interest in the issue through a petition drive and campus events.

More than 50 colleges have removed the box from their applications. Beginning next summer, the question will not appear on the Common Application form.

In addition, Princeton’s Graduate School does not ask applicants about their criminal history.

Published in the Jan. 9, 2019, Issue

1 Response

Rebecca Reimers ’87

5 Years Ago

Banning the Box and Sexual Assault

I appreciate that the Princeton Students for Prison Education and Reform would like to Ban the Box that requires undergraduate applicants to indicate their conviction history due to the classist and racist way that our criminal-justice system disproportionately convicts young people of color and low income. However, I have been heartened by advances in the criminal conviction of sexual assault in the 30 years since I graduated from Princeton, particularly in cases where victim and perpetrator know each other. First-time privileged offenders are more likely to receive sentences that do not create tell-tale gaps in their transcripts, and this is especially true when issues of consent are unclear or mishandled by the criminal-justice system. The laws about registered sex offenders are not an adequate substitute for banning the box, because they include people guilty of statutory rape or consensual “sexting” of photographs and videos who do not pose a safety threat to fellow students. I am wondering why Princeton decided to “ban the box” on its Graduate School applications and how Princeton ensures that Graduate School applicants who have been convicted of sexual assault are not admitted.