On The Campus — Topical Theses

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Daniel A. Irom ’84

Princeton Alumni Weekly. April 4, 1984.

In other times and other places, April means the beginning of baseball season, the coming of college acceptance or rejection letters, and income taxes. But at Princeton during senior year, April means only one thing: Mr. T. By the end of this month, some 900 scholarly discourses will be churned out by the Class of 1984 — which means that right now, some serious churning is taking place.

            Kevin Guthrie ’84, an engineering management systems major better known as a record-holding flanker on the football team, is working on a computer program that will depict football plays on screen. He hopes his thesis will be used by coaches to design plays and predict the outcome of a variety of situations. “From what I know,” Guthrie says, “this kind of thing isn’t being done anywhere else.”

            Many college and professional teams already use computers to produce “tendency analyses” — that is, predictions of an opponent’s behavior based on what it has done in the past. Guthrie’s project will give coaches the chance not only to conduct analyses but also to see a play unfold and to judge its effectiveness. He explains that one remaining hurdle in his thesis is to make the program “user-friendly,” so that the average football coach may easily understand it. “That’s a very important aspect of my thesis,” Guthrie notes, “because the typical football coach doesn’t know — and isn’t interested in learning — about computer programming.”

            If any better matches between man and thesis have been found, Guthrie isn’t aware of them. “It combines my main academic interest with my main extracurricular interest,” he says. “Not a lot of students get a chance to do that.”

            Sociology major Doug Lederman ’84 is examining a topic perhaps even closer to the hearts of Princetonians than football: the Honor Code. “The latest Daily Princetonian poll found that 55 percent of the student body would not turn in a friend if they saw him or her cheating,” Lederman says. “For me, that’s enough to merit a look at the system.”

            He is examining the historical and intellectual origins of the Honor Code in an attempt to evaluate whether the principles embodied in the code are still valid today. “One of the major problems I see with the Honor Code is that students have lost touch with it,” Lederman says. “I don’t think the code can’t work, just perhaps that it isn’t working now. It has become a ritual that people don’t think about — and the ritual has become more important than the principle.”

            His analysis will only marginally touch on Robert Clayton ’80’s lawsuit against the university, in which Clayton alleges that he was wrongfully convicted of violating the code. “For my thesis,” Lederman says, “the only relevance the Clayton case has is that it’s the first time somebody has challenged the Honor Code in public. But it does point to some interesting questions.”

            Lederman says that for students the most problematic aspect of the Honor Code is the clause which requires them to report all violations. “I’m not sure whether it’s ever been honorable to turn in a friend,” he says, “but it certainly isn’t now.” He is looking at past Prince polls to see if undergraduates have consistently reported uneasiness about turning in their peers.

            In any case, though, Lederman feels there has been a substantial departure from the original intent of the system. “The Honor Code has lost its vitality. It no longer has the breadth of enthusiasm and belief that characterized its origins.”

            Biology major Margaret Nachtigall ’84 is investigating whether the hormone estrogen is responsible for female-initiated pre-copulatory behavior in certain animals. “To test for this,” she says, “I’m taking male hamsters before they’re 24 hours old and castrating them in order to remove the hormone that’s necessary to masculinize the undifferentiated brain.” She explains that there is a critical period in the early days of a hamster’s life during which the animal’s patterns of sexual behavior are determined. If the hormone testosterone is present during that period, the hamster will act as a male. “But when I remove the source of the male hormone,” she says, “the brain then differentiates as a female’s brain. The hamster looks like a male, but it behaves like a female.”

            After 80 days, she injects the pseudo-males with estrogen and examines how often they engage in “vaginal marking” — a behavior intended to attract males during the period just before the female is most receptive toward reproduction — when placed together with normal males. Nachtigall thinks it is likely that some part of the hamster’s brain is capable of receiving estrogen and controlling vaginal marking. 

            “This experiment has never been done before,” she says. “It’s amazing that a hormone present so early in life can make such a huge difference in the differentiation of the brain, and therefore in the behavior of males and females. It’s also exciting to see the characteristically female behaviors performed by a genetic male.” She emphasizes, however, that “this has no implications for humans; human systems are different and more complex.”

            Debbie Lewis ’84, a Wilson School major, is writing an atypical Wilson School thesis. She is examining current and past threats to the American family structure. “I’m looking at the construction of family order and stability through the sexual ideology of the ‘defenders of the family’,” she says. “In the 19^th century, prostitution was seen as the biggest threat. Right now, homosexuality, sex education, abortion, and promiscuity are all playing major roles.” Of these, “homosexuality is seen as the biggest threat to the family by pro-family forces.”

            Other seniors are writing novels, directing plays, or tracing the history of the McDonald’s fast-food chain. For the time being, don’t look for any of them — even Guthrie — on Princeton’s grassy fields. They won’t be lofting any frisbees on warm spring breezes. Instead, they’ll be engaging in a traditional nearly as old as Reunions, only infinitely more painful.

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Daniel A. Irom ’84 is writing his thesis for the Wilson School on unions in the motion-picture industry.

This was originally published in the April 4, 1984 issue of PAW.