From the Editor

In March, Susan Patton ’77 created a firestorm with her ­letter, published in The Prince, advising the “women of Princeton”: Seek a Princeton mate early in your college career, because never again will you find so many intelligent and worthy men, and the pool gets smaller each year (page 6). PAW asked a few undergraduate women to weigh in.

Vivienne Chen ’14 noted the “incredible feminism and activism on this campus aimed at dealing with more pressing issues than what men women should marry, such as promoting a brand of feminism that is inclusive of race, class, gender identities ... and sexual orientation, all of which Patton’s letter sorely lacked.”

If Patton “believes that female Princeton undergraduates will never again be surrounded by this many brilliant, eligible, successful men, in a situation where the numbers are skewed in our favor, she has never seen Silicon Valley,” asserted Amy Zhou ’13, a computer science student.

Erin McDonough ’14 was more sympathetic: After all, women can find many smart men of their own age on campus, and there are fewer opportunities to meet potential mates elsewhere. But she rejected as outdated Patton’s assumptions that most men prefer younger women and beauty over brains.

Princeton women, like Princeton men, take varied paths to happiness. So ­perhaps the best advice comes from another alumna, Lisa Belkin ’82, writing in The Huffington Post: “Focus, as everyone in any college anywhere should, on who you are and what you want and who you’d like to share it all with. Then forge ahead with the first two in the hopes that the last part will follow. There is a rich and fulfilling life waiting outside the school gates. Seize it.”