The following letters from PAW readers were submitted as general responses to the magazine and its editors.
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58 Responses
Van Wallach ’80
1 Year AgoOut with "Alumni," in with . . . Alumnx.
Ivan Törzs ’75
6 Years AgoI have always enjoyed reading my Class Notes first. But whereas they used to be easy to find, right at the back of the magazine, you keep moving them toward the middle. I wish you’d stop that.
Brian Zack ’72
7 Years AgoI expected to spend just five or 10 minutes flipping through the supplement to the Dec. 7 issue, Princeton International, before recycling it. Instead, I was enthralled by each first-person article (and even by our president’s introductory essay), and read it cover to cover. A great idea — thank you! I hope more and more students will take advantage of these extraordinary and wonderful opportunities.
Thomas P. Wolf ’48
7 Years AgoFor three years I have tolerated the painful actions of President Eisgruber ’83’s administration (the Wilson fiasco, the recommendation to eliminate uses of “man” from the Princeton vocabulary, the drive for diversity for the sake of diversity at the expense of quality), all for the sake of political correctness.
Now it has come to my attention that only graduate alumni who pay dues receive all 14 issues of PAW. The University sends five issues to those who do not pay dues. This is not only discrimination, but it is stupidity. All undergraduate alumni receive all issues of PAW, even if they do not pay dues. The classes pay for this through dues collection. This, too, is ridiculous.
I understand that this problem is one that President Eisgruber inherited, but I hope it is one that he will get rid of. The University has spent a huge effort in the last few years to make the graduate students and alumni feel more included. I can’t believe that this unnecessary slight was overlooked.
For 20 years I have argued with Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ’69 that PAW should be sent by the University, at its expense, to all alumni. What better loyalty-raiser does Princeton have? It would be money well spent. That is why the University spends millions on Reunions and other Princeton events and programs.
If the University can’t find the money in our huge endowment, one or more alumni could be asked to endow PAW and be rid of the problem once and for all.
Editor’s note: Graduate alumni receive an email notification when each new issue of PAW is posted online, with links to stories of special interest and web-exclusive material.
Charlton Price ’48
7 Years AgoPublished online July 6, 2017
The Jan. 11 issue of the Alumni Weekly includes a timely and noteworthy letter from Tom Wolf ’48, our class secretary. Mr. Wolf stresses the need for information about and contact between the University and its worldwide alumni community, graduate and undergraduate. This is hampered by the limited (mostly online) distribution of the PAW distribution to graduate alumni. As Mr. Wolf’s letter notes, PAW is the main medium of communication likely to get attention from and be of interest to all alumni.
The comment from the PAW editor admitting that graduate alumni get some issues in hard copy, but most only electronically with supplementary material, is an unresponsive, inadequate answer to Mr. Wolf’s letter. (The letter obviously asks for PAW’s attention as well.)
Although PAW is editorially independent of the University administration, it is supported at least in part by alumni class dues. Assuring the best possible communication between the University and all alumni is surely in the best interest of the University, of all alumni, and of the magazine.
As President Eisgruber ’83 stressed in his remarks at the Dec. 6 gathering of Seattle-area alumni, and of course as is emphasized in the current Annual Giving campaign, the University craves continued interest, participation, and financial support by all alumni. Surely PAW is an effective medium – and for many, the only regularly available medium, other than pleas from Annual Giving – for the best possible alumni/University contact and for continued alumni participation and support.
Norman Ravitch *62
7 Years AgoWe graduate alumni are quite used to second-class status, even though our accomplishments are more than first class compared to the wretched undergraduates which Princeton now tries to educate with diminishing results on behalf of diversity. Of course it all goes back to West and Wilson. May I say, most of our problems in fact go back to Wilson. George Kennan in the late 1950s once spoke at the Woodrow Wilson School and began with an attack on Wilson; that made me a fan of Kennan forever! I have recently reread the psychological study Bullitt and Freud did on Wilson: Despite critics, it still reads pretty convincingly.
Bill Torgerson ’66
7 Years AgoPublished online November 30, 2016
I was so impressed by the recitation, in the Oct. 5 Class Notes, of my ’66 classmate Jim Timbie’s remarkable four-plus decades of arms-control service to our country, that I wondered why PAW’s editors hadn’t thought it merited a “particularly noteworthy” paw print. This caused me to look to see what achievement by the alumni they did find particularly noteworthy. The answer: nothing at all!
I call it an editorial microaggression.
Alex Wellford ’64
7 Years AgoPublished online November 30, 2016
For some years now, the President’s Page has been set in a smaller typeface than the rest of the magazine. To me, that small a print is off-putting, so I rarely read it. I do read much of the rest of the magazine. If you could encourage the president to shorten the article enough to use the same font as in the rest of the magazine, I think most readers would be delighted.