The following letters to the editor are related to University history.
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19 Responses
Katie V. Panskyy ’17
11 Months AgoPrincetoniana Committee Is Compiling Archive of Pins
The Princetoniana Committee is excited to announce the launch of our Pin Repository Project, aimed at creating a historical digital archive and possible physical display of all alumni pins and buttons throughout the decades. We are reaching out to you with a request for this endeavor.
We kindly request your participation in this project in the following ways:
• Provide high-resolution photos: This will allow us to include your pin in our digital archive.
• Share known history: We encourage you to provide any information or stories you may have about your pin (when given, for what reason, etc.).
• Donation or loan of pins: If comfortable, you can donate or loan your pin to the physical collection. We will safeguard your pin, and if on loan, I will ensure it is returned to you by the end of Reunions.
The goal of this project is to further enrich the virtual museum for all alumni to view pins at any time along with a blurb of their history. Should you choose to participate, please send your high-resolution photos or any questions to Katie Panskyy ’17 at ypanskyy@alumni.princeton.edu.
Wayne S. Moss ’74
1 Year AgoJames Madison’s Legacy of Executive Power
For James Madison, Class of 1771, Princeton’s most influential alumnus, the received view is that Madison’s genius produced the Constitution, the brilliant numbers 10 (benefits of extended republic) and 51 (separation of powers) of The Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights. However, his presidency, marred by the British burning of the Capitol and the White House on Aug. 24, 1814, an event not repeated until another Capitol invasion two centuries later on Jan. 6, 2021, is seen as underwhelming at best.
Recent historians, however, have noticed the continuity of Madison’s genius into his presidency. They have admired Madison’s scrupulous adherence to constitutional principles even in the face of New England opposition to the War of 1812. That opposition flirted with secession and even offered to negotiate with the British for a separate peace — considered treasonous under the Constitution both then and now. Yet contemporaries observed that Madison restrained his executive power from infringing freedoms of speech and press and other civil liberties. It was noted that the war concluded “without one trial for treason or even one prosecution for libel.”
This is not hyperbole. Contrast Madison with the actions of other wartime American presidents. Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus, giving military leaders authority to arrest, detain, and silence government critics.
Woodrow Wilson, Princeton Class of 1879, successfully suppressed freedoms of speech and press in order to silence critics of World War I. Indeed, Wilson pushed for passage and enforcement of the Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918, thus curtailing a broad swath of dissenting speech.
FDR also had a mixed record — proclaiming the importance of the four freedoms of speech and worship and from want and fear, while incarcerating over 120,000 people of Japanese descent, about two thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, during World War II.
Even President John Adams, a founding father with deep intellectual understanding of the Constitution, suppressed freedom of press and speech under the Alien and Sedition Acts during America’s Quasi-War, an undeclared naval war with France from 1798 to 1800.
In contrast to these presidents, Madison walked his talk of furthering individual rights.
Why does all this matter? Like Washington before him, Madison wanted to show posterity how the holder of executive power under the Constitution should behave — not only what to say but also how to act, which should be with restraint and even respect for and consideration of opposing views. Today, we are confronted with a host of political leaders of all stripes who are quick to manipulate events for the expansion of personal power and selfish gain, while concealing their bad behavior under a veneer that all is done to protect freedom, actually their freedom at the expense of others. We hold up Madison — and the Constitution he did so much to bequeath to us — as a standard against which to assess the integrity and honesty of our leaders today.
Note: I admit that Madison never solved the issue of slavery and did not free his own slaves. His failure to do so, however, does not detract from either the model of executive power he lived as president or his promotion of a system of government where individual rights have now been expanded to all.
Kristin Poor *13
2 Years AgoUpcoming Exhibition on Student Activism
Were you involved in on-campus political activism and student organizing during your time as a student at Princeton? As part of the research I’m conducting for an upcoming exhibition, I’d love to hear your stories and see any ephemera, photographs, or documents you might have saved from your organizing work. Interested alumni can contact me at kpoor@princeton.edu. Thank you in advance.
Peter Straus ’69
2 Years AgoR&B Performances at Dillon Gym Dances in the 1960s
I treasure memories of the great R&B bands playing the dances in Dillion Gym, easily my best experiences at Princeton.
Does anybody have information on who were the performers? It was a huge musical education for me, pointing me to lifelong semi-amateur musicianship.
Does anyone know who booked those bands? And if whoever did sees this, please share anything you’d care to. Thanks!
Joseph Mezzanotte ’71
3 Months AgoLooking for Photos
Does anyone have a picture of when the 5th Dimension came to Princeton’s Dillon Gym in the fall of 1968?
James W. Anderson ’70
5 Years AgoThe Cannon Hoax of ’69
Fifty years ago, S. Aaron Laden ’70 asked me to come to his dorm room for a secret meeting. That evening he informed the assembled group of a preposterous plan. He noted that the approaching Princeton-Rutgers game marked the 100th anniversary of college football. In the years before 1869, Princeton and Rutgers students had rumbled several times over possession of a Revolutionary War cannon. The cannon ultimately was buried on campus between Whig and Clio with just the breech end above ground. According to legend, the two universities agreed to settle their differences with a football game, and hence intercollegiate football was born.
Aaron said the idea would be to steal the cannon, claim Rutgers had purloined it, and then to display it before the game and acclaim our recovery of it. But the cannon weighed 1,088 pounds, and we never could have removed it. Instead, he said, let’s just dig a hole next to the cannon, cover up the portion above ground with the dirt, and trick everyone into believing that Rutgers had stolen it. Incredibly, our band of 12, in the dark of night, did just what Aaron proposed — and it worked.
A half-century ago on Sept. 25, one of the most ingenious hoaxes in Princeton history succeeded. Newspapers across the country touted Rutgers’ “masterful coup.” A day later we revealed, to another avalanche of national news, that the cannon was safely in place and it had all been a deception executed by clever, imaginative Princetonians. The headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer declared:
Cannon Heist All a Hoax
Princeton ‘Outguns’ Rutgers
S. Aaron Laden ’70
5 Years AgoMore Details On the Cannon Hoax
I write to add details to my classmate Jim Anderson’s ’70 fine letter regarding the Princeton-Rutgers Centennial Cannon Hoax that occurred 50 years ago this year.
Although we created the illusion that Rutgers had stolen the Cornwallis cannon, Rutgers students did, in fact, show up on the Princeton campus that very night to wreak havoc. Our team of conspirators were observing the scene around Cannon Green and Whig Hall for the optimal conditions to dig beside the little cannon (the subject of the 19th-century Princeton-Rutgers “Cannon War”) when our suspicions were aroused by several dark-clothed young men slinking from tree to tree, cartoon-style, behind Nassau Hall.
Fearing that they would blow our cover, we confronted them. Ed Labowitz ’70 asked them if they were planning to steal the clapper. When the reply came back, “The what ???” we knew we were dealing with aliens. Suddenly, Dale Stulz ’73 yelled, “Let’s get ‘em, boys!” and the intruders turned heel and ran. We discovered that they had painted Big Cannon red and had painted red “R’s” on the elm trees. After we repainted Big Cannon black, all was quiet until the digging began -- well after midnight -- at Little Cannon adjacent to Whig Hall.
Caroline Castleman ’20, Serena Alagappan ’20
5 Years AgoKeep the ‘Nass’ In Print
It’s hard to believe the Nassau Weekly has been in print for 40 years.
Although the Nass has always stayed true to its roots as a source of quality investigative reporting in a style different from that of the Prince, over the last four decades we have also welcomed and celebrated the work of new voices: poets, storytellers, cultural commentators, satirists, and this publication season, for the first time ever, crossword writers.
In recent years, we have been immensely grateful for funding from WPRB 103.3 FM, which has supported both our content and our commitment to remain in print.
While a move to online-only publication would eliminate the bulk of our expenses, it would deem unimportant the weekly labor of love that puts the words of our writers into a tangible, beautiful form every Sunday. Breakfast-table conversations around the newest pieces and freshly printed Verbatims would take place behind individual screens.
This year, we are asking for your help in restating our commitment to print journalism. Operating at a yearly loss is not sustainable, nor is relying on print ads for income. With our first-ever fundraising drive, we want to help WPRB help us keep the Nass free and in print.
Our special 40th-anniversary issue can be found at nassauweekly.com/issue/celebrating-40-years/. We thank you for your continued engagement with the Nass and encourage you to make a tax-deductible donation at nassauweekly.com/donate/.
Jon Holman ’66, Edward Groth ’66
6 Years AgoPublic-School Majority
Part of the “legend in our own minds” in the Class of 1966 is the belief that we are the first class with a majority of public-school graduates. Recently we heard a member of the Class of 1967 make the same claim.
Recalling consternation among alumni on this topic when we were undergraduates, we wondered if other classes from our era might also claim this distinction. We did some research, finding articles about each class when it was admitted in The Daily Princetonian’s archives and counting schools in our Freshman Herald (’66 did have a public-school majority, but the margin — 100-plus — seemed too large to have occurred in a single year, suggesting we were not the first).
The data we found indicate that the Class of 1962 was most likely “the first class with a majority of public-school graduates.” The Class of 1961 was described in a Prince article as “about 50-50,” with context suggesting preppies had a slim edge, and the same report stated that preppies were “back in the majority” in the Class of 1960, suggesting that ’59 may have tilted slightly to public-schoolers.
It seems clear that the balance shifted firmly with 1962. Prior to 1959 all classes had preppie majorities, generally by wide margins. Every class after 1962 has been majority public-school.
We share this with the alumni as a whole possibly to burst a few bubbles, and to offer any class that wishes to support a different conclusion the opportunity to prepare a rebuttal.
Editor’s note: The staff at Mudd Manuscript Library provided data for the following chart, noting that when foreign-school graduates were considered, the classes of ’59 and ’61 saw “a greater number, though not a majority, of public high school graduates” matriculate and that ’62 was the first class with a public-school majority (50.8 percent).
Dave West ’59
6 Years AgoMore Than One Nassau Hall
This “pavilion” in Keukenhof gardens near Amsterdam seems to prove that there is more than one Nassau Hall. I took this picture as a tourist on May 1 of this year. This Nassau Hall looks newer than ours.
Roland Frye ’72
6 Years AgoStealing the Clapper: Nine Strikeouts — But the 10th Time Was a Different Story
My first effort involved my taking a guitar-case worth of tools to Nassau Hall. The proctors promptly confiscated them. Most of my subsequent efforts ended similarly, with the proctors catching me in the process of “breaking and entering” Nassau Hall.
Eventually, however, I was able to evade the proctors long enough to actually enter the building — only to find that the bell tower was locked. So I did what any creative Princetonian would do.
I jimmied the lock to the janitor’s closet and was about to use the only key on the janitor’s keychain to unlock the bell tower door — when the proctors caught me yet again. Just before being captured, however, I pocketed the key for future use.
Once released from the custody of the proctors’ office, I took the key to a local locksmith and asked him to reproduce it for me. For some reason, he was deterred by the words on the key:
DO NOT REPRODUCE
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
He was not persuaded even by my impromptu lame explanation that the message meant merely that no one was to reproduce Princeton University.
Undeterred, I returned to the scene of the crime, now for the ninth time. I broke and entered yet again. I tried to unlock the bell-tower door with the purloined key. It was the wrong key.
Again undeterred, I entered the office of someone whose window was closest to the portion of the roof nearest the tower. I opened the window and was ready to grab onto the gutter and pull myself up to the roof. Then I realized that there was in fact no gutter to grab onto. In fact, the closest one would require a 10-foot jump from a third-floor window. I did not jump. Following a string of profanities that would make a sailor blush, I scurried downstairs and out the first-floor window through which I had entered.
I was ready to give up. But then I ran across a group of eight or so other freshmen who were also trying to steal the clapper. Collectively, they had assembled a set of tools and had among them one person with climbing experience. But they were lacking access to the building and the roof. These I could provide. So we all agreed that we would pool our knowledge and tools to get the one climber to the bell tower and that, were he successful, we would all share in the glory of being clapper stealers.
We succeeded in getting him into the building, up to the third floor, onto the roof (though I don’t recall how he did it), and into the bell tower — all without apprehension by the proctors. We were ecstatic, as I’m sure he was. Then he pulled out his tools, only to find that he had the wrong-sized wrench to remove the clapper. So he did what any creative Princetonian would do — he disassembled the bell-ringing mechanism.
Once back on terra firma, he distributed to each of us a memento of our collective triumph: a screw from the bell-ringing mechanism. The screw is now mounted in transparent plastic and serves as a paperweight on my desk, as it has for the last half-century.
I was thus able to duplicate, at least in some minor respect, my father’s accomplishment in 1939 — stealing the actual clapper. Crime runs in the family.
Photo: 1972 Nassau Herald
Editor’s note: Read an entertaining look back at Princeton’s most famous undergraduate caper — the tale of Joseph D. Oznot ’68.
Christoph von Rohr h’61
6 Years AgoLooking Back at Historical Figures
Published online Jan. 4, 2018
I had the privilege to spend my junior year (1959-60) as a Fulbright scholar in Princeton, attending the Woodrow Wilson School. I am proud of that and find it hard to understand that persons who without doubt have made unparalleled contributions to the development of a nation, or the world in general, be condemned because parts of their thinking in retrospect appear adversarial to the political standards that dominate in later generations. The contributions of few would survive if we held to this standard all historical figures of substance.
The students who occupied the president’s office quoted Martin Luther King’s heroic fight for equal rights. Were these aware that Martin Luther, the great reformer, the man for whom King was named, held harsh prejudices, including anti-Semitic convictions that were published a number of times? Although today we certainly don’t agree with such sentiments, we can still herald Martin Luther for the courageous acts that he took to instigate reformation. In 2017 the 500th anniversary of the beginning of reformation was commemorated, with many festivities all over the world.
In the case of Martin Luther, the world has taken a different approach, perhaps one that the students who are critical of Woodrow Wilson 1879 may bear in mind. While the failures of this man are easily apparent, especially when viewed from the modern perspective, the greatness of his accomplishments transcend and are recognized well beyond his foibles as an individual.
Norman Ravitch *62
6 Years AgoThe worst thing about Wilson...
The worst thing about Wilson was not his disdain for blacks; that was part of his culture and that of most Americans at the time. What was bad about him was his role in the Paris Peace Conference, where he failed to use his prestige and influence to do good and instead used it for the ludicrous pushing of the League of Nations, which his own people rejected.
Henry Lerner ’71
7 Years AgoSeeking Class War Books
I’ve just finished reading The Princeton Class of 1942 During World War II. How inspiring and humbling are the accounts of these brave Princetonians. Are there any other such class war books?
Calista McRae
7 Years AgoAuthors’ Query
Together with Philip Coleman (Trinity College Dublin), I am co-editing a volume of John Berryman’s letters, under contract to Harvard University Press. Because Berryman taught at Princeton for nearly 10 years, beginning in 1943, we believe some of your alumni may possess unpublished letters from the poet. We would like to consider these for inclusion in our volume. If readers believe they have material of use, we would be grateful if they could contact me at mcrae@njit.edu or Dr. Coleman at philip.coleman@tcd.ie.
April C. Armstrong *14
8 Years AgoCampus Jewish History
Re “Jewish Alumni Conference: A Century of Jewish Life” (Princetonians, May 11): I found earlier records of Jewish presence at Princeton while preparing a blog post for Mudd Library, dating back to 1809, when Mordecai Myers of the Class of 1812 arrived. Records suggest there were at least five Jewish students at Princeton prior to the Civil War: bit.ly/1Nyhsrr.
Martha A. Sandweiss, Professor of History
8 Years AgoFamily Memories of Slavery
As part of the ongoing Princeton and Slavery Project, a research project devoted to documenting the University’s involvement with the institution of slavery, I am interested in hearing from Princeton alums descended from slaveholders, slaves, or both. My freshman seminar in fall 2016 will be collecting stories from Princeton affiliates with family memories of slavery, and working with filmmaker Melvin McCray ’74 to capture these stories in audio and video form for inclusion on the project website.
I would be grateful to hear from anyone willing to share his or her family story at familymemory@princeton.edu.
Bob Carpenter ’43
8 Years AgoA ‘Prince’ Campaign for Integration
Published online May 11, 2016
I believe my late classmate, Frank Broderick ’43, deserves credit for a campaign in The Daily Princetonian that publicly advocated the admission of black students by Princeton University.
Editor’s note: Read more about Broderick in a story from the Dec. 20, 1995, issue of PAW.
Gabriel Henderson
8 Years AgoAuthor’s Query
I am doing research on David M. Burns ’53 and his role in administering a major climate-research program through the American Association for the Advancement of Science. I would appreciate it if anyone can contact me about their recollections of Burns and his life. You may contact me at hende270@gmail.com.