The Best Intentions

When institutions get too big, they knock things over just by stretching. The University knocked the Dinky station a few hundred yards out of the way of local commuters when it stretched McCarter Theatre into an arts neighborhood. Awkwardly, it ignored the heartfelt protests of the local citizens it inconvenienced. The University’s hungry bureaucracy has gobbled up a once open, shady campus, leaving behind a confusion of steel and stone that might have spread out better on the other side of Lake Carnegie. Worried voices went unheeded as grass and trees vanished.

Do not mistake this for arrogance. The University acts with the highest intentions, which, of course, is what paves the road to hell. Now the juggernaut comes for the editorial independence of the PAW, and it will get its way.  With an endowment approaching $30 billion, it can ignore the voices of its children. It has outgrown us. 

Still, I raise a tiny, insignificant voice. Leave the PAW alone, Princeton. Be worthy of thy name.