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Exclusives: Comparative Life September
11 , 2002: The
unsullied Princeton By Kristen Albertsen '02 A favorite Sunday ritual of mine is waking late, downing coffee, and settling into a comfortable chair for a leisurely afternoon with the Sunday edition of the New York Times. Only calamities like a horrific hangover or Monday deadline can quell my delight, and there is little else, save gourmet coffee or a crackling fire, that can augment it. Last Sunday, however, was one of those rare occasions when my end-of-weekend/ beginning-of-week ritual was even more satisfying than expected, due to a special photo and article in the Times Magazine. When I flipped to the weekly column entitled "The Way We Live Now," I was struck by a vision — it was, in full black and white glory, a photograph of the Princeton University campus; and not just anywhere on campus, but the steps and arch between Patton and Cuyler Halls, more intimately known as my dormitory senior year. To anyone else, even the average Princeton grad, such a scene would appear generically gothic, taken anywhere in the junior slums or Pyne courtyard or Rockefeller college. However, my seasoned eye recognized the looming expanse of Brown Hall through the arch, and the signature cracks and divots of the Cuyler stairs. I had trod those stairs countless times my senior year — in rain, in snow, with the burden of the thesis weighing heavily on my back, on the wings of freedom following graduation.
"Look!" I cried ecstatically to my Sunday guest. "That's Princeton! That's my old dorm, where I lived all of senior year!" He cast a uninterested eye at the photo of an anonymous college-age male, back to the camera, trudging wearily up gray stone steps. "Hmmm, that's nice. What's the article about?" I realized, sheepishly, that I didn't even know. I was so excited to see in print not just any Princeton but my Princeton that I had ignored the textual content of the article. Who cared what it said? Princeton as a news item or piece of gossip means nothing to me compared to the personal opinions, associations, and memories I possess. Interestingly, that was effectively what the article said. For those readers who did not peruse it, or even for those who did, Walter Kirn '83, the author, was discussing Princeton's recent debacle with Yale's admission website. He stated, in short, that the sudden uproar over illicit and catty Ivy League tactics had done nothing in the long run to tarnish the reputations of the Ivies. America clings to and needs its ideal of meritocracy personified by elite colleges like Princeton, he stated. I thought, just like it needs patriotism symbolized by the flag or democracy embodied by the ballot. No quantity of web security breaches, empty rhetoric, or hanging chads will dampen our zeal for such American institutions. Princeton and Harvard and Yale will always be the top three schools about which everyone reads, writes, and dreams. It is the same, in a sense, for me. While Princeton does not represent
to me the quintessence of meritocracy — jobless and set to
leave the country in a week, I have yet to reap the benefits of
my education — it does represent a certain social and educational
idyll that can never be corrupted. No amount of bad press or sleazy
exposÈs can muddy the memories I made at school, and little
that Princeton does while I am an alum will change the way I felt
as an undergrad. The factual text will never obscure the idyllic
picture of Cuyler courtyard I carry in my mind.
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