Last week our school paper, The Daily Princetonian, published an editorial that caught my attention. “Cheer on every team” complained that it is “disappointing that the University rarely makes a point of mentioning the excellence — or, for that matter, the existence — of Princeton’s competitive academic teams, such as the Debate Team or College Bowl.” They went on to say that these academic teams “travel across the country and around the globe to compete in tournaments against the world’s best students.” The Prince called for greater recognition of the accomplishments of these groups, and greater funding for them. “The lack of funding and attention given to [them] create the perception that they are a low priority on the campus.” The nicely written piece ended by commenting that “Having a bonfire [as Princeton does when its football team beats both Yale and Harvard] to celebrate football victories is a great thing, but the University community should also get fired up when our academic teams demonstrate their excellence.”

Right on, I say. Having posted recently about allegedly unfair competition in football, let me say that I think greater university financial support for the broad range of extracurricular activity and greater recognition of the meaningfulness of such activity seems consistent with a university’s support for truly liberal education. I confess that I do not follow our College Bowl team, but I pay attention to a great many nonathletic activities that make a significant contribution to student learning, campus, and community welfare. We should of course be just as proud of those students who work in the local soup kitchen or lead campus religious groups as those who have a gifted jump shot — each is contributing to our communitiy in significant ways.

One of my favorite teams here is the Princeton University Orchestra, which has been brilliantly led for about 30 years by its conductor, Michael Pratt. My wife and I have been attending almost all of the concerts ever since we arrived in Princeton three decades ago, and it has been a thrill to see the orchestra mature and improve under Michael’s tutelage — he is surely one of the best teachers at Princeton, and we ought to give him a teaching prize sometime soon. We speak about “student-athletes,” so why not “student-musicians”?

My favorite this year would be Sarah Vander Ploeg, a Woodrow Wilson School senior whose thesis I am directing. Sarah has won a Marshall Scholarship to study in London for the next two years, and she was the co-winner of the Pyne Prize, which Princeton gives to the student who displays the greatest combination of academic excellence and contribution to the community. She plays the viola in the University Orchestra and is a lyric soprano vocal soloist in the choir (and elsewhere). She will use her Marshall to attend the Royal College of Music, something I think must be pretty unusual. Her promising thesis is an examination of the impact of the law of intellectual property on the role of popular music in creating community in post-apartheid South Africa. Equal to a jump shot? I think so.