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About the Author
Stan Katz teaches public and international affairs and directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at the Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is a past president of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society for Legal History. He comments frequently on policy issues relating to higher education, particularly liberal education, and on the humanities and social sciences, philanthropy, scholarly relations with Cuba, and the interplay of civil society, constitutionalism, and democracy. And on his beloved Cubs.
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Recent Posts
The Higher Education Act and the Education Industry | Comment [2]
A Good Day for History Teaching | Comment [4]
Good Luck, President Simon and MSU! | Comment [7]
A Curious Pair of Obituaries | Comment [5]
Bronislaw Geremek: Scholar-Statesman | Comment
Featured Articles By the Author
Go Sarah, Sis Boom Bah!
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.
Posted at 05:14:46 PM on March 10, 2008 | All postings by Stan KatzComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
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Unless a college or university has some sort of “residential college” system which involves the faculty in extra-curricular campus life (as do most of the Ivies and many of the private colleges), the fact remains that many faculty simply commute in to the campus for their teaching and office hour obligations — sometimes from quite a distance away, and often for a one, two, or three-day schedule on campus. This is only exacerbated in the lives of the “frequent flyer” adjuncts, of course, who must cobble together a meager living often from multi-campus course engagements.
That unfortunate reality has eaten away at the traditional role of faculty involvement in extra-curricular activities as central to the development of the life of the mind and of community. And while I have no data, I would hazard a guess that the increasing abuse of alcohol and drugs on campus coincides with the decline of faculty presence in extra-curricular life.
So, yes, indeed, “Go, Sarah, Sis Boom Bah!” — and pity the students who are abandoned to a “residence life” or a “commuter life” designed almost exclusively by non-academic staff.
— Anti-hypocrisy advocate · Mar 10, 07:46 PM · #
As someone who was competed on the collegiate quiz bowl circuit for several years (including against Princeton once or twice) I should say that their are fine representatives of the school. Check out their website at http://www.princeton.edu/~cbowl/.
If you’re interested in collegiate quiz bowl more generally, you should poke around the message board found at http://www.hsquizbowl.org/forums. It’s quite the fun activity that has greatly added to my education over the years.
— Brian Saxton · Mar 10, 08:59 PM · #
Readers interested in pursuing the residential college idea as suggested by the first respondent are invited to visit The Collegiate Way: Residential Colleges and the Renewal of University Life where just this sort of thing is recommended and methods for implementing it are presented in detail. This is a growing international movement but it does depend upon faculty taking the lead in campus life (as they should have all along).
— R.J. O'Hara · Mar 10, 10:18 PM · #