What has USG done for you lately?
APATHY ABOUT USG
"USG is more “government club” than Undergraduate Student Government."
Most Princeton students are apathetic about USG. That apathy is well deserved. While USG spends around half its budget on party planning and movie nights, students and their families are suffering from real economic stress. It is no wonder that voter turnout remains embarrassingly low (40% on a good year), and turnout for presidential debates is usually in the low to mid teens. USG is more “government club” than Undergraduate Student Government. The inconvenient truth is, USG was not designed to represent students’ concerns when they do not align with those of the administration.
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While middle class students and their families feel the squeeze, USG concerns itself more with planning Lawnparties, passing bylaws, and playing government than the financial health of its constituents. Is it any wonder Princeton students don’t care?
MISSION
In 2016, Princeton revised its financial aid calculus in order to lower the cost of attendance for middle class families. In the summer of 2019, Princeton decided it would no longer require scholarship students to pay the school, on average, $2,350 from their summer earnings, by September 2020. What prompted these changes?
External pressure. A few years back, other wealthy colleges were beating Princeton on cost of attendance, despite having lower per capita endowments than Princeton. While Princeton was a pioneer with its need-based financial aid system, other colleges had met and surpassed it over the years. In order to stay competitive with these other elite institutions, Princeton revised its definition of your “need,” and increased its financial aid spending.
Similarly, Yale was rocked by summer earnings contribution protests in the 2018-19 academic year. To prevent something similar happening here, Princeton preemptively cancelled the summer earning expectation for scholarship students.
Ok. So pressure works. But why does this pressure always have to be external?
Seems to me we have a perfect institution available to us, a student-run institution that can apply pressure on the administration, an institution that can advocate for the economic wellbeing of every student, and that of the family behind every student.
That institution is called USG, and it has not lived up to its potential.
Priorities
Return the Pell Grants
Princeton is quite proud of the fact that 24% of the class of 2023 have received a Federal Pell Grant, designed for undergraduate students who display exceptional financial need. But 0% of these students actually receive this grant, instead Princeton deducts exactly the dollar amount of the award from the students’ financial aid.
Meanwhile, Princeton estimates these same students who display exceptional financial need have to come up $3500 in miscellaneous expenses: things like travel home, school supplies, textbooks, and so on.
I pledge to apply maximum pressure on the administration to release these grants. After a sit down with the relevant administrators, all options are on the table to make this happen.
Priorities
Access to Psychological Help | Independent Students
I do not have confidence in the ability of USG or the administration to fix CPS from within. Nor do I have confidence in the ability of USG or the administration to arrange grocery store transportation for independent students. Apparently, a more convenient bussing schedule is a bridge too far.
Lower income students are the main victims of these policy failures. They are the most economically sensitive students among us, so they are the least able to seek out outside psychological help when CPS does not meet their needs. For these same students, ubering to the grocery store may be enough to put them in the red.
Returning the Pell Grants solves these problems. The Federal Government has already determined these students’ financial need, and has granted them up to $6,195. These funds can make the difference between a student seeing the right therapist for themselves, or going without. These funds can make the difference between an anxiety-ridden trip to the grocery store, or being food-secure.
Priorities
Supporting our Veterans​
None of Princeton’s veteran community uses its well-deserved GI Bill benefits to pay for this school--they tell me it just isn’t worth it because Princeton deducts their Federal benefit from the financial aid grant anyway. This situation is similar to that of our Pell Grant students. I commit to using the USG’s institutional power to make sure every one of our veterans' unique needs are met, and to very publicly broadcast when they are not. Veterans, who have sacrificed so much for us, should not have to spend a single penny on their Princeton education. They fought for us, we should fight for them.
Priorities
Title IX
I generally agree with many of the points made by the Title IX Now movement to address the systematically flawed Title IX process on campus. It is completely unacceptable that something so serious and urgent is still stuck in Princeton bureaucratic limbo, causing victims of sexual misconduct to feel powerless in the face of an esoteric bureaucracy.
With new guidelines coming from the US Department of Education in the near future, this is a difficult issue to address right now. However, there are three immediately actionable things we can do to make the lives of victims of sexual misconduct just a little bit easier:
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If victims share a class with the alleged perpetrator, the administration can arrange for private instruction with the class’ preceptor and/or professor. No questions asked.
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If victims share a walking path or residential housing situation with the alleged perpetrator, the administration can make every effort to re-dorm, and re-organize victims’ schedule to minimize the possibility of the two meeting by chance. No questions asked.
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If victims want to go out to the Street at night, SHARE will arrange for a SHARE Peer to accompany the victim, if they so choose. No questions asked.
These are not holistic, satisfying answers to the state of Title IX on campus. I can and will push for tangible movement on this issue through continuous meetings with relevant administrators, but concrete action is not possible until US Department of Education guidelines are made official, and we know under what rule set we are working, after which I will advocate for CPUC's recommendations.