On Wednesday, the Daily Princetonian reported that the University intends to cut a total of six RCA positions (one in each residential college) beginning next year. This seems to me like the sort of common-sense measure that Princeton ought to be adopting in response to our declining endowment. As the article notes, this reform could actually improve the RCA system. Here we see the process of “creative destruction” at work, a reminder that every challenge comes with a silver lining. It is in this same vein that the administration made the decision to close the Forbes dining hall on Saturdays for the rest of the semester. Although as a Forbesian this has been a minor inconvenience for me, I feel that it is a small sacrifice to make. In tough times, we must all rise above our own parochial concerns and concentrate on advancing the best possible outcome for the student body as a whole.
One area in which Princeton has wildly missed the mark in its quest for fiscal discipline, however, is the effort to enforce minimum precept sizes. As a Prince editorial remarked last week, this move will assuredly cause scheduling conflicts for students while hurting the quality of discussion in precepts. These drawbacks fly in the face of the administration’s stated goal of preventing budget cuts from interfering with the quality of our education. Hopefully, such draconian policies will soon be abandoned.
Sam Norton is a junior from Falmouth, Maine. He is majoring in politics.