31/5/13 – Princeton Reunion Weekend (Day 1)

This morning we packed the car, downloaded the directions from the iPad and set off on our much anticipated trip to Princeton. Princeton Reunions are an annual college reunion event held every year on the weekend before the official ‘Commencement’ (graduation) ceremony at Princeton University. It is known as the best-attended college reunion in the world. Known simply as "Reunions", this event brings back to campus upwards of 24,000 alumni, and at least that many guests, for a four-day celebration featuring large outdoor tents, elaborate costumes, sporting events, alumni and faculty presentations, fireworks, and bands from rock to swing.

 

Princeton University is a private research intensive university located in Princeton, New Jersey. It is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and one of the nine Colonial Colleges that were founded before the American Revolution. Princeton provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering.

Princeton does not have schools of medicine, law, divinity, or business, but it does offer professional degrees through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, the Princeton University School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the School of Architecture. However, as you will have gathered from the foregoing discussion it is still, primarily, a college for undergraduates.

 

Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, as the College of New Jersey, the university moved to Newark in 1747, then to Princeton in 1756 and was renamed Princeton University in 1896. Princeton was the fourth chartered institution of higher education in the American colonies and has always had close ties to the Presbyterian Church, but it has never been formally affiliated with any denomination and today imposes no religious requirements on its students. Princeton has been associated with 35 Nobel Laureates, 17 National Medal of Science winners, and three National Humanities Medal winners.

Celebrity graduates include Michelle Obama, Donald Rumsfeld, Ralph Nader, David Duchovny, Alec Baldwin, Brooke Shields an Sonia Sotomayor (an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, its first Hispanic justice, and only its third female justice). On a per-student basis, Princeton has the largest university endowment in the world @ $17 billion. (Harvard has the largest total endowment fund, but it has many more students than Princeton)

New Light Presbyterians founded the College of New Jersey in 1746 in order to train ministers. The college was the educational and religious capital of Scots-Irish America. In 1756, the college moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Its home in Princeton was Nassau Hall, named for the royal house of William of Orange (who became King William III of England).

 

Following the untimely deaths of Princeton's first five presidents, John Witherspoon became president in 1768 and remained in that office until his death in 1794. During his presidency, Witherspoon shifted the college's focus from training ministers to preparing a new generation for leadership in the new American nation.

To this end, he tightened academic standards and solicited investment in the college. 

Witherspoon's presidency constituted a long period of stability for the college, interrupted by the American Revolution and particularly the Battle of Princeton, during which British soldiers briefly occupied Nassau Hall; American forces fired cannon on the building to rout them from it.

Before the construction of Stanhope Hall in 1803, Nassau Hall was the college's sole building. The cornerstone of the building was laid on September 17, 1754. During the summer of 1783, the Continental Congress met in Nassau Hall, making Princeton the country's capital for four months.

Over the centuries and through two redesigns following major fires, (1802 and 1855) Nassau Hall's role shifted from an all-purpose building, comprising office, dormitory, library, and classroom space; to classroom space exclusively; to its present role as the administrative centre of the University.

The class of 1879 donated twin lion sculptures that flanked the entrance to Nassau hall until 1911, when that same class replaced them with tigers. Tigers have since become the ubiquitous and widely recognised symbol of the University. Nassau Hall's iconic bell rang after the halls construction however the fire of 1802 melted the bell. The bell was then recast and melted again in the fire of 1855.

James McCosh took office as the college's president in 1868 and lifted the institution out of a low period that had been brought about by the American Civil War. During his two decades of service, he overhauled the curriculum, oversaw an expansion of inquiry into the sciences, and supervised the addition of a number of buildings in the High Victorian Gothic style to the campus. McCosh Hall is named in his honour. 

In 1879, the first thesis for a Ph.D. was submitted by James F. Williamson, Class of 1877.

In 1896, the college officially changed its name from the College of New Jersey to Princeton University to honour the town in which it resides. During this year, the college also underwent large expansion and officially became a university. In 1900, the Graduate School was established. In 1902, Woodrow Wilson, graduate of the Class of 1879, was elected the 13th president of the university. Under Wilson, Princeton introduced the preceptorial system in 1905, a then-unique concept that augmented the standard lecture method of teaching with a more personal form in which small groups of students, or precepts, could interact with a single instructor, or preceptor, in their field of interest.

At the southern edge of the Princeton campus is Lake Carnegie, a man-made lake named for Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie financed the lake's construction in 1906 at the behest of a friend who was a Princeton alumnus. Carnegie hoped the opportunity to take up rowing would inspire Princeton students to forsake football, which he considered "not gentlemanly." The Shea Rowing Centre on the lake's shore continues to serve as the headquarters for Princeton rowing. A collection of historical photographs of the building of the lake is housed at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library on Princeton's campus. On October 2, 1913, the Princeton University Graduate College was dedicated. In 1919 the School of Architecture was established.

 

In 1933, Albert Einstein became a lifetime member of the Institute for Advanced Study with an office on the Princeton campus. While always independent of the university, the Institute for Advanced Study occupied offices in Jones Hall for 6 years, from its opening in 1933, until their own campus was finished and opened in 1939. This helped start an incorrect impression that it was part of the university, one that has never been completely eradicated.

Getting to Princeton from New York City is not an altogether easy task, especially if you are driving. Peter had done the trip once before, but that was 30 years ago and the New Jersey Turnpike and the Lincoln tunnel did not then exist. The trip took us more than three hours, at least an hour of which was spent circling around the airport trying to find the Princeton Marriott. But we managed it in the end and, after taking some time to settle into our new digs we set off on a a quick tour of the campus/town.

In the late afternoon we met up with Nancy at the ‘Class of 78’ marquee (each graduating class /year has its own hospitality marquee set up somewhere on the campus), met Valerie (her partner) and Anna (their daughter) as well as the partner to the US Ambassador to NZ. After a few snacks and ‘drinkees’ we all set off to see the famous Triangle Drama Club Review. Nancy, is a Trustee here at Princeton and who will become President of the Alumni Association next year and as a past president of the Drama Club she was very keen for us to see the show.

The Tony-award-winning McCarter Theatre was built by and for the Princeton Triangle Club, a student performance group, using club profits and a gift from Princeton University alumnus Thomas McCarter. Today, the Triangle Club performs its annual freshmen revue and spring musicals in McCarter. These reviews have a reputation for being very funny, irreverent and well produced.

They are regularly taken on tour to other colleges around the US, so we were really looking forward to seeing the show, and we were not disappointed. The 2013 review entitled ‘Trees Company, Four’s a Forest’ was hilarious, especially the scene explaining the true cause of ‘Global Warming’. In it ‘Mother Nature’ revealed the ‘inconvenient truth’ that she is going through menopause and that is why there are rising temperatures, hot flushes and general dryness in the world today!! There were many outstanding individual performers but the highlight was, of course, the final show piece - the traditional all male kick line. All round brilliant … and my didn’t those young men have nice legs!!