When walking through Princeton University, one can’t help but admire its quaint footpaths lined with lampposts, pockets of trees, rolling lawns, and scattered buildings in an eclectic array of architectural styles. In a way, Princeton’s campus feels like a park—unlike Columbia’s orderly quadrangles and Harvard’s methodical complexes, its layout prioritizes leisurely aesthetics over utility. Like Baron Haussmann’s renovations of Paris, complete with expansive boulevards and sweeping avenues, Princeton’s layout is spacious and aesthetically pleasing. It also makes public insurrection nearly impossible.
Perhaps because of its pastoral atmosphere and park-like design, Princeton does not have an outdoor social hub. There is no equivalent of Harvard Yard or University of Chicago’s quads, public gathering spaces where students can easily meet and socialize. Frist Campus Center supposedly serves this purpose, yet it is heavily regulated by security and administration. Reserving a space in Frist is a multi-step process that requires at least three business days and administrative approval, meaning that you must inform the administration of your organization’s purpose and intentions. In 2012, while the Occupy movement was in full swing, Princeton was one of few campuses at which student protesters did not set up an encampment. There was no viable space where they could do it.
Fundamentally, it’s very difficult to stage a successful public protest at Princeton. Lack of unregulated space is not the only reason: many student activists over the years have complained about the apparent political apathy of our student body. In researching this piece, I went through decades of articles in the Daily Princetonian archives about the dearth of activism on campus. Many of the authors were saying the same thing—overall, Princeton students are remarkably less confrontational, controversial, and willing to rock the boat than their peers. In an article titled “Why We Don’t Fight,” Cindy Hong ’09 states: “campaigns to educate, cooperate, and cajole are stand-ins for protests, walk-outs, and hunger strikes that generally come to mind when one thinks of ‘campus activism’… Princeton’s brand of outreach is distinctively politically correct.” For the most part, Hong is right. A substantial percentage of Princeton’s student body are beneficiaries of a system that has continually ensured them positions of power and privilege. Why would they bite the hand that feeds them? Princeton’s reputation as an activist backwater likely results from a combination of these factors—but it’s crucial to remember that this system has not always served everyone. Historically, much of the activism on campus has been initiated by students of color, in efforts to secure equal treatment and representation. Despite the considerable obstacles to organizing activist movements at Princeton, these students have succeeded in making waves through an innovative and effective tactic: the annexation and manipulation of space.
As previously illustrated, activist campaigns are tough to keep alive at Princeton. Student organizers have had to deal with the logistical challenges in the lack of unpoliced space as well as the Sisyphean task of mobilizing a largely apathetic student body. To overcome student apathy and administrative hostility, past activists have wielded spaces (i.e. physical expanses) as tools for both staging insurrection and making symbolic statements. One of the first significant applications of this tactic was the establishment of the Third World Center, now known as the Carl A. Fields Center. In 1963, the University administration announced an initiative to actively recruit African-American students. It had long been lagging behind its peer institutions with regard to minority admissions, and it was not until 1947 that Princeton had African-American graduates (the first black students at Harvard and Yale graduated in the 1870’s). By the time the policy took effect, the incoming freshman class in 1965 had 14 black students—the largest group to ever enter a class at the same time. Despite these unprecedented changes, Princeton was still a overwhelmingly white institution engineered to serve the ends of white people. For these first students of color, it was an alienating and hostile environment, pervaded by WASPiness and a largely racist student body. Although the hiring of Carl A. Fields (Princeton’s first African American administrator, and first in a majority white college) in 1964 and the formation of groups like the Association of Black Collegians (ABC) began to alleviate the problem, there was still no official safe space for minority students. Taking matters into their own hands, a group of African-American, Latinx, and Asian-American students put together a proposal for a University-sanctioned institution that would prioritize their needs and perspectives. According to their proposal, said institution would “provide a central location to examine the political, cultural, and social movements of minority groups in the United States, encourage the development of student initiated seminars and courses concerning the present condition of minority groups in the United States, and set up sensitivity groups to examine the personal role of students in rectifying injustice,” among other goals. In 1971, the Third World Center was founded as a space created by minority students for minority students. For the next thirty years and following its renaming after Carl A. Fields, the center served as a springboard for diversity and inclusion-centered activism and brought attention to the needs of minorities on campus.
In addition to creating spaces, student activists have seized spaces. The late 1960’s were marked by protests and movements at campuses across the country, and this time Princeton was no exception. In 1969, a campaign spearheaded by the ABC called for the University to withdraw its investments from companies supporting South African apartheid. In late February, the United Front on South Africa (a composite of black and white student groups) held a public rally advocating divestment. In response, University president Robert Goheen ’40 stated that Princeton would do no more than “inform the companies it invested in of the University’s feelings toward apartheid” and that divesting from thirty-nine companies that perpetuated racial segregation in South Africa would “not have a substantial prospect of meaningful impact.” Frustrated with the administration’s impassivity, the students decided to escalate their tactics. On March 11th, fifty-one members of the ABC forcibly entered the administrative offices in New South and occupied the building for eleven hours. Members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a mostly white group, piled bike racks at the entrance, preventing public safety and administrators from going inside. In the words of student activist and later trustee Brent Henry ’69, “In the late sixties, campus building takeovers were not uncommon, so we decided that we would make a statement by taking over New South.” As tame as this was in comparison to contemporary actions at U.C. Berkeley and Columbia, a building takeover was unprecedented at Princeton. The seizure of a space used for administrative functions made a forceful statement, strong enough to gain coverage by news media outlets.
History repeated itself on November 22nd, 2015, when members and supporters of the Black Justice League (BJL) occupied Nassau Hall for thirty-three hours in protest of the University’s decision not to rename the Woodrow Wilson School and residential college. The BJL occupation and the discussion that ensued garnered substantial media attention, bringing Wilson’s racist and segregationist sympathies to public scrutiny. Although the University ultimately did not rename the buildings, a number of initiatives took place in the months following the sit-in, including the removal of the Wilson mural from Wilcox dining hall and the formation of administrative task forces on diversity and inclusion. Most importantly though, the BJL succeeded in dismantling Wilson’s status as an indisputably venerated figure and in exposing his discriminatory views towards people of color. In the context of manipulating space as an activist tactic, the movement to rename the Wilson School was a manipulation of space in itself. The BJL demanded that the University remove the legacy of a racist from its buildings and programs in order to become a more inclusive and considerate space for students of color.
These are just a few of many examples of how students utilized space as a tool for activism. In an institution too often impervious to social change, activists at Princeton have had to be resourceful in their incorporation of University property as a tactic. The act of seizure is not the only approach to this; converting spaces to serve different purposes from what the University intends can also send a powerful message. In March of 2017, the Princeton Private Prison Divestment coalition (PPPD) staged a walkout at the Council of the Princeton University Committee (CPUC) meeting, in retaliation for the CPUC Resource Committee’s decision not to accept PPPD’s proposal that the University withdraw investments from for-profit prisons. After the walkout, participating students gathered in the Friend Center Lobby, outside of the meeting room, for a PPPD-organized teach-in. By sitting on the lobby floor and absorbing the powerful testimony from the teach-in speakers, the students converted that space into a platform for communicating the injustices of the private prison system. It is through tactics like these that student activists at Princeton have made any difference at all. While it is true that ingenuity in using space cannot totally overcome the difficulties in enacting social change through activism, it is by far the most effective tactic Princeton students have used to date. “Politically correct” activism, like handing out pamphlets and tabling in Frist, does little but validate the stereotype of complacency at Princeton. History has proven that the only way students can hope to make an impact is by taking command of their own space.
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