“Punk culture is very atheistic in a certain way, and I never felt like there was really a place there for my Jewish identity. Maybe to some extent people would be into us, but there might be some difficulty in connecting with the traditional punk audience.”
I have been many things throughout my tenure at Princeton—a human, a tiger, a journalist, drunk—but I have never been a lady. Through no fault of their own, approximately one half of mankind never experiences the triumphs and challenges of womanhood, and I am destined to remain among them.
“The College does not endorse the views or activities of any independent student organization,” said Harvard College spokesman Jeff Neal in November of last year, after the College granted official recognition to Harvard College Munch.
Roads, public libraries, and a respectful and helpful police force are all key, helpful features of a healthy state–and this is generally how the middle class experiences things. The government, however, has a more invasive, regulatory presence in the lives of people who lack power.
Looking for a place to start this article and overwhelmed by the weight of the subject matter before me, I do a quick experiment and type “virginity” into Google; I’m curious to see the most popular searches. “Virginity statistics, virginity auction, virginity quotes, virginity pledge” reads the list. The list doesn’t help much except to reestablish what I don’t want this article to be about.
I’m sitting on one of the loveseats in the Starbucks on Nassau Street, weirdly conscious of my calves sticking to the cold leather seat covers, experiencing what I imagine only certain paparazzi have felt at the peaks of their careers. The strangeness of spending years seeing someone in two dimensions, only to have them sitting across from you, alive and fidgeting. Lorena Grundy gestures at my coffee cup.
“Granny Annie had devoted her life to others in a manner that was awe-inspiring. Even winds upward of 100 miles per hour and torrential rain could not stymie her optimistic spirit, the hope that coursed through her family’s veins.”
Chris Hedges, Pultizer Prize-winner, teaches a creative writing class comprised half of Princeton students and half of inmates at a women’s prison nearby. He and Boris Franklin, a former student of his, spoke to me about the role of education in prisons, the standing of women, and the necessity of divestment from private prisons.
