Black Princeton Tiger

I’ll never forget my first days on Princeton’s campus as a freshman. I had spent the week before school getting to know some of my classmates on a service project in Trenton that had been organized by the University, where we painted dilapidated church poverty centers and fed the homeless.  We discussed at the length the problem of inner-city joblessness, teen pregnancy,  and the immense school drop-out rate and bonded over our deep sense of caring.  We promised that as Princetonians, we would remember our poor brothers and sisters only 2 miles from our storied campus, and we were earnest too. I’m certain, however, that most of us in my group never went to Trenton again in our four years, save to pass through the train station on the way to Philly.

By the time I got to campus, I was itching to explore college life for real, unfettered by poverty and blight. I was pumped for the drinking and the revelry of “hooking up” (something I’d never done in high school) and was anxious to get it on in the Gothic behemoth University edifices.

Like any overeager frosh (that’s what they're called on campus), I over-did it. I was hospitalized on the night of the first day of classes, with a BAC of .245 (that figure is forever etched in my mind) and I would spend days recovering.

My twin brother, a freshman at Swarthmore, was incredulous by my wanton over-the-top indulgence, and my parents, Princetonians themselves, were deeply concerned (though my mom managed to keep her voice steady as I delivered the news that I’d spent the night in emergency care). I still own the 4 page front and back hand-written note that my dad sent me, along with a family picture and a solo framed portrait of my then three-year-old sister.

The psychologist at the campus health center asked me if I was trying to kill myself to which I replied a contemptuous (if groggy) “No.”  My own brother asked if Princeton had somehow, on the first day, ramped up the level of work to a fever pitch that was utterly unmanageable, but that wasn’t it.  My best friend at Princeton, who at the time didn’t drink but had cared for me and been at my side even as I went into a drug induced slumber, didn’t ask. He could feel it. The place, teeming with gaudy expectation and grandeur. The University oozing with prestige and immense wealth. The Campus, whose very orange and black banners seemed to announce ostentatious pretention.  It was oddly overwhelming. 

I say odd because of what and where I come from. It’s a strange thing to grow up a generation after parents who had nothing-----who Horatio Algered their way into being the highly successful people they are today. I’ve really only known upper-eschlon communities in my life.  Princeton (as a child).  Alpharetta, Georgia. Shaker Heights, Ohio. I went to camp with children from Darien and Greenwich and Rye. You might say I was groomed to be elite.

Still, though, Princeton took the wealth I’d seen as a child and raised the bar. It was more than wealth. It was power. Everybody on campus was tall. I mean EVERYBODY. At 6 feet, I felt slightly below average.  Most were fit (some absurd percentage were athletes), and even in slightly yesteryear’s Princeton ( I graduated in 2009), one still rubbed shoulders with a Rockefeller or five.  I got the impression that I was going to school with “the sky” from the expression “The sky is the limit,” and could feel inadequacy creeping around me.

Naked power, when tinted with the recklessness of youth, is frightening and awesome, and I saw some pretty spectacular collapses, as a result.  I remember an acquaintance of mine getting heavily into cocaine, and seeing her become a skeletal hyped up simulacrum of herself. She was a talented singer and her academics remained stellar, but she and I both knew she was out of control.

Because she was white, I never did worry about her. I figured daddy and mommy would, should she ever hit rock bottom, bail her out and coach her through a nice upper crust rehab program, such that she’d speak of her college days with pip and earnest nostalgia.

When one of my black friends, however, began getting heavy into alcohol and pills and whatever else, I worried. He was like me, a black alumni child, who had grown up in privileged communities.  I suspected that like me, the lifeline that could be cast out by his parents was shorter than that of some of our classmates; way shorter.  Eventually, my friends and I (mostly black) staged an intervention where we wept over a serious problem as we saw it, and we even called our friend’s parents.  We were afraid that the crux of our buddy’s problem was that he had been duped into believing that the wealth of Princeton and it’s sheer STUFF belonged to HIM.  Whereas many of my black friends recognized that we could not claim any part of Princeton until AFTER we had graduated, this one felt, like many of our white classmates, that he was already entitled. 

In this way, Princeton wasn’t mine. I was so conscious of the opportunity afforded to me as a consequence of my race, even as a double legacy, that I was focused, so very very focused, on making it through. It was an attitude of a lot of my black brothers and sisters on campus; we didn’t have time for addiction and stupid shit.

Because of that, some of us missed out on some great stupid shit. Many of us didn’t involve ourselves in the Eating  Clubs, Princeton’s prestigious and singular version of frats. We traveled together, roomed together, partied together, and often did not do any clubs save for the ones that had overt racial ties. We inured ourselves to the shit around us because the consequences of failing to make it seemed very pricy, and not just financially.

That being said, I think I was lucky.  Somehow or another, I got it into my head that I wanted to do a cappella, and I started a soul a cappella group with good friends. That experience in itself allowed me to forge connections with people through music, and craft something that had my own personal and unique imprint.  In a place that’s big into history, this was a huge deal for me.

In addition, I got to sing around the world with another of University’s singing groups, along with people who I certainly would never have known, and I think my 3 years doing that was instrumental in enriching my Princeton experience. I became a member of the a club, took a risk and acted in a 6 hour play, and won many many many games of Beruit (Beer Pong,  for all you undignified fools).  I lived a pretty full Princeton experience. I think. 

Only 4 years out of school, I’m still making meaning of all the pomp and circumstance of the circus of Old Nassau.  The power and the wealth, hubris and chutzpa, paradox and idiosyncrasies.

 What a strange and awesome thing it is to be a Black Princeton Tiger.