Inspired by the Dartmouth Student Assembly's "Visions" project in 1998, Princeton University's Undergraduate Student Government launched its own "Visions of Princeton" project in February to gauge student opinion on the future of the university.
The USG received answers from approximately 600 students who answered four questions on an online poll about what they like and dislike about Princeton and the changes they would like to see at the university.
President of the USG P.J. Kim '01 -- who initiated the "Visions of Princeton" project -- said he first got the idea when he met Josh Green '00 and Case Dorkey '99, former president and vice president of the Student Assembly, at an Ivy Council meeting.
Kim said the project is an "incredibly common-sense good idea ... [because] Princeton like Dartmouth is going through a transition with students looking inward and evaluating the university."
He referred to possibly substantial changes occurring at Princeton like the increase in the student population by 500 people.
The Dartmouth project was launched by Assembly leaders in the presidential transitional year of 1998 to write a report on how students envisioned the College. It was to be the first exposure to student opinion for the new Dartmouth president, who had yet to be named.
The Dartmouth Visions project featured an aggressive bombardment of students for submissions, but many felt the idea lost some of its meaning when James Wright -- who had already been at the College for over 30 years -- was announced as the new president.
Although the final "Visions of Princeton" report will be released in the next two weeks, Kim said that on the whole students seemed satisfied with academics at Princeton, but many that replied said they were unhappy with the student life.
According to Kim, some students have complained about the lack of diversity at the university and social and extracurricular activities outside of the Eating Clubs -- similar to some of the issues that have been raised at Dartmouth throughout the Student Life Initiative process.
Kim said he was very happy that 600 students -- a little less than the 800 who took part in the Dartmouth project -- responded to the Princeton poll, however some critics at the university have written that that number does not give Kim a sufficient level of responses to formulate a USG agenda.
