In this week’s installment of our recurring series, Ted Cruz ’92 weighs in on campus safety, local women find the campus a good place for fundraising, and more.

February 28, 1990—In response to the University’s announcement that locks will be installed on dormitory entry doors, Ted Cruz ’92 is quoted in the Daily Princetonian opposing the change. “I think the effect (locked entryways will have) in keeping people out of dorms is negligible. I do think it serves to be an inconvenience of being restrictive.” Cruz suggests, “perhaps the money could be better spent elsewhere.”

March 1, 1873—A self-identified “Northern Student” writes to the Princeton Press to argue that Princeton should make Southern students comfortable and allow former Confederate Secretary of War John C. Breckinridge to speak at Commencement.

“Slavery, that bane of human progress, was long since abolished. The gap which separated the North from the South is almost closed. The wound which threatened the life of the nation is almost healed. The scenes of Bull Run and Antietam are almost forgotten. The cold iceberg of oppression has been melted away in the warm Gulf Stream of a Nation’s love. The world moves on forgetful of the past. Peace and prosperity meet us on every side. Then let it be the desire of every student—aye, of every citizen of this land, that this prosperity should continue on, and that the North and South may continue to stand, as they stand to-day, upon the firm basis of universal liberty and equality.”

March 3, 1846—Newark’s Centinel of Freedom reports that the women of the local Presbyterian Church are holding fundraisers on campus to help pay the debts of rebuilding the burned-out church building. They have served refreshments at the museum in Nassau Hall for two nights, “and thereby their coffers were pretty largely supplied.”

March 5, 1969—Princeton professor Charles F. Westoff and co-author Norman B. Ryder (University of Wisconsin) have found that Roman Catholic women have an increasing tendency to use birth control, in spite of a papal encyclical forbidding the use of artificial contraceptives. Their survey shows that 64% of married Catholic women who were under 40 in 1965 are using non-approved methods of birth control, while use of the pill has gone from 14% in 1965 to 37% among this demographic in 1969.

For the previous installment in this series, click here.

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