 msnbc
With confirmation hearings opening tomorrow for Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court, I thought I'd reprint my blog entry of Nov. 27 (see below) about Alito's connection to the offensive and discriminatory organization called Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) that arose in opposition to the coeducation of my alma mater and other integrating trends of the 1970s. An opinion column by Senator Edward Kennedy in yesterday's Washington Post "Alito's Credibility Problem" also neatly summarizes the lousy history of this group.
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Do Not Bring Back the Old Princeton
Because I went to Princeton in its first class of women (class of '73) and was there at the same time as Samuel Alito '72, people have been asking me about the Supreme Court nominee and the Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP) a conservative alumni organization that he referenced as part of a job promotion application to the Justice Department in 1985. The NYTimes today has a good long front page story about the organization and the Alito connection.
All I can add is that, from its inception in 1972, CAP was an affront to fellow Princetonians who now happened to be female. Members of CAP (from crusty, rich old alums to prep school undergraduates with roman numerals after their names) were folks who couldn't accept that the times were a changin', who felt personally undermined and who had retro beliefs about women's capabilities and PLACE. That they were still trying to turn back the clock on coeducation long after Princeton had successfully integrated only showed that they were well worth leaving behind. The fact that Alito (whom I did not know personally) would tout his membership in this organization 16 years after coeducation began is a completely valid indicator of his personal beliefs.
[To CAP's prediction that the gender and racial integration of Princeton would vitiate the institution, one need only look at today's PrU, rated the top college in the nation in popular polls, with a huge endowment supported by an unsurpassed percentage of alumni who donate (61%) and headed by a female president with a 50/50 undergraduate gender split. Minority racial representation could be a whole lot better, but we're working on that.]
Do not doubt that CAP was a lousy organization. In a post today to the DailyKos website, blogger QuickSilver, who attended Princeton in the 1980s, recalls perhaps the most infamous of CAP's capers, having to do with Princeton's health services and one female undergraduate's private sex life. The incident was described in only partial detail in the NYTimes account. Here's what QuickSilver recalls:
you have no idea how crazy CAP was
Concerned Alumni of Princeton printed the name of a student who was having sex with another student and slipped it under the door of every single student on campus! Her crime? She was having a relationship against her mother's wishes. Her real crime? She apparently had access to birth control through McCosh, the on-campus infirmary. The article was quite explicit about all of it.
It was an extraordinary violation of an undergraduate's privacy. The article, which appeared in the Prospect (CAP's publication), appeared (if memory serves) some time during my Freshman year (1983-1984) -- probably in the spring of 1984, but I may be wrong. I was absolutely shocked by it at the time -- and am still shocked, remembering it. I even called up Dinesh D'Souza, whom I have never met, and berated him over the phone. [issue was March 1984 -RH]
But apparently, Alito continued to give money to CAP even after this debacle! If he's bragging about it in 1985, questions definitely must be asked. Believe me, when Alito says he opposes Griswold v. Connecticut (1967), the decision which permitted married couples access to birth control, he should be taken at his word.
This guy is extremely dangerous.
"[I]n all due respect to your profession [journalism], you do a very good job of protecting the leakers." -- George W. Bush on Oct 7, 2003
by QuickSilver on Sat Nov 26, 2005 at 08:37:35 PM PDT
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-RH
10:52:35 AM 
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