Jooho Lee: An attack sadly rooted in a bitter school rivalry

The attack on Princeton University debater John Brantl reportedly committed by a Penn student two weekends ago caused a mini-uproar on campus last week.

Most people may have been appalled by the news, but after the initial shock wore off, could we honestly say that we were all that surprised? Drunk Quakers do stupid things to Tigers. In certain ways, we've almost come to expect things like this to occur.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the person who doused the Princeton student in motor oil and threatened to burn him was wearing a "Puck Frinceton" shirt at the time.

When will the madness end?

I'm not here just to criticize the student who committed the asinine act that Saturday morning. It is obvious that what he/she did is wrong and that he/she should be punished severely.

But I do have a bone to pick about the whole "Puck Frinceton" phenomenon.

I cringe anytime I hear someone yell, "Puck Frinceton!" It conjures up the same emotions as hearing a College student yell "Wharton sucks!" on Locust Walk.

Wharton does not suck. It is the home of the best undergraduate business program in the world. Its acceptance rates are significantly lower than that of the College, and Wharton students enjoy the privileges of attending a high-powered institution of higher learning.

This isn't to say that Wharton is better than the College, of course. It's just different.

Unfortunately, when a College student irrationally accuses a very respectable institution of "sucking," it is the College, not Wharton, that looks bad.

After all, a large part of the whole "Wharton sucks" deal is at least partly due to an inferiority complex nursed in the archaic classrooms of the McNeil Building, under the shadows of the imposing Huntsman and Steinberg-Dietrich halls.

Could this explanation be true of "Puck Frinceton" as well? Why do some of us see our inferiority complex as a legitimate rivalry with a school whose endowment is incomparably larger than ours, rather than seeing it for what it is?

Is it because many of us here were rejected from Princeton?

I would consider Harvard-Yale to be somewhat of a rivalry. At least Harvard acknowledges Yale as a rival. It would be hard to say that Princeton does the same for us, save on a basketball court.

I doubt that Princeton students proudly wear "Puck Fenn" shirts. I wouldn't be too surprised if many of them didn't even know that Penn's mascot is the Quaker.

The "Puck Frinceton" phenomenon embarrasses me. I feel like every time we bash Princeton, we are merely tarnishing our own reputation as its legitimate peer.

Princeton is a well-respected institution -- its reputation is rock solid. The mockery coming from an irrational Penn student is the equivalent of one attempting to break this solid rock of a reputation with an egg.

I'm not saying that Princeton is better than Penn. I love Penn, and I never even considered applying to Princeton.

However, we are not better than they are. Instead, the two schools are very different.

Unlike Princeton, we are an urban university with amazing resources and a public commitment to symbiotically evolve with our surrounding community. We are much more diverse, both in the student make-up and in the types of educational resources offered to undergraduates. Rather than being a haven for princes, we are, like Benjamin Franklin himself, pragmatic, quirky and self-made in many ways.

We are a great institution, and we should take pride in that. But so is Princeton, and we should respect that.

While a healthy dose of school pride is a great thing, the fine line between school pride and irrational hostility toward an opposing institution has been crossed with "Puck Frinceton."

This irrationalism finally reached a boiling point with the unfortunate assault on Brantl two weekends ago. It was a cheap shot at our arch rival, even if they don't consider us the same.

Shame on us. May we never utter the words "Puck Frinceton" again.

Jooho Lee is a junior History and Political Science major from Los Angeles, Calif.

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