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Office of the Vice President for Campus Life Records
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Held at: Princeton University Library: University Archives [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Princeton University Library: University Archives. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Office of the Vice President for Campus Life is an administrative office at Princeton University responsible for enriching the student experience for the University's undergraduate and graduate students. The Office, which initially reported to the Office of the Vice President and Secretary, currently reports to the Executive Vice President of the University and maintains administrative oversight of the following units:
The Office of the Vice President for Campus Life Office was created in 2000 following the departure of former Dean of Student Life, Janina Montero, who vacated the position in 1999 for a vice president opening at Brown University. Rather than hire a new Dean of Student Life, the University in April of 2000 expanded the scope of the role and hired Janet Smith Dickerson, then Duke University's vice president for student affairs, as the university's first-ever Vice President for Campus Life to begin on July 1, 2000, a posting Vice President Dickerson held for ten years. Significant initiatives that Vice President Dickerson led include the shift from the two-year to four-year residential college system and the establishment of the Campus Club, as well as her efforts to co-chair the Diversity Working Group and the Task Force on Health and Well-Being.
Vice President Dickerson's tenure was followed by Vice President Cynthia Cherrey, who held the position from 2010 until 2015, a tenure in which several changes to the University's fraternity/sorority (Greek) life took place as well as a growing number of student protests following the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, an event that impacted Princeton students and led to the formation of new student organizations leading a new generation of student activism. Cherrey's administration concluded in 2015, and was succeeded by Vice President W. Rochelle Calhoun, whose administration immediately was thrust into the continuing protests into the 2015-2016 academic year, including a student sit-in of Nassau Hall in November of that year.
Vice Presidents for Campus Life:
8.049 email messages
The Office of the Vice President for Campus Life Records contain internal emails, reports, minutes, spreadsheets, and other office files that document the activities of the office from its inception in the early 21st century and through its first decade and a half of existence. Topics that are particularly well documented in the collection include student health, campus protests, athletics, drug and alcohol usage, residential life, sexual misconduct, religious life, and fundraising for new initiatives or centers, such as the LGBT Center.
The majority of the collection was created and used in various computing environments, including an office-wide networked folder and an email account owned and used by the office's second Vice President, Cynthia Cherrey. The types of files represented include textual/word processing documents in the form of correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes, and agendas.
See the description notes for each series and subseries for further description.
The collection is organized according to the date on which it was transferred to the custody of the University Archives.
The collection was transferred to the University Archives in July of 2015 (AR.2015.065) and September of 2015 (AR.2015.073).
Full text searching of the this collection's archived website(s) is available through the Archive-It interface.
This collection contains records created and used on computing devices. Researchers are responsible for meeting the technical requirements needed to access these materials, including any and all hardware and software.
This collection was processed by Jarrett M. Drake in 2016. Finding aid written by Jarrett M. Drake in 2016.
Appraisal has been conducted in accordance with Mudd Library guidelines. The records in Series 1 were appraised using the output of the software application Digital Record Object Identification (DROID), resulting in roughly 2/3 of the records being selected with archival value.
During accessioning, the following four folders were deleted from the folder "Janet Smith Dickerson - Archive" in Subseries 1B. "/Recommendations" was deleted due to the presence of FERPA-protected information pertaining to student performance. "/JSD - including Bios and Recommendations/JSD, address lists and personal" was deleted to the presence of personal information pertaining to Dickerson's private life outside of her role at the University. "/Correspondence (stewardship ltrs)/Recommendation Ltrs" was deleted due to the presence of FERPA-protected information pertaining to student performance. "/Correspondence (stewardship ltrs)/External" was deleted due to the presence of FERPA-protected information pertaining to student performance.
Organization
Subject
- Publisher
- University Archives
- Finding Aid Date
- 2016
- Access Restrictions
-
Series 1: July 2015 Transfer is restricted for 30 years from the date of record. Series 2 and Series 3 are open for research use.
- Use Restrictions
-
Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. For quotations that are fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. The Trustees of Princeton University hold copyright to all materials generated by Princeton University employees in the course of their work. If copyright is held by Princeton University, researchers will not need to obtain permission, complete any forms, or receive a letter to move forward with non-commercial use of materials from the Mudd Library. For materials where the copyright is not held by the University, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold the copyright and obtaining approval from them. If you have a question about who owns the copyright for an item, you may request clarification by contacting us through the Ask Us! form.
Collection Inventory
This series is arranged according to the provenance of the two groups of records: an email account and a shared office server.
Series 1: July 2015 Transfer comprises the largest series within the collection and contains the most in-depth documentation of the office's activities and decisions from the years 2003 until 2015. The series contains records acquired from a shared office server and emails from the office's second leader, Vice President Cynthia Cherrey. See the description notes for each subseries for more information.
Physical Description72 items
This subseries retains its original arrangement.
8.049 email messages
Cynthia Cherrey was the second Vice President for Campus Life from 2010 until 2015. This subseries contains email messages that were sent to and from Cherrey, who used Microsoft Outlook to manage her correspondence. The largest share, respectively, of the correspondence can be found in the email folders on development, meningitis (MM), and implementation teams (I-Teams).
The emails in the development folder primarily focus on financial contributions, gifts, and other donations to various athletic programs at Princeton, but also reflects the office's fundraising efforts for the LGBT Center. The meningitis folder contains correspondence about the meningococcal meningitis outbreak the plagued the campus during 2013 and 2014. The third folder, on implementation teams, holds communication between Cherrey and other cabinet officers regarding the implementation of initiatives or recommendations led by the office, with a sizeable portion of the correspondence covering Greek life (fraternities and sororities) on campus.
Physical Description72 items
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This subseries retains its original arrangement.
The files in this subseries were acquired from a shared server accessible by the entire office. These records constitute the primary corpus of documents created and used during the administrations of the first Vice President for Campus Life, Janet Smith Dickerson, and her successor, Cynthia Cherrey. The predominant file types in this group of records are textual documents of meeting agendas and minutes (Microsoft Word, PDF), spreadsheets and tabular data used for reports (Microsoft Excel), and presentation files for internal and external use (Microsoft PowerPoint).
The topics covered in this subseries pertain to initiatives and activities conducted by the office itself as well as topics related to the many departments it oversees, such as the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, the Office of Religious Life, and the Pace Center for Civic Engagement, the records of which can be found in the "Core Group" folder. The largest volume of files within this subseries can be found in the following folders, respectively: "Amy Campbell_Archive," "Trustees," and "Janet Smith Dickerson-Archive."
The first folder, of Amy Campbell, reflects the work done by Campbell through various administrative positions within the office's first decade of existence, including Campbell's position as co-chair of the Alcohol Coalition Committee. The Trustees folder holds reports and other documents prepared by the Office for the Board, especially materials from the Trustees Committee on Student Life, Health and Athletics. The final folder, on Janet Smith Dickerson, contains reports and program reviews (on Athletics, University Health Services, Sustained Dialogue) from her stewardship of the Office as its first Vice President as well as a folder of correspondence with external (mostly financial donors) and internal (mostly alumni) parties.
Physical Description7264 digital files
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No arrangement has been placed on the series; it retains its original order.
This series consists primarily of reports, meeting minutes, campus surveys, and other records that document the decades of research and planning before the Office was created. Topics covered in depth include student life, residential life, and athletics. Many of the folders in the "Campus Life Files" potentially duplicate records found in Subseries 1A.
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The Campus Life website contains information for students (current and prospective) about the University's offerings in extracurricular activities, including athletics, student organizations, and career services. Also found on this website are listings of committees, events, and announcements. Full text searching of this archived web site is available through the Archive-It interface.
The original arrangement of the files was maintained.
Physical Description1 website