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On Monday evening, which happened to be the evening of my 43rd birthday, my husband came home with the mail and dropped it on the desk as usual. And it was the usual pile of bills and holiday catalogs and appeals for end-of-year donations. And the Princeton Alumni Weekly<\/em>.<\/p>\n For years, when this magazine (also known as the PAW<\/em>) arrived I would pick it up practically with two fingers, hold it at arm’s length, and drop it in the recycling bin. But over the past two years, thanks to relentless love and friendship, thanks to writing, thanks to Zen, that has started to shift. I have been able to open the\u00a0PAW<\/em> and read it enough to know that things are starting to change at my alma mater, finally. I read undergraduate Adam Mastroianni’s speech to Princeton staff <\/a>in the winter of 2014 , in which he talked about Princeton\u2019s \u201cmagic,\u201d but also how \u201clittle by little\u201d he \u201ccame to understand that some parts of Princeton are beyond the reach of this magic.\u201d During his stint as a residential adviser, he said, \u201cI found myself comforting, counseling, and bringing more students to McCosh infirmary\u2026than I want to recall. I realized that across campus, there must be hundreds of students\u2014or maybe more\u2014struggling silently with depression, anxiety, and a whole host of mental-health issues.\u201d Well, that\u2019s better than what my residential adviser did, which was to take me, a depressed freshman who could barely eat food off the cafeteria plate in front of her face, to bed.<\/p>\n And of course I have been reading about the shifting approach to sexual assault and high-risk drinking on campus.<\/p>\n Three issues ago, there was a lead story about this, and it was radically different from anything I’d seen before. It featured images of undergraduate women and men, from a group called SpeakOut Princeton<\/a>, standing proudly in front of phrases fleshing out the meaning of sexual consent (\u201cRespect Your Partner, Respect Yourself,\u201d \u201cConsent is Given, Not Assumed,\u201d \u201cMy Consent Can Be Rescinded at Any Time\u201d). It detailed the significant changes in Princeton\u2019s sexual misconduct policies, and discussed the culture shifts that will be necessary to support them. I pretty much collapsed on the floor after reading this piece, crying tears of relief and joy. And I knew immediately that I would write a letter. Then I second-guessed myself, and put it off.\u00a0 But a few weeks later, in the middle of running down a hot gravel road, I suddenly heard myself asking, \u201cWhat if I trusted my first move?” Not my first response tinged with story (it’s too shameful, no one cares, it won’t make a difference, etc.), but my first move\u2014which in this case, as in most cases with me, was to be truthful and write.<\/p>\n