Robert George (aka Robbie George according to the Princetonian) was none too pleased at the paper.  In the same joke issue, the paper ran a story about how "Robbie George caught with a gay hooker."  George, who said he doesn't want to cause any pain for the school, is conferring with a lawyer.  Will this mean the end of college humor as we know it?

Illegitimi non carborundum.

There's only one thing that The Daily Princetonian can say to atone: "Me so solly."

The question I have and one I can't seem to find an answer to, is why Princeton?  According to one of my links he got passed over by MIT, Harvard, Penn, and another elite university.  Is it possible that Princeton's ratio of Asian American undergrads is under the proportion of Asian Americans in the general population?  Was there some sort of information that came Li's way that there was some sort of glitch in Princeton's admissions procedures?  Was the form letter turning down his application to school composed by the same person who wrote the letter in the Daily Princetonian.

I do believe the Daily Crimson might be treading on thin ice, what with all that stuff about Li's "competitive ego" lying at the base of all these problems.  Considering Harvard was one of the schools which told Li how sorry they were they wouldn't have him in the Class of 2010 combined with his documented litigious ways, they might just want to dummy up.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

I thought bad judgment and offensive jokes were what being an undergraduate was all about.

January 20, 2009. Justice becomes possible.

Having read the letter, it is clear that it is not satirising racist attitudes, but rather is satirising the student who is complaining about not having been accepted by the university. 1 month after the article about his lawsuit in the Princetonian, Jian Li's name has been crudely switched around to Lian Ji, and put atop some scrambled garbage. Obviously this garbage is what the writer's thought of his lawsuit.

Clearly they are saying:
We got into Princeton, not Yale, so we're better than you, and you are just upset because you suck.

This is dressed up in faux-Asian English, as a supposed joke, the subtext of which appears to be:
Yes, he may be 'clever', but he's still as thick as two-short-planks, since he can't string sentences together.

The editorial board retrospectively said: "Using hyperbole and an unbelievable string of stereotypes, we hoped to lampoon racism by showing it at its most outrageous,"
This is simply an attempt to deflect criticism. Can anyone who reads that letter believe that it is an attempt to "embrace racist language in order to strangle it."? All it does is poke fun at Chinese people's supposed lack of grammar skills* and their supposed different cultural values. It presents a crude stereotype of a musical and mathematical Asian genius completely lacking in any social skills or awareness. How does this challenge stereotypes at all?

The issue at hand is the under-representation of Asian students due to quotas for different minorities. If the joke had been aiming at black and hispanic minorities for taking up places, rather than making jokes about trying to become 'white', then it might have hit closer to home. However, the writers missed that point entirely, leaving only their racism on display.

Students will be students, and especially student newspapers will be student newspapers. Stupid things will be written, and, in the course of trying to be funny, certain students will show their true colours. They are simply very lucky that Jian Li doesn't consider the 'joke' as grounds for another law suit.

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*Having seen more than 200 different individuals writing while in China, I feel safe in saying that the mistakes presented in the joke have no connection with the mistakes that real Chinese writers make when writing English.