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The world moves fast. Daybreak keeps you up-to-date.
Enjoy everything you need to know to stay informed — on campus and off — in this digestible, efficient podcast. Daybreak is produced by Maya Mukherjee '27, Twyla Colburn '27, Sheryl Xue '28 under the 149th Managing Board of The Daily Princetonian. The theme music was composed and performed by Ed Horan, and the cover art is by Mark Dodici.
[Theme music begins]
For the Daily Princetonian, I’m Anastasiya Chernitska. You’re listening to Daybreak.
Today, we take you inside the ForWord Collective’s Black History Month Poetry Showcase, cover Princeton’s newest Sloan Research Fellows, and look at a recent homicide in Palmer Square.
It’s Wednesday, February 26th.
[Event ambient noise]
On Tuesday, the ForWord Collective, a student-led spoken word group, performed works celebrating Black history, culture, and identity for their Black History Month Poetry Showcase. I spoke to Nyla Harvey, Class of 2027, to look at the event and what ForWord Collective represents on campus.
Nyla: I'm Nyla Harvey. I'm a sophomore. ForWord Collective has been me and my friend Mel's passion project for the past year, and so currently I serve as the president and one of the co-founders of the ForWord collective, and we’re a student-led spoken word group. We encourage people who've never done poetry or spoken word to join. We don’t have auditions, and it really just helps to create a really, really lovely community that has become one of my favorite parts about being at Princeton.
Anastasiya: You recently hosted a showcase of poetry for Black History Month. How has that experience been?
Nyla: Starting a club from the ground up is very hard, so I think it always feels like a hundred times better when we have events like this, where we have great turnout, great performances, a great engaging audience, and just great poetry. It's always heartwarming for me to come to ForWord collective events, especially ones like this one.
Anastasiya: Given a lot of the spotlight on university efforts to highlight diversity and the criticism of DEI programs, how is that going to influence what the ForWord collective does and its continued mission of being a safe space for [diverse] voices?
Nyla: I think, in light of all the craziness happening and all this anti-DEI rhetoric, groups like the ForWord collective are more important than ever.I think it's important for people to know that they can still speak their truth and express themselves freely and creatively without it being policed, or, certain words being taboo and things like that. Because as much as what's happening on the outside can influence what's happening here on the inside at Princeton, I think it's important we don't let it and we just stay true to ourselves and stay true to our art.
And so I think as a member of the ForWord collective, we're just going to keep pushing forward and moving up as much as we can, and just trying to expand and really get more people to learn about who we are and what we stand for and what we represent, especially at a school like Princeton, it's very white, elitist, and doesn't always have spaces for people of color like me to really just express themselves exactly how they want to.
Anastasiya: And given that this is a new club, and you guys have been having such a push for events and for representation on campus, what things are you going to be doing going forward?
Nyla: I mean, a big part of the ForWord collective that I makes us different from other student groups is that we also really want to involve the community, we want to sort of break through these fences and walls we sort of have in Princeton and really just get the community engaged, like at the showcase tonight, we highlighted two pieces from two different special guests. One was Todd Evans, who's from Trenton. He's a poet, playwright, author, business owner, he does everything, and he's been such a great and big supporter of the ForWord collective. He's gotten us gigs, and he's just been a great person to be around. And so I think it's important that you know Princeton students get to see you know people like him, who you know from a different generation, from a different city, but like, still, we can find so much common ground just in spoken word poetry alone. We're going to have, like, a youth workshop working with Princeton High School in March. So we're going to do a mix of on-campus and off-campus things.
In campus news, four Princeton professors have been selected as 2025 Sloan Research Fellows to recognize their early-career research discoveries in scientific and technical fields. Alexandra Amon, Jason Klusowski, Lue Pan and Maria Micaela Sviatschi were among the 126 researchers selected from over a thousand nominees and will each be granted 75,000 dollars for their respective research projects. Cosmologist Alexandra Amon explores the structure of the universe and galaxy clusters, while mathematician Lue Pan specializes in algebraic number theory. Maria Micaela Sviatschi’s research focuses on labor and development economics, with an emphasis on human capital, gender violence, and crime. Meanwhile, Jason Klusowski’s work delves into large language models and transformers, advancing the field of artificial intelligence.
In local news, a Princeton man has been charged with the murder of his brother after a body was discovered in an apartment complex in Palmer Square. Joseph Hertgen, 26, was found dead on Saturday, February 22, after Princeton Police responded to reports of a fire and an unresponsive individual. His brother, Matthew Hertgen, 31, was later arrested and charged with first-degree murder. This is at least the fourth homicide in Princeton in 40 years.
Today, you can expect partly cloudy skies, with a high of 57 and a low of 40 degrees fahrenheit.
Today’s episode was written by Yusuf Abdelnur, Michael Fan, and me, sound engineered by me, and produced under the 149th Managing Board of the ‘Prince.’ Our theme was composed by Ed Horan Class of ’22. For The Daily Princetonian, I’m Anastasiya Chernitska. Have a wonderful day.