Extended semesters and Ivy Champions ft. Julianna Lee — Monday, Feb. 26

Today, we discuss the idea of extending the academic semester with Julianna Lee, and cover the women’s swimming and diving team’s Ivy Championship win, Jeff Bezos’ investment in a new AI company, and Donald Trump's primary victory in South Carolina.

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Title: Extended semesters and Ivy Champions ft. Julianna Lee — Monday, Feb. 26

For the Daily Princetonian, I’m Theo Wells-Spackman. You’re listening to Daybreak.

Today, we discuss the idea of extending the academic semester with Julianna Lee, and cover the women’s swimming and diving team’s Ivy Championship win, Jeff Bezos’ investment in a new AI company, and Donald Trump's primary victory in South Carolina.

It’s Monday, February 26th.

I sat down with opinion columnist Julianna Lee to discuss her piece on extending academic semesters at the University.

In campus news, the Princeton women’s swimming and diving team won the Ivy League championship on Saturday evening. This is the team’s second straight conference win and the 25th of all time, making it the most successful women’s swim-dive program in the Ivy League. Sabrina Johnston ‘26, Heidi Smithwick ‘26, and Dakota Tucker ‘27 all won their individual events. Tucker was named Most Outstanding Swimmer for the event.

In national news, Jeff Bezos ‘86 is joining NVIDIA and other tech giants who are investing in the new AI startup FigureAI. The company will focus on the intersection between Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, with the goal of creating humanoid robots that perform dangerous tasks in place of humans, and alleviate labor shortages. Bezos and his affiliated companies will contribute roughly a quarter of a billion dollars, over one-third of the capital sought by FigureAI in this round of fundraising. In the last few weeks, Bezos has been in the news for selling a combined 50 million shares of his stock in Amazon, worth over $8.5 billion. After the sales, Bezos still holds around 9% of Amazon, or just under a billion shares.

Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary saw former president Donald Trump soundly defeat Nikki Haley in her home state. With a winning margin of over 20% in the polls, Trump claimed 47 of the available 50 delegates on his way to a possible Republican nomination. Despite Haley’s home advantage, her loss is the widest of a contested primary since 1992. Nonetheless, she has announced that she has no intention of withdrawing from the race anytime soon, stating that [quote] “There are huge numbers of voters …who are saying they want an alternative.” Trump’s victory in South Carolina comes amid significant legal troubles for the former president, who is being criminally charged in four jurisdictions and faces fines of over half a billion dollars.

Today, you can expect partly cloudy skies, with a high of 55 and a low of 35 degrees fahrenheit.

That’s all for Daybreak today.

Today’s episode was written by me, sound engineered by Maya Mukherjee, and produced under the 148th managing board of the ‘Prince.’ Our theme was composed by Ed Horan, Class of ’22. For the Daily Princetonian, I’m Theo Wells-Spackman. Have a wonderful day.

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