The Night Before the Morning After: Scott Newman's Memoir and Princeton

Princeton senior Scott Newman's memoir, The Night Before the Morning After, is provocative, recounting stories of the writer's past sexual encounters and underage drinking, but among some Princeton students, the memoir and its author have been the subject of largely negative online discourse about its treatment of the university and its students.

The book is a twenty-two chapter romp through a series of Newman’s adventures from the past seven years of his life. The chapters range in topic from bungee jumping in Chile to how he gamed the college admission system to get into Princeton.

Newman and his memoir were the subject of a New York Post article which was shared around by students and posted to campus Facebook pages (in some cases, by Newman himself). The story — which Newman admits was “sensational” and may have obscured his message — paints a bleak picture of the Princeton experience.

“[A]s a freshman, Newman was horrified by the unfriendly, uninspired and corporatized culture on campus — where prestige-intoxicated students are groomed for soul-crushing careers in investment banking, consulting and tech,” reads the article. 

“A lot of people didn't read the book, they just read a short article that talks about one chapter in a twenty-two chapter book,” said Newman about the largely negative response on Facebook. He added that he had gotten a lot of positive feedback privately, even among Princeton students. 

On the Facebook group Tiger Confessions#, where Princeton students can anonymously post about the university, an unnamed student wrote in “Thanks to Scott Newman for shining a light on what this place really is. Get fucked, Princeton.”

Jack Edmondson, a senior, read the whole book and wrote a lengthy Amazon review where he called the book immature and hedonistic. “It’s hard to describe what this book is. In many ways, it fails to do what it sets out to do,” reads the review.

He agreed with Newman that some criticism from students was shallow and reflected their desire to get clout with their peers. “It was an easy target,” he said, and that he wishes that students had engaged more with Newman’s actual message — adding that he disagreed with parts of it. 

“It was a bit disheartening that while I was trying to start a conversation on campus about things like an unhealthy interest in prestige seeking, that message was lost on some people,” said Newman.

While many agreed that universities like Princeton have a problem with competitiveness and social climbing, some students took issue with the specifics of Newman’s presentation.

Many students felt that Newman’s representation of Princeton failed to grapple with the role that his own wealth played in his negative view of the university. The memoir and the NY Post article outlined how he was able to spend his summers taking classes in Europe and his high school years attending the Lawrenceville School, an elite preparatory school in New Jersey.

“What I found really distasteful is the lack of introspection for how much his privileged upbringing allowed him to disregard the positives of a place like Princeton and reduce it to the hedonistic bullshit that he ultimately got out of it,” said Henry Zhao, a fourth-year graduate student in the Economics department. “A lot of students here don't have that luxury.”

“Privilege comes in different forms,” said Newman. “I watched my mother die a slow and painful death of cancer growing up. I buried my mother when I was thirteen years old.” He said that a lot of students made assumptions about him based on things they’d read in the article or his memoir, which did not include the death of his mother.

Another common criticism was that the article and relevant sections of the book painted an inaccurate picture of Princeton’s diverse campus. 

“One overarching theme that I sometimes felt was that kids were reticent to help others,” said Newman of his experience at Princeton. In the book, he complains that the university is full of students who do little else than study and network in an attempt to social climb or get prestige.

Many students seemed to disagree with this point. While Edmondson agreed that there were certainly pockets of campus that fell victim to this problem, this wasn’t characteristic of his overall experience at the university. “I don't feel that Princeton is awash with these reedy lunatics,” he said, noting that he found it easy to find positive spaces on campus. 

Michelle Dai, a sophomore studying Operations Research and Financial Engineering, felt the same. “Going to Princeton has demonstrated the power of cooperation, the power of what great minds can do together,” she said, a point echoed in an opinion piece for the Daily Princetonian by senior Remy Reya. 

Defining a single Princeton “culture” is near impossible, given the breadth and diversity of the undergraduate community, wrote Reya.

Newman said that he wasn’t trying to attack Princeton students or the university, that the problems he identified were problems with culture in the United States more generally. 

He also said his book wasn’t even strictly about college. Of the book’s 22 chapters, four deal with Newman’s admission into, and time spent at, the university.

“This is not a book about Princeton. It is not a book about college admissions. It's very much a coming-of-age story where I talk about learning from my mistakes,” he said.

Ultimately, students seemed less upset with Newman’s broad message about the college admissions process and the problem of prestige-seeking, and more upset with the way it was delivered via his memoir and the Post article.

“Any validity his criticisms could have had got washed away by how poorly he presented them,” said Zhao, who said that he worked with many undergraduates who did not fit Newman’s description. He added, “I hope, if nothing else, that the freshman who have not yet experienced campus life will take this with a grain of salt, with many grains of salt.”

In a previous version of this story, Jack Edmondson's name was spelled incorrectly, and he was referred to by his first and last name on second reference.