Former Princeton Official Trades Job For Slot at Harvard Law School

For Peter M. Onek '66, returning to school this fall comes as something of a reversal. For the past seven years. Once served as assistant dean of students at Princeton University. Two weeks ago, he joined the ranks of the Law School's first-year class, embarking on his third career and his third Harvard degree.

Think it will take some time until I'm accustomed to being on the other side of the desk," he says.

While the 39-year-old former dean's presence on campus may raise some eyeborws. Onek sees his move back to the classroom as a logical progression. At Princeton, he oversaw the undergraduate judicial system, acting in a highly legalistic capacity. Onek estimates that he personally participated in 1,000 disciplinary cases over the course of his Princeton career, acting alternately as judge, mediator, advocate and prosecutor.

"For the last several years I have been sleeped in the rhetoric and procedure of the judicial system, so law school was a rather natural thought," he explains.

Two years ago, Onek decided that if he was going to act as a lawyer, he might as well become one. He applied to six law schools, but in the end, he says he faced an easy decision. "It's a little hard to pass up Harvard," he says.

Onek in Winthrop House, where he will serve as a pre-law tutor. Although the landscape is a far cry from peaceful Princeton. N.J., the territory is familiar. Along with his four years as a Harvard undergraduate. Onek also earned a master's degree from the Graduate School of Education.

Before joining the Princeton administration, he taught elementary school in Lexington, Mass., and at a Western embassy school in Moscow, Now he's contemplating a career in public interest law or government.

"When you do something for seven rounds, it becomes less growthful," he says, describing his desire to leave Princeton.

So far, Onek says his classmates have related to him as just another student.

And the professors? "I see them from afar," he says.