Recruitment gets personal at Quad

Membership in Quadrangle Club has declined sharply over the past decade, but Quad president Christian Harris ’09 said he is ready to combat the decline in membership and broadcast Quad’s advantages to the student body.

Quad is now the smallest club on Prospect Avenue, with between 40 and 50 members signing in this year, and 45 members signing in last year.

Quad’s popularity was not always so low. In 1997, 132 students joined the club, more than joined any other club on the Street that year. In 1998, 83 members joined.

But Harris says that the club — home of such notable Princetonians as former University president Robert Goheen ’40, amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos ’86 and former presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson ’22 — will once again gain numerical strength.  

At the core of Harris’ strategy is an effort to introduce prospective members to Quad’s tight-knit, friendly atmosphere — what he calls “the vibe of the Quad community.” In addition, Harris said that he is increasing membership benefits and trying to make students aware of Quad’s existing amenities, which he said are “already better than many other places on the Street."

Financially fine

The drop-off in members has not dented the club’s finances, Harris said. “Quad has been around for 108 years. We have a lot of alumni support and a big endowment,” he explained. “If you have a few bad sign-in years, you don’t have to skimp or save. We have actually improved the clubhouse, and we have more events, more study breaks this year than last year.”

The club’s Form 990, which nonprofits file to provide the Internal Revenue Service with annual financial information, indicates that Quad lost money during the last tax period. For the fiscal year from July 2006 through June 2007, the club ran a deficit of $165,722. As a result of the loss, the club’s net assets dropped from $1.4 to $1.2 million. From July 2005 through June 2006, on the other hand, the club turned a profit of $141,788. The previous year, from July 2004 through June 2005, the club made $152,974.

Quad’s financial stability is due in large part to generous alumni donations, Harris noted. “The alumni have always played a big part. Everyone who leaves Quad after they graduate feels a part of the club and wants to give back to the club, wants to be around the club,” he said.

Eating clubs face inflexible fixed costs, such as property taxes and employee salaries. The New Jersey Association of Property Tax Board’s tax database lists Quad as having paid $44,495 in property taxes in 2007.

Though Harris would not disclose any specific details about Quad’s finances, he said, “I can tell you that a club that has been around as long as Quad plans its budget carefully.”

The Quad community

The focus of Quad’s recruiting strategy will shift toward engaging individual prospective members rather than hosting larger parties and events.

“When you go to a party at a club, we are there for three hours, and you don’t get to see the type of community that exists at the club,” Harris explained. “Once we show what kind of a community we have, I have no doubt we’ll be fine for next year.”

This year the club will be “more open so that we can bring people around, introduce them to members [and] have them eat meals, so that they can see what the club is like,” Harris said.

New sophomore members are already bringing friends who have yet to join clubs to events, Quad vice president Marissa Smith ’09 said.

Other members praised the quality of their club’s community. “Everyone is here all the time,” Will Watts ’09 said. “I go to other clubs in between meals and no one is there, whereas I spend 90 percent of my time here, and that’s the case for everyone here.”

“I feel like we own the club rather than it being someone else’s,” Watts added.

Phil Chacko ’09 said that he feels so comfortable in the club that he “can come in here and scream everything I want and no one cares.”

Members of other clubs are often surprised by the amount of time Quad members spend in the club, Smith said. “I’ve had friends come here from other clubs and say, ‘Whoa, you do things here besides eat and party?’ ” she added.

Quad treasurer Todd Dale ’09 said that this year, “he spent no time in his room” in Little Hall.  

Quad’s mentality is “that a club should be your home,” Harris said. He plans to make sure the club is “a place I can go at midnight, or at 7 a.m., and find people there."

Membership benefits

Quad members echoed Harris’ assertion that member benefits at Quad are among the best on Prospect. Jade Faugno ’09 pointed out that sophomores can eat three meals a week at the club immediately after joining, a benefit not open to sophomore members of many other clubs.

Faugno also pointed to the flexibility of the kitchen staff as a little-known benefit. “The staff knows us all by name,” Faugno said, explaining that the staff frequently cooks special dishes for members with dietary restrictions or members who are simply choosy.

“If you come to lunch and don’t want anything on the menu, they will make you something special,” Smith said. “I’m kind of a picky eater, and sometimes they will come up to you and say, ‘Oh, look, I cooked you a special meal!’ ”

A key difference between Quad and other clubs is the relationship that members have with the club’s staff, Harris said. “We don’t view the kitchen staff as employees; they are more like friends. That’s something a lot of the clubs don’t have.”

Additional benefits include facilities such as a basketball court, a volleyball court, well-equipped game rooms and TV rooms. “People don’t realize how nice [our] facilities are,” Harris added.

The club is also open on Tuesday nights in addition to Thursday and Saturday nights, Harris said.

If the club does grow, Harris said he is not afraid that the club will lose its community feel and the attention given to its members. “That’s something that’s persisted here and that’s ingrained in [the] club.”

Gaining members, Harris said, “is not a matter of grandiose events and complex maneuvering,” it will just involve making students “aware of what already exists.”