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 ...(back to the article)
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I was walking back down Prospect after lunch, and passing a tour of a bunch of men in business suits, I overheard the administrator who was leading them say "...well, they're kind of a necessary evil, since we don't have enough dining hall space..." Am I the only one disturbed by this attitude? Why does the University, obsessed with beer and its lack of administrator control, not recognize the eating clubs as the dynamic student and alumni assets they are?
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Well, you're right, 2004 was a good sign-in year, but 1997 was still bigger. Also, '01, '02, '03 weren't particularly big years. The late '90s was quad at its peak, so it makes sense that they would mention it here. Also, COA, if you recall the circumstances around the closings of clubs, all it takes is a few weak years to exhaust the finances.
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I'm surprised the article decides to gs all the way back to 1997 to cite a good sign-ins year. After all, it was as recently as the Class of 2006 that the club filled to the brim and refused to accept new members off the waitlist until the fall. Meanwhile, just the year before that Charter was looking in danger until Campus closed and most of their membership down to Charter as a bloc. Then dig back in the Prince archives a bit and you'll see that around 1997 it was Colonial that couldn't get any members. These things go through cycles; that's just the way it works with sign-in clubs. It's astonishing that a club that was very recently maxing out its sign-ins goes through all of three weak years and all of a sudden people are sounding the alarms. Then again, it's probably not a coincidence that this comes just the year after everyone who was around for the '06s sign-ins has graduated; this place has no institutional memory. From the student body at large that's understandable, but the Prince should be doing its research and putting these things in their broader context.
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I support the work that Harris is doing at Quad, but I just don't understand the impetus for this article. It comes off sounding like propaganda (almost every member of every club will praise the community and welcoming feel of their own club), and frankly despite its positive spin doesn't doing Quad any favors. How many people on campus actually knew how small Quad's membership had become before this article was published, or the fact that the club is running so deeply in the red? I want Quad to survive as much as the next guy. I've had some great times there over the last four years, and have some very good friends there. At the end of the day, the thing that's going to pull Quad out of its current slump is good leadership and enthusiastic members -- not the Daily Princetonian. Good luck Christian, speaking as a former club president I know it can be a hell of a job sometimes.
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1. If you introduce yourself or start-up a conversation and ask a member to get you a "members" drink they will get one for you and then you will have one. 2. I once was hanging out in quad in 1996 before their surge in membership and there was this chick whom I'll call calamaty Jane who decided to dance on one of the tables. Unforunately she was a little bit over the table dancing weight limit and the table broke. She was not hurt and it was a hilarious moment.
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Are you guys for real? What is up with all the inter-club hostility? Instead of alienating the same people with whom we shared dining hall tables a year or two ago, let's just be grateful for our time here. Whether you're in Tower, Quad, Ivy, or Terrace (or any of the 6 others), you're still a Princetonian. As a freshman, you didn't hate your classmates from Forbes just because you had a lot of Rocky pride, did you? Why should this be any different? Let people do their thing, and you do yours. Get to know members of every club so that you can hang out at all of them and see that we're not all that different. And please, save the in-group/out-group mentality for sporting events and U.S. News rankings. Go Tigers!
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Hate to add more fuel to the fire here, but it seems that all the commenters (well, I don't know how many they actually are, they could just be a one or two people) complaining about Quad and/or the positive nature of this article seem to have some personal ax to grind. @Anonymous #2, why do you spend so much time at quad if you hate it so much? I'd like to echo earlier commenters in saying that not every prince article needs to be negative in tone. I'm not a member of quad, but I personally think the quad bunch are friendly, and it is true that they have more community there than any other club on the street. Also, how many of you anonymous commenters would have been willing to speak out against Quad publicly in a Prince article? *cue crickets*
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I echo the point of the person who said "If you are going to let Quad run a free advertisement in the Prince, you should let all clubs do it." Also, I have a number of things to add to this article. The officers of the Quadrangle club this year are those responsible for the downfall of the club. In my experience, the only officers in the club who are not condescending and unwelcoming to non-members are the mooseheads. As a non-member who has spent a fair deal of time at quad, not just on nights when they are open for people to come drink their beer, I find it an uncomfortable atmosphere for non-members. Quad, like some other clubs, often has "members-only" drinks. The difference, however, is that lately mostly members areout at quad, so almost everyone there has a members-only drink. This creates an atmostphere where anyone else who is there is resigned to having to drink bad beer, while everyone else gets something better. This speaks loudly toward the porrly-chosen direction Quad has gone: they try to encourage new members to join by demonstrating very prominently how you will be treated much better once you're a member. However, this means that before you join, they alienate you until you don't want to be a part of Quad. If they aren't doing that, they're desperately begging you to join, making them seem desperate and driving you away again. The club will either recover once they get more competent leadership, or they will get stuck in a rut of nobody wanting to join the least popular and most made-fun-of club. Needless to say, while their membership is falling already from lack of new members, I've talked to a decent number of current members who are planning on leaving the club.
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Article summary: "YAY QUAD! YAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!" - officers in Quad
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because the hippies don't like real food
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@FE and others: The completely alleged 'racist' incident was nothing more than a misunderstanding on the part of one person who has since acknowledged it as such. Everyone at Quad got over it a long time ago (because nothing actually happened), and you should, too. Again, there was no leadership crisis, simply some restructuring that proved to be for the betterment of the club. @NAFE and others: Why refer to reduced numbers as "the decline of Quad"? There may be fewer members, but the quality of the experience is just as amazing as it has always been, if not better for the level of fraternity that smaller numbers afford. The club is still beautiful, the food is still delicious, the staff is still friendly, and the members are still happy. That doesn't sound like a decline to me.
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Great food? Really, how did Quad get an F from the hippies?
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If you are going to let Quad run a free advertisement in the Prince, you should let all clubs do it. And Quad's leadership issues didn't go off "just fine," but I will give it to anonymous, it's smart to circle the wagons when things aren't looking good.
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the prince hardly praises tower - this year has seen many articles pointing out tower's flaws. the one about tower's study abroad costs being the highest wasn't even true, but it was in the headline...
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So what was this 'racist incident' exactly?
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And I don't even hate Quad. But I think that FE makes a decent point when he says that the article could have been better had it explored reasons behind the decline of Quad. It would also have been more comprehensive if the author had talked to someone who was not a quad officer. The second and third comments clearly come from quad members as well.
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Why do you hate quad so much? Would it be fair to kick a club when it's already hurting by printing unsubstantiated rumors and false impressions? I don't see how that would be good journalism at all. I'm not surprised that you are a former editor, because you represent all that was wrong and biased about the Prince in the past. I'm really glad the Prince took a break from it's normal agenda of negativity and quad-bashing. Bravo.
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To comment on an "allegedly racist incident" without actual information on the matter is in and of itself irresponsible journalism, Former Editor. Furthermore, there was no "leadership crisis." The president left no void and the other officers managed just fine. Find out the facts before you go spouting off. And heaven forbid the Prince do anything but trash Quad like it usually does. Quad has had way more than it's fair share of irresponsible Prince journalism directed against it. It's nice to see that turned around for once. Sorry if that ate into the normal schedule of praising Tower.
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A well-written piece of poor journalism. Perhaps there is a reason why Quad has declining membership. Perhaps this angle ought to be explored, so that the story is something more than a collection of statistics and PR fluff. Why is no mention made of the leadership crisis that Quad suffered last semester, when the president resigned after an allegedly racist incident? Why not speak with students who considered joining Quad but chose another club? Or students who joined Quad and dropped? The writer could also have spoken with members of other clubs to gauge the general campus impression of Quad, which likely has a lot to do with their current woes.
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