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E-PrinceThis week, The Daily Princetonian has published a series of articles on results of the COMBO II survey. For the most part, many of the trends in terms of ethnicity and income seen in the original COMBO have continued. Though ...(back to the article)
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I'd like to hear the Edits Board write about whether bicker should continue to exist at the University. You consist of mostly egalitarian left-leaning members who are more or less all members of a club (Tower) that selects its membership based on socially selective criteria. Is this hypocritical? I'm not sure myself, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.
My main problem with this article is the lack of concrete policy suggests. The point of the Edits Board is not to wax eloquent, but to identify a problem and then give concrete and realistic policy solutions to overcome it. They normally do a good job and this article identifies a real problem. Hopefully, besides a brief and superficial treatment of the issue, they do a woefully inadequate job at recommending how the University should fix this problem.
The Prince Pundits opine, "The most striking new information that COMBO II provides is evidence for the substantial decline in the number of students joining sign-in clubs."
And yet somehow this January, many, many hearts will be broken because individuals were not admitted into the Sign-In club of choice, as demand far exceeds supply.
Go figure.
The university has known about how its policies affect the sign ins for a long time, and most sign ins foresaw this happening anyway. Instead of making eating options more accessible and creating an egalitarian social atmosphere, the university will face even more social stratification as bicker clubs are the only student run game left in town....and of course, everyone else gets relegated to Whitmania parties.
Have fun, kids.
Last year we were in the middle of a recession, and this year's not much better. Has anybody considered the possibility that a recession impacts sign-in numbers more than bicker numbers? Just sayin'.
I agree with Loyal Watchdog. All too often, I find myself getting lost in your eloquence and not really seeing the concrete solution you're proposing, if you even propose one.
"A good first step would be to expand the number of shared meal plans for sign-in clubs, in hopes of allowing more students to be part of their college and sign-ins."
I suspect that the University sees this "contradiction" as "good" because it is trying to pressure the sign-ins into offering more shared meal plans. Remember, Tilghman's dream is for all clubs to be sign-in and ALL club members to be on shared meal plans so that EVERYONE can still be in a res college.
there's no way the university could have been so short-sighted as to not realize that the four year colleges would draw directly from sign-ins. did they really think a bunch of rich kids would be enticed by whitman sweatpants?
the problem is that some freshmen come in knowing the social scene because they're from the right high schools in new york or california. the rest of us spend four years figuring out we've already missed the boat.
As the person who did the data analysis, I find this editorial disappointing. In their five-part series, Aaron and Michelle got it exactly right that when looking at actual membership numbers, only two sign-in clubs showed declines: Colonial and Quad. For Colonial, which was massive in 2007, this should not mean financial ruin, as membership is still about 80 per year. Quad, of which I was a member, is the only club that seems to have had a membership decline that could put it at risk. Quad has done exactly what the editorial board recommends, vastly increase the number of split meal plans (something I took advantage of as well). Thus, the editorial board is right but is promoting a policy that has basically already been implemented.
Overall, COMBO is unique in that it can show what people join, how they feel, etc. by factors like income and ethnicity. When it comes to raw numbers such as the number in people in clubs, actually getting that real data (printed in the Bric-a-Brac yearbook each year) is much better.