There has been a recent initiative on campus in the form of a petition to call forth a referendum to end Bicker in the Princeton eating clubs. The referendum calls for eating clubs to end Bicker by the 2019-20 academic year and to establish an Undergraduate Student Government committee, which must include a non-voting member appointed by the Interclub Council, to facilitate the process. Although an initiative to familiarize students with the downsides of Bicker and to introduce to students all available alternatives would be valuable, Bicker still ultimately has a place on this campus.
The fact that there is a need to hose students indicates that there is a demand for certain eating clubs and no way to fulfill that demand. As long as the number of people who want to join certain clubs exceeds the capacity of those clubs, there will be a need for Bicker. Although having a lottery system would be a technically feasible way to allocate membership when there is an excess of students bickering, a lottery system would defeat the purpose of having individual, unique eating clubs. Each eating club facilitates its own culture and personality, which is a large part of the draw for each of these clubs. Although Terrace Club implements the lottery system to address its lack of capacity issues, it is not unreasonable for clubs to choose Bicker as a way of maintaining their culture. It makes sense to choose people based on fit in order to maintain the culture and personality that made the club so desired in the first place.
The claim that Bicker divides friend groups is a valid concern. It’s true that meal exchanges don’t mitigate the social distance separating different eating clubs, since meal exchanges don’t cover the other social events that eating clubs host. It’s true that being in different eating clubs may mean that friendships change, especially if friends don’t make the effort to stay close. Ultimately though, the main objective of eating clubs is not to accommodate every student who wants to join and to make sure they feel comfortable and safe and wanted; rather, the objective is to foster a community of people with similar interests and, unfortunately, using a lottery system would be at odds with that objective. There are other alternatives, such as sign-in clubs, co-ops and other avenues to join a social community that don’t involve bickering. There are other ways to keep in touch with friends in different clubs, such as meal exchanges, dining swipes for upperclassmen and guest meals. These alternatives may not be as ideal as joining the same club as friends and being able to eat together every single day, but making sure every single student feels comfortable is not a feasible goal for the eating clubs. It is simply impossible for them to keep everybody happy given capacity limitations, so the goal they strive for when using Bicker as a membership selection method is to foster a cohesive culture.
The most difficult part of being hosed is the feeling that it is indicative of you as a person. It’s all too easy to believe that is the case — although I’ve never bickered, I know that gut-sinking feeling of failing a fit interview for an internship and thinking that it’s because I’m inherently an unlikeable, unworthy person. I know friends who weren’t accepted to their top-choice sorority and friends who’ve been hosed from their desired eating clubs. It’s difficult to deal with, knowing that you were judged solely on your personality. However, rejection is not necessarily a commentary on your personality: it may indicate only that you were not the right fit for the company or the sorority or the eating club or that there was simply not enough space. We commonly hold the mentality that we want to be the best at everything and be accepted by everything we apply to. Although it may be hard to see after being hosed by an eating club, often there is another place that will turn out to be a better fit in the end. While “Hose Bicker” would be a way to protect students from feeling like Bicker is a judgment of their character, it is not a feasible course of action for the eating clubs. A better way to help students reach this understanding is to facilitate conversation that helps students genuinely reject the idea that Bicker is indicative of self-worth. This is the conversation that needs to be had on campus: not an abolishment of Bicker, but an understanding of why Bicker is necessary and what hosing means — helping students find places that are better fits for them personally — and what it doesn’t mean — that a person is unlikeable.
Barbara Zhan is an Operations Research and Financial Engineering major from Plainsboro, N.J. She can be reached at barbaraz@princeton.edu.
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