In defense of passes and lists

On Oct. 4, senior columnist Marni Morse wrote a column in The Daily Princetonian titled “Open parties: Making eating clubs slightly less restrictive.” In her column she argues that eating clubs should do away with passes and lists and instead be always either members only or PUID. In this column I will attempt to refute the points she makes.

Morse’s primary argument is that passes and lists are bad for school unity and split the school population by dividing where people are able to go out to on weekends. In actuality, this is not a problem that occurs very often. Underclassmen are not affiliated with a club and do not have to worry about their club affiliation splitting them up when they go out. Often underclassmen will go together to the PUID-only clubs. The only thing that can split up underclassmen is if one gets a pass and another does not, and even then, they still have the choice of staying with their friend or going to the club.

Many upperclassmen are in clubs, however, but this usually doesn’t prevent them from partying with their friends. Friends in different clubs can always party together at PUID clubs. Furthermore, if one of them is in a pass-only club and wants very badly to go there for the night, he can always give a pass to whichever friends he wants to come with him. This is the entire reason that passes exist. It is quite rare that underclassmen find themselves unable to party with friends because of passes or lists.

More importantly, however, Morse seems to misunderstand what the eating clubs fundamentally are. The eating clubs are not subsidiaries of the University. They are private institutions. They are privately owned, privately run and paid for by their members. Therefore, their purpose is not to serve the University, but rather to serve their members. If the members of a club decide that what’s most enjoyable for them is to invite the entire school to their parties, that’s wonderful. However, if they decide that they would rather have a greater measure of control over who comes into their club house, trashes their basement, drinks their beer and hurls all over their bathroom floors, that is also their right.

We should treat parties at pass and list clubs the same way we treat any other party – only those who are invited should come. If any one of us were to have a party for our friends and out of nowhere a bunch of drunkards we’d never seen before showed up and demanded entrance to our room and access to our booze simply on the grounds that they are Princeton students, we’d call them insane and give the Department of Public Safety a quick ring. Eating clubs are no different.

I believe that we at Princeton have gotten so used to the idea of massive parties with free beer every weekend that we have forgotten how incredible of a concept this is at all. The fact that nearly every Thursday and Saturday night I can simply walk up to one of five mansions and flash my PUID at a bouncer and will therefore gain entrance to a huge party full of free alcohol is unheard of in nearly every other university in the entire world. It is by no means a right, but rather an extremely lucky privilege, and we have no right to demand it of the other six clubs.

One more point I would like to address is that destroying passes and lists could lead to overcrowding on particularly popular nights. In her original article, Morse mentions this problem and attempts to refute it by claiming that her sister goes to Dartmouth and has told her that frat parties there are sometimes open to the whole school but don’t have this problem. However, we can find on this very campus evidence that overcrowding would be a problem without passes and lists. This past weekend was Capmandu, a very popular night at Cap & Gown Club. Even though one needed a pass to get into this party, it was still incredibly crowded to the detriment of all involved. We also see this same problem occur every semester at State Night, Tiger Inn’s biggest night, and Tower Underground, Tower Club’s biggest night. A few weeks ago, Terrace Club held one of its raves. Even though the club allows revelers into a huge portion of the building, it was nonetheless so full that one could barely move, and the club was forced to go members-only at multiple points throughout the night. Overcrowding is already sometimes a problem at both PUID clubs and pass clubs, and would be even worse without passes and lists.

Passes and lists help control big parties and create better experiences for those already inside. More importantly, however, we must remember that the clubs are not the University, but private institutions, and as such are here for the service of their members. One’s desire for a fun night out does not give one access to that which someone else pays for.

Colter Smith is a computer science major from Bronxville, N.Y. He can be reached at crsmith@princeton.edu.