Sally Frank '80, who ten years ago forced the last three all-male eating clubs to go co-ed, will speak today

When Sally Frank '80 attended the University during the late 1970s, she joined student activists who fought against everything from South African apartheid to the absence of locks on women's bathrooms in the dorms. "I probably majored in activism," she said. "Organizing 101."

It was during her sophomore year that Frank, now a Drake University law professor and an attorney specializing in family law and domestic violence, began a legal battle that would last 13 years. She filed a lawsuit against three eating clubs that refused to admit her because of her gender.

Frank — who will speak today in Bowl 2 of Robertson Hall at 4:30 p.m. — bickered Cottage Club, Ivy Club and Tiger Inn when the Bicker system still allowed for students to bicker multiple clubs.

She said that as she bickered, her desire to become a member became based on more than political activism. "At the beginning, my goal was just that I wanted to join, and that if I joined, by definition, [the club] would be coed," she said. "But as I kept going through it, I would get to know people who I would not get to know on campus. I enjoyed getting to know people who were very different from me."

Frank was never admitted to a club, though she bickered in her junior year as well. "It was the only aspect of the case I lost," she said.

When Frank first brought the case to court, she was still a full-time student. "While I was an undergraduate, the case was with me every day, regardless, because of the tension it created," she said.

Frank said that during the suit she found she had few supporters at the University, even among the progressive community. "Most people didn't see it as an important issue. I didn't see it as a main issue, either, which is why I didn't ask people to organize around it. It was something I could take on myself," she said.

Since then, however, the attitudes of those in her class and younger alumni have changed, Frank said.

"I think a lot of people, after they graduated and got into the working world, realized how important it was as they started suffering discrimination too," she said.

While her case was not a class-action suit, Frank said she believed she was doing something positive for the University as a whole. "By winning, there was relief for all Princeton students," she said.

Legal battle

During her junior year, Frank filed a legal complaint claiming that though the clubs said they were private, they were public accommodations that would be required to include females. Otherwise, they would be practicing gender discrimination.

Cottage — which settled with Frank in 1986 — began to accept female members that year after paying her $20,000 in damages for legal fees. Ivy went coed in 1990 when the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in Frank's favor.

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Tiger Inn, however, held out and asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case twice but was denied both times. The case was heard in the Federal Circuit Court, which upheld the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling. As a result, Tiger Inn held coed Bicker in the spring of 1991. Frank's case officially concluded in June 1992.

The court ruled that the eating clubs have a "symbiotic relationship" with the University, and this mutual dependency prevents the clubs from being "distinctly private," Frank said.

"They need each other," she explained. "The clubs depend on Princeton for its members, and Princeton depends on them for eating and for the social life."

Frank, who will speak today on women in law, said she tries to remain in contact with the students at the University, especially student activists. And though she has returned to campus several times since the controversial lawsuit ended, she has not entered the three eating clubs since she bickered. "Nobody's invited me," she said.