For the last few days, pre-frosh have swarmed the campus. Equipped with maps, '04 buttons and awed gazes, they are hard to miss.
On tours, at receptions and at panel discussions, pre-frosh are barraged with facts and figures about what makes Princeton unique. But with two years under my belt, I have begun to wonder whether any of these statistics actually distinguish Tigertown from other schools.
The question I field most frequently from people — especially students at other Ivy League schools — who hear that I attend Princeton is "What's up with those eating clubs?" As unfortunate as it may be, Princeton's social scene is its most distinguishing characteristic. How many schools can claim that approximately 75 percent of their students hold membership in one of 11 coed social clubs?
What makes the eating club scene different is that it is effortless. Going out at most other schools requires making plans, having a fake ID and lots of cash. The 'Street' requires none of those things — grab your PUID, head over to Prospect and you are guaranteed to find a beer. This is more than just an example of how Princeton is not like the real world.
Trying to obtain alcohol as a minor requires great effort in most states because it is illegal. Without any obstacles to procuring alcohol, liquor laws would be about as easily enforced as anti-sodomy laws. But somehow at Princeton, all of the obstacles have been removed — money is not an issue, age is never questioned and the locations where most drinking takes place are basically off-limits to law enforcement officials. The anti-reality that is Princeton is one of the reasons why in the past you have seen so many tanked pre-frosh. It's like setting a kid loose in a candy store.
There is little room to deny that because alcohol is so accessible, Princeton has more of a party scene than most other institutions of similar academic intensity. When I visited Harvard earlier this year, I found a total dearth of social life. There, students are serious about one thing: academics.
What makes Princeton's social scene unique is what makes Princeton's atmosphere in general unique. People here are not all uptight, all the time. They work hard, and then they party hard, too. It's like students at Princeton discovered that the secret to a good college experience is balance, and we forgot to send the message up to Cambridge and New Haven.
Princeton students stand divided about how much they like the social scene here, and the 'Street' in particular. While many love the idea that they can cross Washington Road and find most of their peers every weekend, others find the 'Street's' domination of school social life stifling.
This year, however, prospective students will not have the opportunity to judge Princeton's social scene for themselves. What was once Pre-Frosh Weekend is now Pre-Frosh Monday through Wednesday, encompassing the two nights of the week during which one is least likely to find Prospect Avenue jumping. I've thought of several possible reasons for this change. The first might be scheduling conflicts, especially with last weekend's major holidays. The second could be the administration's effort to avoid having prospectives base their college decision on one night of drunken revelry.
The third touches on the alcohol initiative. What the trustees have done is try to divert student attention from the clubs by creating more non-'Street'-based social activities. As many people have attested to in recent articles in The Daily Princetonian, they have failed. The pre-frosh program and the alcohol initiative both make obvious that the administration and the trustees are simply ignoring the significant role alcohol plays in Princeton's campus culture.
Bring in every big-name comedian and sponsor as many Butler beach parties as you'd like — students will still find their way across Washington Road. Princeton culture thrives on having the 'Street' to counter the academic rigor. No matter how much money the trustees dish out, Princeton students will not stop indulging.
And as Penn's short experiment with a "dry campus" proved last year, when the big parties are drained, student drinking in dorms goes up and drug use skyrockets. At least in a public setting like an eating club, students have peers to look out for them. But the fact is, even if you could imagine IDs and cover charges at the 'Street,' the clubs are private institutions, and their grad boards will not be eager to give up more than 100 years of tradition because the administration wants to play the role of parent.
The irony of the situation is that April hosting is designed to give prospective students an opportunity to observe student life here beyond the facts and figures. What you read in guidebooks and hear on an Orange Key Tour — like the 7-to-1 student faculty ratio — has little bearing on a student's college experience. If pre-frosh visits are supposed to offer a more complete glimpse of campus life, we can't ignore the fact that the 'Street' is a major part of what makes Princeton Princeton. Julie Straus is from Potomac, Md. She can be reached at straus@princeton.edu.
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