No strings attached

To all sophomores and juniors who are considering whether to go independent next year: there is life outside of the clubs, and it can be a fulfilling one. After a semester in an eating club and a stint in Australia, I came back to Princeton for senior year, reinvented as an independent living in the white concrete jungle of Spelman Hall. I haven't regretted it for a moment.

Independence provides just that. Independence of the eating clubs and the dining hall heaps gobs and gobs offreedom on the worthy recipient. I can eat whatever, whenever or with whomever I want — or not eat at all — and not feel guilty about wasting a meal. I care not for such trifles as completing meal exchanges by the end of the month or eating a certain number of meals by the end of the week.

I pay nothing to maintain a lavish mansion or buy other people's alcohol. Whenever I so desire, I can go up to Nassau Street and splurge on a decadently expensive meal, safe in the knowledge that my weekly food costs are still a fraction of those of my eating club friends. I will most likely spend less than $1,500 this year for food, and I hardly scrimp and save. And if I want to eat with non-independent friends, I eat with them at their eating club or dining hall, or I invite them over to my room for a meal. As hospitality goes, surely a meal selected and prepared with one's own hands ranks higher than an invitation to a club or PUDS. Despite my questionable cooking skills, I've come to enjoy entertaining people in my room, and they are unfailingly grateful for a respite from institutional cooking.

Some worry about nutrition outside of the clubs. Yet, inexplicably, independents live healthy lives and prosper! True, independents have to watch what they eat and make sure they get the requisite nutrients, but this is true for everyone. Joining an eating club doesn't remove from one's back the burden of a healthy diet. And, surprise, surprise, unless Daddy provides us with our own cook, when we graduate we will have to cook our own meals, buy our own groceries and otherwise feed ourselves.

We have to grow up some day. Moreover, shopping for groceries at the supermarket (not the 'Wa) is a regular foray into the gritty real world of central New Jersey, something most Princeton students sorely need. Not everyone in the world has his meals served to him by white-gloved servants in an oak-paneled manse.

Others worry about social life as an independent. Yet surely any Princeton student has the energy and organization necessary for an active social life. Whenever I want to eat with someone, I just e-mail him or call him up. I've eaten with as many as 10 different people in one week. And if I want to go out to the 'Street' on Thursday or Saturday night, with few exceptions I can still go wherever I want, with or without a club membership.

My apparently extreme views on the necessity of the eating club system's continued existence aside, I bear no animus towards members of eating clubs, for I was one myself, and know what it is all about. Yet all who are so inclined should consider independence. It is as much a state of mind as a means of saving money.

I came to this realization while I was studying abroad in Australia last spring: Tens of thousands of miles away from Princeton, the eating clubs (and Princeton) seemed small and insignificant. They were suffocating, while in Australia I discovered that my greatest asset was my freedom. I treasured it. Then, and once I returned to Princeton. In the end, independence is brazenly saying, "I am confident enough in myself that I derive no self-worth from membership in an eating club. I am willing to dart from the herd to trample a fresh sheep path. I am willing to flaunt the entire system. I want to feed myself and interact with my friends on my own terms." Justin Hastings is a Wilson School major from Bedford, Mass. He can be reached at justinh@princeton.edu.