Bicker 501: How to sneak a grad student into Cap & Gown

If you are an undergraduate, you should know this right away: I'm a grad student, who tried to become a member of Cap & Gown, by claiming I was a junior, just so I could write about it.

I tell my grad friends to think of eating clubs as a co-ed fraternity, dining hall, recreation center, dance club and bar all wrapped into one. I tell them that for three memorable nights in late January, I was an extra on the set of "Animal House." And I tell them to have patience as I try to answer their questions one by one (except I can't answer the commonly asked, "What gave you this hare-brained idea?" etc.). I tell them that members of an eating club offer admission to sophomores based on a series of informal interviews and outlandishly less formal "games," most requiring the voluntary imitation of sexual positions, which will be the basic thrust, as it were, of this article.

Then again, it is conceivable that I learned something more powerful from the process. Two lessons spring to mind. First, my vision of an Affluent-East-Coast-Old-Money-Eating-Club society faded away as I got to know the members. It seems to me the clubs do nothing more than combine food and social expenses. The elitist image more likely comes from University admissions, not Bicker. Second, I find a major misconception among undergraduates that grad students may, in fact, come from outer space. We do not. Similarly, grad students often fail to reach out to undergrads. The two groups, we might agree, may never party together, but at least we can get to know a few names and faces.

This wily three-night ploy of investigative reporting started as an experiment between my undergraduate track friends and me just to see if their club, Cap & Gown, would let a grad student in. Some of my friends were members and others bickered along with me. They were all in on this Bicker idea from the beginning, lips sealed as undercover operators. At track practice, my insider friends asked rhetorically, "How hilarious would it be if you ACTUALLY got in?"

My grad buddies, on the other hand, ask, "What is an eating club?" "How do you get in?" "Who joins them?" Now I do not need to remind you that these are really basic questions. To a large extent, undergrads categorize grad students as socially inept and all together odd. Grad students think undergrads are pretentious and socially underdeveloped. I assure you, after having spent time with both groups over the past seven months, neither stereotype holds water. To a surprising degree, graduate students actually converse with others. Often, when a grad student talks, it does not sound like an audio recording of "Nature" or "Physics Weekly" or "Foreign Affairs." And there are occasions, conversely, when undergrads do not wear Phillips Exeter sweatshirts and seem perfectly unpretentious. The track guys, who will act as a representative cross-section here, have me convinced they could edit U.S. News and World Report, G.Q. or maybe even Playboy.

On rare occasions, as I understand it, juniors may undergo the three-day vetting process required of five of the 11 eating clubs on campus. So I declared myself a junior in the Wilson School, living in the sophomore Zoo of 121 Dodge-Osborn Hall. Now I did not just straight up say conflicting things like that. Far better to let members ask questions or tell me to swallow goldfish, shape peanut butter with my mouth only, chug prune juice and lick whipped cream from various objects, some of which were undergraduate women.

Things were going just dandy until the first interview. The interviewer asked which state I would get rid of first. I thought this was a stupid question. Knowing she was from Texas (with help from my insider friends), for fun I picked her own Lone Star state. She still does not like me. Then things really went downhill. I sat down with the next interviewer, looked him in the eye, talked with relative coherence and even smiled. Promptly, he awarded me a red card, which as you know, all but disqualified me. The next interview went worse. My second red card in five minutes.

My track buddies assured me, however, that despite my careless interviews, I had a good shot at admission to the club. I withdrew at the suggestion of those of my track buddies also bickering so they would have a better chance to get into this crazy life.

After this experiment came to an end, I wrote a Discovery Channel-style story for my fellow grad students to explain what has become mundane to most of you: eating club life. They ate it up . . . they thought it was hilarious. You might not know it, but your life turns out to be pretty interesting for us grad students. Justin Mikolay is a grad student in the Wilson School from Hudson, Ohio. He can be reached at jmikolay@princeton.edu.