Selectivity of Bicker mirrors the real world

Ah, February, that magical time of year when sophomores' apprehensions about leaving their residential colleges develop into outright worries over how they will find nourishment next year. As the semester begins, we are thick in the middle of Bicker and, perhaps even more noticeably, the annual round of controversies it inspires.

We're all familiar with the arguments. Some say Bicker splits the student body, creates needless anxiety and is elitist, classist and racist. Others say it preserves traditions, creates new friendships and instills a sense of community. Despite this division, we all agree on one thing: For better or worse, Bicker is — even more than your thesis — quintessentially Princeton.

Or at least I used to think it was. But then I learned that this year Bicker had been extended to an unlikely group: my parents.

Last year mom and dad, their children safely entrusted to respectable institutions of higher education, decided to rid themselves of their newly empty nest and put our house on the market. After a brief dalliance in San Francisco, last month they settled into a sunny Victorian about five miles from our old house in southern Rhode Island. Alongside the house's many charms, one feature took my parents somewhat aback — it is part of a community.

This is not one of these newfangled subdivisions of Orwellian dendrology — places with names like Oak Grove and Pine Hill but nary a sapling in sight — but a real New England community. Residents make it their business to know their neighbors, and everyone shares a private sewer system, a private library and, most problematically, a yacht club.

I say "problematically" not because yacht clubs are undesirable institutions, but because my parents — oceanographers who are more interested in what goes on under yachts than what happens on top of them — are decidedly unaccustomed to any kind of selective social club. Hearing them describe the selection process with a mix of apprehension and principled indifference, I am, in a strange moment of role-reversal, reminded of my sophomore self.

When I came to Princeton, I thought Bicker was something that other people did — yacht club people, for example. Though I ended up joining a Bicker club, I have always felt uncomfortable with social exclusivity. However, a large number of students come to campus from families in which restricted clubs of the yacht or country variety are the norm. Familiar with selectiveness, many of them probably wonder what all the fuss is about.

Though the name "Bicker" is uniquely Princetonian, the process it describes is all around us. On other campuses it is most prominently expressed in fraternities, sororities and secret societies. The adult world also has its share of exclusive organizations; you need go no farther than the corner of Nassau and Mercer to find the Nassau Club, an eating club for grownups. In this sense Princeton is not so much a bubble as a microcosm. Perhaps this explains some of the pro-Bicker/anti-Bicker acrimony on campus. When people unused to exclusivity are packed onto a small campus with those accustomed to it, the cultural differences that in the larger world divide, say, yachters and oceanographers are magnified. The divide is exacerbated by the Street's prominent profile as both provider of food and purveyor of entertainments.

Should we be worried about this exclusivity at Princeton? I think there are strong reasons to be. Just because selective social organizations are prevalent in society at large does not mean they are appropriate or desirable for what should be a close-knit academic community. But at the same time it may be unrealistic to think that university-level social engineering can remove the impulse to divide and exclude. Eating clubs are not just traditions to be snuffed out like the Nude Olympics; in many ways they are a reflection of human nature.

Bicker may one day follow other traditions into the dustbin of Princetoniana, but I doubt it will happen anytime soon. More importantly, I suspect the underlying exclusivity is here — and everywhere — to stay.

As sophomores wait anxiously and everyone from students to administrators debates the cause of their anxiety, it is good to remember that in some ways Princeton is not so different from the rest of the world after all. Tom Hale is a Wilson School Major from Saunderstown, R.I. He can be reached at thale@princeton.edu.