On Sunday night, as students returned from intersession, sophomores plunged into an age-old tradition: joining an eating club.
Though the vast majority of students join a club in the spring of their sophomore year, a number of other Princetonians are unable to join, not for lack of will, but for lack of money. While some students happily choose not to join an eating club, many others are forced to miss out on an important part of the Princeton social experience simply because of clubs' expensive price tags.
Princeton has, in recent years, made great strides in recruiting students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds to attend the University, primarily because of its excellent financial aid program. Yet while the University itself has become more accessible, the eating clubs have not. For many of these students, the difference between a PUDS meal plan and an eating club contract — generally between $2,000 and $3,000 — is hardly a sum to scoff at.
The University has done a great deal to make the clubs more accessible to financial aid students. It continues to provide upperclassmen with approximately $4,000 in financial aid for eating expenses. This amount is static, whether students buy a PUDS meal plan, join an eating club or go independent. When the four-year residential colleges open in a few years upperclass eating options will be further expanded.
However, the University cannot provide grants to help students pay the eating club fees that exceed the $4,000 cost of PUDS. Instead, the financial burden that club membership imposes on certain students is one issue that the clubs themselves can realistically be expected to do something about.
The clubs, individually or collectively (through the ICC), need to start aggressively focusing their fundraising efforts on the creation or expansion of a financial aid fund, and every alumnus of every club should at least be asked if he or she wants to contribute to club financial aid. Different clubs have different financial capacities, but they can all at least begin to discuss how they can work together to make their clubs available to all students who want to join.
The club presidents understand the Street's ethical obligations to the Princeton community. They know that financial barriers to full social participation are antithetical to Princeton values, and they are no more comfortable than we are with the idea of fracturing the campus along economic lines. We hope that they will also agree that workable solutions to these problems are well within reach.
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