Campus Club may reopen dry

After Campus Club's board of trustees decided last month to close the club this fall, members hoping to keep Campus open are joining with students who want to create an alcohol-free eating club. They hope to attract enough new members in the next weeks to prevent the club's permanent closure.

Though members say chances of reopening are grim, they are plastering the campus with posters and fliers encouraging students to join.

"Campus Club is making a revolutionary new move by reopening as a dry eating club — but only if we can recruit enough members to keep us open," according to the club's website. The club would also offer a reduced membership for $4,000.

Members of the club and its board refused to confirm that Campus might reopen as a dry club.

Campus closed after struggling to attract enough members to keep the club financially viable, board chair Anne Lester Trevisan '86 told The Daily Princetonian last month. "I can confirm that Campus will not be opening for meals in September," she said, declining to discuss the decision in more detail. Trevisan could not be reached for comment on recent developments.

Campus Club member David Schaengold '07 wrote in an Aug. 30 email to club members that unless enough new members signed up to join a dry club, the trustees would shut down the club and transfer ownership to the University. He estimated that about 70 students would have to join.

When the club's closing was announced, club members and alumni were surprised. The club had about 30 members before the start of the current academic year, including a dozen sophomores who joined the club in February. It has a capacity of about 130 students.

The proposed "dry policy" wouldn't eliminate alcohol, but the club would no longer provide kegs of beer and would instead emphasize nonalcoholic drinks, according to Campus' website.

The club would allow members to bring their own alcohol "because we don't want to alienate existing members, who signed in before the dry policy came into effect," the website said.

Students first proposed making Campus a dry club last spring when Schaengold, Scott Shimp '06 and other students approached Campus officers with the idea. The officers opposed the move because current members had not agreed to it when they joined the club, Shimp said.

"There were definitely lots of Campus members willing to go along with making the club dry, but before the club was threatened with closing, it wasn't a step the officers were willing to take so immediately," Shimp said.

"But," he added, "the officers have adopted the idea of a dry eating club as their last chance to keep the club open."

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Officers and trustees previously tried to revive the club by switching from a sign-in to a selective admissions process in fall 2002, though they returned to a sign-in process last school year.

Some trustees argued in 2002 that students prefer selective clubs and that making Campus selective would improve membership numbers.

In the 2002-03 academic year, the club admitted members selectively, though nearly all students who wanted to join the club were invited to join at any point during the year, not just in September and February, when students typically join clubs.

In the spring of 2004, Campus used a toned-down Bicker process to select members and the club's 25 bickerees were all accepted. Last fall, the two students who bickered were accepted.

Only about a dozen sophomores signed into the club in February, despite efforts to publicize the club's return to sign-in. The club encouraged interested sophomores to sign in before the end of the fall semester for a $100 discount in membership dues and "full meals at Campus until the end of ICC sign-in/bicker week," the club's website said.

In recent years, other clubs have voiced support for Campus, Princeton Prospect Foundation (PPF) board members said.

"Other clubs wanted to know how to help Campus out," said Gordon Harrison '68, a former Campus member who is treasurer of the PPF and manager for several clubs. "They wanted to find ways to keep the club alive and to encourage students to join."

Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Students and PPF board member Maria Flores-Mills said the Inter-Club Council and Graduate Inter-Club Council "are compelled to help keep all the other clubs afloat."

"The clubs think about their own interests," she said, "but also want the whole system to stay healthy because it helps all the rest. It just seems like not enough could be done."

If the club reopens, full memberships would cost $6,000, according to Schaengold's email. The cost is similar to that of joining clubs that provide alcohol, and about $2,000 more than a University meal plan with 20 meals per week. Students could also join Campus on a reduced meal plan that excluded lunch for $4,000.

Though other clubs do not accept sophomores until the spring semester, sophomores interested in joining Campus could pay $1,000 for a few meals each week, Schaengold said.

But for now, the pathway leading to Campus Club is largely unused, with only a few confused freshmen wandering through the gates and up to the door.