Schaengold fights to found first dry club

As a Messianic Jew from an Indian reservation who believes in both sexual and alcoholic abstinence, David Schaengold '07 is used to being a minority. But when he arrived at the University as a freshman and found the Street too alcohol-friendly for his taste, he immediately began looking for ways to create a dry eating club.

"Ultimately, I sort of find that drinking and drunkenness is fairly boring. I think there is room on the Street for a club where people who drink and people who don't drink can concentrate their time on conversation and getting to know each other," Schaengold said.

He teamed up with Scott Shimp '06, and the two began a campaign to open an eating club that would provide alternative opportunities to upperclassmen. The two, now roommates, first thought about lobbying to reopen Dial or Cannon as a dry club but were unable to get the support of the club's Grad Board or the University.

After the pair obtained several hundred signatures on a petition designed to gauge student interest in a dry club, they soon shifted their focus to Campus Club, which was having difficulty attracting new members.

Schaengold joined Campus Club last spring and continued to promote the idea of a dry eating club, emailing students who had signed the petition and expressed interest. When the club's Grad Board announced it was shutting down Campus, he jumped at the chance to reopen it as an alcohol-free club.

"As a dry club, Campus would be the fullest club on the Street on a Saturday night because we would be providing events that are interesting in their own right and hopefully providing a place where everyone in the University community feels comfortable," he said. "We're not trying to create here an atmosphere of teetotalism by any means. We're just trying to create an social situation where the focus is not on alcohol."

Despite his efforts, however, Campus will not open as a dry club. Schaengold called the situation disappointing because "a lot of [the club's] members looked at Campus as a home."

His youth may have influenced his belief in responsible drinking. Schaengold spent much of his childhood growing up on an Indian reservation in New Mexico where his father's work as a government physician with Indian Health Services allowed him to witness firsthand the dangers of drinking.

"It never struck me as motivation for my efforts here, but ... alcoholism is a huge problem on the Reservation," he said. "A tremendous portion of the adult population is alcoholic, and drunk driving accidents are one of the leading causes of death there."

Schaengold's advocacy for responsible drinking is not the only way he has voiced his personal philosophy on campus.

As vice president of The Anscombe Society, a student organization that supports and encourages sexual abstinence, he has helped organize pro-abstinence lectures and meetings with the hope of providing what he calls "an alternative viewpoint from the one we feel is the predominant ideology."

"It wasn't something that I thought was under a lot of challenge until I came here," Schaengold said.

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"And I suppose that it is similar at most colleges where there is what I call a culture of disrespect. It's certainly not universal on campus by any means. But I feel like certain issues like the prevalence of random hookups and drunkenness ... are contrary to my ideas," he added.

Schaengold says his advocacy for personal restraint in both sexual activity and alcohol consumption stems from his religious upbringing.

As a Messianic Jew, Schaengold considers himself to be "ethnically Jewish with a Christian belief system." Because the University does not have a religious program for Messianic Jews, Schaengold travels to New York City every Saturday to attend services.

His religious persuasion has also helped him to deal with his minority status as both a supporter of sexual abstinence and restraint concerning alcohol.

"Being a Messianic Jew makes you a minority everywhere in the world, not just on the Princeton campus," he said.

"I didn't start out my career here to champion conservative causes. I am a card-carrying Democrat, but ... I believe that all human beings should be treated with dignity, and I think that is a principle that ... underlines both movements."