Valuing the eating club system

As a senior, scarily and irreversibly close to my unwanted title of alumnus, I often read the campus life rumblings in the Princeton Alumni Weekly — a postgraduate publication that keeps the vast network of Princeton grads in tune with events and discussions percolating on campus. In a recent issue, there was a four-page spread on our ever-controversial eating clubs. The caustic article stated that the eating clubs prepared students for the world by "maximizing bonding social capital, the kind of social capital on which self-enclosed elites thrive."

The article, sadly, inspired a host of supportive letters-to-the-editor, and one in particular struck my attention. A Princeton graduate of 1969 claimed that when he talks to promising high school seniors about where they'd like to attend college, "first choices are often Brown, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Bowdoin, Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Penn ... There is a pattern here ... clearly, the 'eating-club scene' is the number-one culprit for many students who shy away from Princeton." If this is in fact true — a bold statement that I am not entirely convinced of — then I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the administration.

The University, most notably under the tenure of President Woodrow Wilson, has over the years generally chosen a path of most resistance in regard to the eating clubs, openly criticizing the system and working to rid the campus of what many presidents and deans have considered elitist and exclusionary institutions. As I begin my fourth year here firmly ensconced within an eating club community, safely nestled away from the underclassman hardships of passes, bicker and dining hall food, I feel it would be remiss to go through my tenure as a Princeton undergraduate and not write about one of the defining aspects of my Princeton educational experience. To apathetically accept this negative portrayal of the clubs as nothing more than 1950's elitist relics would be to ignore the indispensable social positives the clubs have provide in my time at Princeton.

Coming off our epic Sunday of Lawnparties — a day when everyone with a University ID is welcome to come out and bask in the glory of seersucker, music and friends — I can't imagine a Princeton without the eating clubs. In order for the University to break the negative mystique that shrouds the clubs, it is essential that the administration represent the Street for what it really is — a complex and relatively diverse social scene that does a lot more for students and the community than the administration would like to admit. The Street is not all about bicker: Half of the clubs are sign-in. The potential closing of Campus in its current state opens up other social possibilities at the Street, and with the rumors and rumblings of Cannon being bought by a religiously affiliated organization, it may be that the Street will truly offer something for every unique and diverse Princeton student. For the University to passively dismiss the clubs as insular elitist establishments also overlooks their contribution to the Princeton community. Not only do they provide activities for they entire campus — whether Lawnparties or charity events — but they foster deep social bonds that are unheard of and, I dare say, impossible to achieve in any residential college.

It was to my delight this year to open up the new admissions brochure to find that the eating clubs were rewarded with a five sentence blurb — a vast improvement from the their previous one-line mention that falsely claimed their irrelevance to campus life. As some eating clubs near their one hundred and fiftieth anniversary — a sign that they will surely be a part of Princeton life for generations, even with four-year colleges on the horizon — I think it is time that the University chose to have a different relationship with these irreplaceable icons of Prospect Avenue. Instead of trying to sweep them under the rug and dismiss them as the black sheep of the University, it might not be a bad idea for the administration to openly recognize the clubs' significance to campus life, and praise their merits rather than harping on their weaknesses. While the bicker system will always provoke snarls and shouts of "old boy elitism," Prospect Avenue contributes to the life and soul of the University in a way that a four-year residential college never possibly could. Chris Berger is a history major from London. He can be reached at cberger@princeton.edu.