Few admitted in fall Bicker

Clarification appended

Tower, Cottage and Cap and Gown clubs accepted an unusually small fraction of Bicker candidates this year, with few spots open to a large number of junior and senior applicants.

Tiger Inn did not hold fall Bicker and Ivy officers did not respond to requests for comment.

Tower welcomed 15 new members out of an applicant pool of 45 at their pickups Tuesday night, club president Chris Berg '07 said.

"The higher turnout demonstrates there is more enthusiasm for the club this year," Berg said in an e-mail. "The increased turnout skews our acceptance ratio to something much lower than we normally experience, though we took close to the same number of people last year."

Cap and Gown president Meka Asonye '07 reported eight new members after his club's pickups Friday night. He declined to give the number of candidates but said there was high demand this year.

"It was a really strong Bicker class," Asonye said. "Less people went abroad and more people returned. There were just fewer people that could be accepted."

Cottage picked up only five students out of 19 candidates Friday, a decline from the 11 accepted last year, club president Gavin Fabian '07 said.

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"Fall Bicker this year was extremely competitive," Fabian said. "We let in a little more than our board recommended in the spring, so we had to pay for that now."

A significant portion of the sophomore class participates in spring Bicker, while fall Bicker involves only juniors and seniors.

Clubs experienced a drop in acceptance rates as the size of their applicant pools climbed. Tower took 23 out of 31 candidates in 2003 and 20 of 34 in 2004.

Cap and Gown accepted 20 out of 33 candidates in 2003 and 13 of 42 in 2004. Cottage, which did not report fall Bicker results in 2003, accepted 17 of 20 applicants in 2004. Fall Bicker results were not reported last year.

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Ivy did not release its Bicker results this year, and its officers were unavailable for comment. In 2003, Ivy awarded membership to 15 of its 40 applicants, while only eight of 45 were accepted in 2004.

Tiger Inn did not hold fall Bicker this year, continuing its recent tradition of abstaining from the event, club president Kyle Morgan '07 said in an email.

Clarification

The number of bickerees accepted to Tower club this year, though similar to last year's figure, was not exactly the same. The original version of this story implied this point, but did not make it explicitly.