Disjointed meal plans

A sense of accomplishment following the recent announcement that 106 freshmen have been slated for Whitman College is tempered by an important caveat. It is time to state the obvious: The University's plan to bridge four-year residential college and eating-club membership has been rendered virtually ineffective. This means that these 106 freshmen will be joining a residential and dining system that is no less fragmented and stratified than the one the University set out to remedy.

While the administration intended a joint-meal plan to serve as the happy medium between club membership and the continuity of a four-year residential college, the improbability of a viable joint-meal contract is undeniable. Of the 793 undergraduates admitted to both sign-in and bicker eating clubs for next fall, only 5.4 percent will have the opportunity to consider dividing meals between four-year residential colleges and their clubs. Among clubs, this percentage varies dramatically. While 22 percent of Quad's new membership and 22 percent of Cloister's membership will be able to participate in a joint-meal plan, only 3 perent of new Ivy members and 5 percent of those who received bids to enter Cap & Gown will have the same luxury. This unequal distribution of joint-meal plans among eating clubs strongly suggests that such plans may be used to bolster the membership of sign-in clubs while serving as further beacons of exclusivity to bicker clubs. (Tiger Inn, Tower and Cottage have not yet commented on the extent to which they will adopt shared meal plans.)

It is time to recognize that the University's plan to link the clubs and colleges was more symbol than substance, a fractured fairytale. In fact, the fabric of the University's dining and residential system remains torn. It is evident that eating clubs and four-year residential college dining halls have competing interests: Eating-club officers have stated they do not want to lose members to dining hall contracts.

It is time that the University community remember that the four-year college plan was not intended as a fund-raising gimmick to increase class size to and revenue. The plan was brought to Princeton a century ago as Woodrow Wilson's vision of a European residential university. Its long delayed implementation at Princeton should take place in an environment that decreases social fragmentation and isolation and not exacerbates it.