With bicker and sign-ins less than two months away, sophomores are considering the choices they will make in early February: whether to join a club and which club to join.
The options to sign in, bicker, go independent or draw into a four-year residential college are the same that last year's sophomores faced, but this is the first year that students are making those decisions with the new residential college system in place.
With Whitman College and the renovated Rocky-Mathey dining hall drawing upperclassmen who are on meal plans or just using their two free meals a week, the annual dining option rite of passage revives a question that has circulated for years: Will the residential colleges wean upperclassmen off Prospect Avenue?
To University administrators, the answer is a wholehearted no. Executive Vice President Mark Burstein said the colleges are not meant to draw upperclassmen away from the Street. "This is really about choice," he said. "I wouldn't say that our job is to recruit in any way."
Mathey College Master Antoine Kahn also said the colleges have no intention of detracting from the clubs. "Some people conceive the [colleges] as competition with clubs," he said. "Nothing is more wrong than that — it is a complement, a different mode for social life at Princeton."
The clubs, once fearful of the colleges' impact on sophomore recruitment, are now largely unconcerned about their effects.
Quadrangle Club president Christian Harris '09 said he has not noticed the four-year colleges having much of an effect on sophomores' decisions, though he said it may be too early to tell. He added that Quad has not changed its recruiting process to compete with the colleges.
"Some people feel comfortable in clubs, others don't," Harris said. "The University is just trying to take care of its students and give them options."
Tiger Inn president Chris Merrick '08 said he agrees that the University is "genuinely ... just trying to provide options for students," adding that TI's membership has not gone down since four-year colleges became an option last year.
Now that the four-year college system is in place, Burstein said, he plans to meet with all of the eating clubs to discuss the joint-meal plans that were implemented this year. He and Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel will meet with student leaders in January to solicit feedback on the four-year colleges, while an open-house information session for sophomores will be held in March.
Burstein said that the administration has already received feedback from students interested in combining living as an independent and being part of a four-year college — such as the option of living in Spelman Hall while having a dining plan — and is hoping to offer a wider variety of options to sophomores in March.
Jon Turner '10 said he has not decided whether he wants to stay in Mathey next year, though he is certain that he doesn't want to join any eating club. "I don't want to deal with all the politics and hassle of Bicker and all that," he said. "It's something I'd like to avoid."
Whitman resident Ellen Adams '10 said in an email that she is debating between going independent and signing in to Terrace Club. Ideally, she said, she would like to live in Spelman, but she is afraid it would be hard for her mixed-gender group of friends to continue to socialize if they don't join a club, since they would have to live separately.
Another Whitman sophomore, Cristina Torres '10, said she intends to bicker a club but also said the colleges are good options. "I think that they have really nice facilities, and I would definitely stay in a four-year college if I wasn't planning to bicker," she said.
Lilly Nordahl '10 is applying to be a Mathey RCA but also plans to bicker a club. "Currently I'm really involved in Mathey and I'd like to continue [to be involved]," she said. "[But] I also really want to be in an eating club," adding that she sees the clubs as "part of the Princeton social scene that I don't want to miss out on."
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