Guide advises independents

As sophomores consider their eating options for the coming year, the University has launched a new Independent Student Guide (ISG) to give interested students the resources necessary to decide if “going independent” is for them.

The new ISG was the work of the Freshman-Sophomore Council of the USG, with help from the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS) and the Student Design Agency (SDA). A previous version of the ISG had been in existence since 2003 but had not been updated since 2006, and the Independent Student Union, which has traditionally been in charge of revising the website, is no longer in existence.

“There is current interest in reviving the Independent Student Union,” said Devon Wessman-Smerdon ’05, the ODUS administrator who worked with the USG to create the new webpage.

The revised webpage provides resources for grocery shopping, a list of local restaurants, advice and recipes for cooking, and information about local transportation options to get to shopping centers. The site also lists the different eating options available to juniors and seniors at the University, which include upperclass, independent, Spelman Halls, residential colleges and co-ops. It also offers information about eating alternatives such the Center for Jewish Life.

The site includes a section to explain purchasing a residential meal plan during junior and senior years but does not provide any information about joining an eating club.

Students “are likely to have thought of eating clubs but may not have thought about drawing into a residential college with a limited meal plan,” U-Councilor and Frosh-Soph Council member Kate Huddleston ’11 said.

Other USG members said that it is not necessary to add eating clubs to the site. “The reason that there’s an Independent Student Guide in the first place is because independent students don’t have their own resources,” USG vice president Mike Wang ’10 explained, noting that eating clubs have their own websites. The ISG website does, however, offer a link to the University page that gives a description of the eating clubs.

The recent decline in demand for independent housing was not a factor in the revision of the ISG website, Frosh-Soph Council member Liz Borges ’11 said. “The decision to take on the update as a Freshman-Sophomore Council project was made before we knew about that statistic,” she added.

While USG president Josh Weinstein ’09 sent out a school-wide e-mail about the ISG, current independents and sophomores interviewed said they do not regularly use the ISG site.

“I’ve been an independent for one-and-a-half years,” Minh Nguyen-Dang ’09 explained. “I tend to do my own thing.”

Some sophomores said they saw the USG e-mail but did not use the ISG website in deciding to be independent next year. “I’m pretty much decided,” Marieugenia Cardenas ’11 explained, “and I didn’t think that the website would have changed my mind.”

USG representative Jane Yang ’11 said that the Freshman-Sophomore Council’s next objective was to increase awareness of the ISG. “We’re currently working on advertising,” Yang said, adding that the council hoped to put up posters soon.

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Huddleston, Yang, Borges, Wang and Tiffany Yeh ’10 were the USG representatives who took on the task of improving the ISG page. Ian Lord ’09 from the SDA created the ISG’s new layout at princeton.edu/~isg/.