'Builderers' secretly scale University towers

The practice, however, survives.

Despite the controversy that erupted in 2006 when Public Safety discovered photos of students climbing buildings on the PBS facebook.com group, PBS members continue to attain the highest levels of achievement on campus.

Public Safety reprimanded the members with a warning, PBS member Lisa ’09 said, adding that “they were making sure that we had good protection and were being safe.” All members’ names have been changed to protect them from disciplinary action.

The incident with Public Safety did not deter Princeton builderers, though they now climb primarily at night.

“I think people have done it and will always do it as a measure of excitement,” builderer Greg ’09 said.

Buildering offers students a unique perspective on Princeton’s campus that often goes unperceived, Lisa noted.

“Seeing campus from above can be both exhilarating and clarifying and also fun,” she said. “People don’t tend to look up.”

PBS members declined to comment on which buildings were most popular for fear that Public Safety would increase surveillance, but Blair Hall, Fine Hall, Holder Hall and Nassau Hall have all been thoroughly explored, member Adam ’09 said. “Certainly all the major buildings and the large towers on campus have been climbed before,” he added.

Gothic architectural embellishments can make the buildering process even more exciting, some members said.

“Every building is possible to climb, and it’s definitely more interesting to climb buildings that have cool gargoyles and architecture,” Lisa said. She added that the buildering society was a direct result of the combination of Princeton’s “beautiful Gregorian architecture … and curious, vertically minded people.”

PBS is perhaps best known on campus for its rumored tradition of stealing the bell clapper from Nassau Hall.

“I suspect that the clapper tradition was an initiation rite of some kind [for the Society],” Lisa said. The University ended this practice in 1992 by removing the clapper after a student fell from the top of Nassau Hall in an attempt to steal it.

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Buildering experienced a rise in popularity in the United States in the ’70s. Some members of PBS said that the society has been around for much longer than that, perhaps even “since the turn of the century,” Adam said.

Lisa said she did not know when the group was formed, but that she thought “part of the mystique of the group itself” stems from its uncertain origins. “The society is a secret that is kept among students,” she added.

This secrecy might make it difficult for interested students to join PBS, but Lisa said she was confident this obstacle was not insurmountable.

“If people were interested, they would start exploring on campus,” she said. “The society has a way of finding people. At least, that’s what happened to me.”