Letters to the Editor: Feb. 9, 2009

Financial aid for sign-in eating clubs facilitates elitist Bicker system

Regarding “Insufficient aid deters sophomores from joining clubs” (Friday, Feb. 6, 2009):

Poor Rafael Klein-Cloud ’11 can’t bicker Cap & Gown Club because he can’t afford the cost of membership.

I hate to break it to him, but someone has to say it. If you can’t afford membership, there’s a good chance that Cap doesn’t want you. You’re not rich enough. You’re not good enough. You’re not one of them. It’s in the name “eating club.” “Club” has no meaning unless other people are excluded. You are one of those people. Stop crying to the University, it’s not its job to aid your climb up the social ladder.

Some point to sign-in clubs as egalitarian alternatives. The University provides students with enough financial aid to join one of these clubs. Bad idea. Sign-in clubs have an equal part in supporting the Bicker system. Bicker clubs can get away with their outdated traditions because they can point to the sign-in clubs as egalitarian alternatives. Sign-in clubs act as enablers. Their existence grants tacit approval of the Bicker system.

The University should not provide any financial aid to help students join any eating club. I know eating clubs are tradition. But so were slavery and subjugation of women. Not all traditions are good. While there will always be elitists, jerks and social climbers, at the very least we shouldn’t waste money on them.

Dylan Shinzaki ’12

Undergradates’ eating-club aid concerns are unfounded

Regarding “Insufficient aid deters sophomores from joining clubs” (Friday, Feb. 6, 2009):

This marked the best satire article The Daily Princetonian has published to date. When I read that “the entire sophomore class is having a giant seizure,” I was chuckling.

But when I learned that a university in which only 8 percent of undergraduates recieve Pell Grants would be overly concerned about “socioeconomic segregation among the dining options,” I was splitting my sides. Keep ’em coming!

Casey Ydenberg GS

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Poor statistics undermine column’s argument

Regarding “Admission statistics in bikinis” (Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009):

Adam Bradlow ’11’s Thursday column contains a number of questionable and unsupported assumptions. More importantly, the factual premise upon which it rests is fundamentally flawed.

Bradlow notes that only 56 percent of the Class of 2012 is on financial aid, compares this with the 70 percent of applicants who wanted financial aid and clucks his tongue disapprovingly.

This, however, assumes that every applicant who requested financial aid received it once admitted. In fact, only 85 percent of the Class of 2012 cohort who requested financial aid received it. If we assume that aid-requesting applicants and students qualified for aid at the same rate, only 59 percent of the Class of 2012 applicants would actually have received aid. Furthermore, this small gap could be the result of admitted aid-seeking students deciding to enroll at different rates than their non-aid-seeking peers.

Princeton may not be a bastion of social mobility, but the facts do not support the suggestion that “the admissions process is helping the privileged maintain their privilege at the expense of everyone else.” A proper look at the numbers reveals little if any distinction between admission rates for aid-seeking and non-aid-seeking students.

Lucas Issacharoff ’10