We fear and hate that which we don’t understand, and this column is defined by a clear lack of understanding about the actual nature of the Street. Loh’s main idea is that eating club membership is defined by the “unending belittling of others,” while the clubs themselves are little more than “cliques founded upon the principle of making others feel insecure and worthless.” I must have missed the all-Street meeting where club members are told that our mission is to mercilessly mock people.
Maybe the cartoon version of the Street operates that way, but in the real world, club members are generally pretty nice people who don’t relish sitting around for hours rejecting people they barely know. It’s actually a burden, not the highlight, of club membership. And far from leaving our messes for others to clean up, we actually do much of the cleaning ourselves. I doubt Loh’s ever been in one of the clubs at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night as the members mop the floors and take out the trash, but if he’d been there, he might have gotten an eye-opener as to what actually happens to the “detritus strewn” in our wake.
Are there individuals who show contempt for others? Of course there are. But those people are, luckily, the exception and not the rule. To assume that all club members conform to the worst stereotypes is absurd and speaks more to Loh’s mindset than to the true state of play. That he criticizes others for being smug, superior and judgmental while calling club members “horse-faced” and “brainless,” among other choice insults, is also interesting. “Judge not lest ye be judged,” Johann.
I’m also curious how Loh holds what I believe are two completely contradictory critiques of the eating clubs together in his head: that they both enforce conformity and are a reflection of social balkanization. Put simply, it is not possible for the clubs to both force everybody to conform to some narrow standard while also making it easy for students to self-segregate into organizations that allow them to express who they already are.
If the members of a club are similar, it is not because the club made them that way: Each club has a unique identity defined by its members, not the other way around. What’s more, that identity is eminently malleable. There are plenty of people in every club who don’t fit the club stereotype; for instance, I’m neither a rower nor a swimmer, but I’m a happy Cloister Inn member. I’d therefore have to agree with Loh on one point only: The eating clubs differentiate Princeton from other schools.
Just as each eating club is different and not for everyone on campus, Princeton’s unique social scene isn’t perfect for all comers. But Princeton isn’t right academically for everybody, either. My brother, for instance, goes to a small liberal arts college because that’s the academic environment he wanted: A university like Princeton isn’t for him. Similarly, I know of many people who didn’t matriculate or apply here in part because of the social scene, eating clubs included, and others who came because they liked that same system. So yes, some people would be happier here than others would, but that is the case with every community, academic or otherwise, in the world. Loh often discusses diversity in his columns; a true champion of diversity would at least tolerate differences.
Any attempt to make Princeton equally perfect for everybody will ensure mere mediocrity and, dare I say it, conformity. Make of that what you will. Loh is motivated by the unattainable and ultimately destructive fantasy that anywhere can be everything to anybody all the time, which would result not in happiness but in the equal sharing of misery. Eventually, we all do have to realize that “carving our own path through the world” “like a good existentialist” requires that our path be different from others. In point of fact, the eating club system is Princeton’s different path. And if the critics of that path expect to be taken seriously, they’ll need to change their tone, because otherwise the legitimate points buried within their missives get lost in a cloud of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Barry Caro is a history major from White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.
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