U. announces members of eating clubs task force

Eighteen Princetonians have been chosen.

Eight students join three professors. A starting wide receiver joins a champion-basketball-player-turned coach. Members of bicker clubs join members of sign-in clubs, members of residential colleges and members of no club.

They are black and white. Hawaiian and Chinese. Men and women.

That they have been chosen for a worthy task, they all agree. “I’m actually excited about this. I think this could be a really good thing,” proclaims an English professor. Though he is known for his excitability, the intensity of his eyes show you that, this time, he truly means it.

But what exactly have they been chosen for? None answer with conviction. “We are examining the relationship between the University and the eating clubs,” they say, reciting part of the name of their task force.

But what will they examine? They mention financial aid and Bicker. Shared services and new connections. But what exactly will they discuss? “You know as much about this as I do,” they say. They do not know what their task force will take to task.

“I think it would be against the mission of this experiment, of this project, were I to say — were I to actually think — what kind of report should be written,” the English professor reflects.

Do they have views on Bicker? On the image of the eating clubs? On alcohol and the Street? Yes. Yes. And yes.

But they have vowed to put these views aside. To come together as a group of relative strangers with a common pride for their school and a shared sense that after a year of discussion, their initial views might be shaken.

Nick DiBerardino ’11, Angela Groves ’12, Lingzi Gui ’10, Trey Peacock ’11, Nick Pugliese ’12, Genevieve Ryan ’11 and Ben Weisman ’11 will join USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 to comprise the student representation on the committee.

Three of the students — DiBerardino, Diemand-Yauman and Ryan — are members of Ivy, Tower and Cottage clubs, respectively. Two are currently members of sign-in clubs: Weisman is a Terrace Club member and Peacock is a Quadrangle Club member.

Gui joined Colonial Club during the spring of her sophomore year and was a member of Terrace her junior year. No longer a member of any club, Gui is now a resident of Mathey College, one of the University’s three four-year residential colleges.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Pugliese plans to bicker Tiger Inn, while Groves has not yet decided whether to join a club.

The committee will also feature three faculty members, five University staff members and two club graduate board chairs.

University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ’69 will chair the committee, which is set to convene in October and will meet throughout the academic year. He is joined by Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Maria Flores-Mills, men’s basketball head coach Sydney Johnson ’97, University counsel Clayton Marsh ’85, Assistant Director of Admission Donielle Wright ’01, sociology professor Devah Pager, chemistry professor Erik Sorensen and Rockefeller College master Jeff Nunokawa — the aforementioned English professor.

Durkee, who was a Colonial member as a junior and a Quad member as a senior, attended Princeton at a time when all 15 of the clubs then on Prospect Avenue accepted new members through a Bicker process. More recently, Wright was also a member of Colonial, while Johnson was a member of Cap & Gown Club. The Daily Princetonian was unable to determine whether Marsh was a member of a club while he was an undergraduate.

Cottage graduate board chair Carlos Ferrer ’76 and Quad graduate board chair Dinesh Maneyapanda ’83, who also chairs the graduate interclub council, round out the commission’s 18 members.

Peacock, the wide receiver on the football team mentioned earlier, said, “Because there’s a large number of athletes in clubs ... they should have a voice on the task force.” He also credits the eating clubs with providing an “avenue for bringing members of different teams together.”

Though he considered bickering Cottage, Peacock said he joined Quad because he liked the club and was signing in with teammates, and not because he disliked the Bicker process.

Weisman, who referred to his experience socializing in each of the 10 eating clubs and visiting friends at other universities, said he finds the eating club system “far more favorable than the systems at other colleges” and that it “allows more people to be included.”

Weisman is also the director of national sales and development for The Daily Princetonian.

A native of Beijing, Gui said that she hopes the task force will examine ways to make the eating clubs more welcoming for international students. She said that Bicker can be a particularly difficult process for international students “because it focuses so much on American culture.”

Gui said she “had a great time” at Terrace but added that she didn’t “think Colonial [was] a good fit.” She chose not to be in a club this year because she thought the dining halls offered a better food selection.

Groves, who is the secretary for the Class of 2012 government, said many of her friends have told her “there’s no way I’d want to join an eating club.” She added that, as a freshman, she was worried about the “elitism” of the clubs.

“I don’t have that much insight into [the] Bicker process since I have not experienced [it] firsthand, but from what I’ve heard about the process, I’m not necessarily a fan,” Groves said.

Pugliese characterized the eating club system as “a great Princeton tradition,” saying it is more “fair and pleasant than it has ever been in Princeton’s history.”

Pugliese also said there were no “glaring problems that need to be addressed” immediately, and that the aspects of club life that “could probably be improved are already moving in the right direction.”

Ryan called the clubs “important to Princeton’s culture and social life.”

Nunokawa explained that, when Tilghman invited him to join the task force, she said she wanted a residential college master to serve on the committee. But “for this task force to work well, people will transcend their sector definitions,” he said. “I spend a great deal of time talking with students, and will I make a special effort to talk with students about eating clubs? You bet I will.”

Nunokawa said that his perspective of the eating clubs has evolved over more than two decades on the faculty, noting that discussions with his students at eating clubs have been “some of the most felicitous experiences” of his time at Princeton.

Sorensen, who joined the University faculty in 2003, said he knows “very little” about the eating clubs. He said that Tilghman asked him to serve on the task force because of his “unbiased perspective” and “pro-student” inclinations.

Johnson cited both his own experience as a student-athlete member of an eating club and his years coaching students who have experienced the “triumphs and challenges” of the eating clubs as shaping his membership on the committee.

Wright said she is “very excited” to provide the perspective of an admission officer who has been a club member.

Durkee said that he and Tilghman both approved Diemand-Yauman’s request to increase by one the number of undergraduate members on the task force, to eight, and the committee’s total membership, to 18.

Ferrer, Flores-Mills, Maneyapanda, Marsh and Page could not be reached for comment.

Their final report “should not be, in tone or content, something that could have been written before the task force started deliberating. This is a project in which everyone involved is entering in good faith,” the English professor ruminates.

Faith. That is what they share. A faith in a body whose purpose and power they do not yet fully understand.