Women eating club presidents discuss leadership

Former female club presidents noted that their decisions to run for office were not motivated by existing gender stereotypes.

“We ran because we thought we’d do a good job, not because we thought women should run,” former Tower Club president Stephanie Burset ’09 said. For Burset, who ran against three men in her bid for the Tower presidency, the fact that other women in her year were not running for president was an afterthought.

In the past, Burset added, many women had served in other officer positions in Tower, so the thought of a woman president did not seem strange.

Former Terrace Club president Becky Gidel ’06 said her decision to run for president came after Terrace’s incumbent president, Leo Lazar '05, encouraged her to run.

“My story was less about, ‘Am I a woman?’ than it was, ‘Do I fit into my own perception of the club stereotype?’ ” she said. Gidel added that, before talking with Lazar, she initially planned on running for treasurer, building off her experience as business manager of the Nassau Weekly.

Gidel won the election, and club members soon began calling her “Mama Prez.” She noted that while many club members embraced the idea of having a female president, she approached the job based on what skills she could bring to the position.

“This is my strength, and this is what I want to share with other people,” Gidel said.

Former Cap & Gown Club president Lizzie Biney-Amissah ’04, who is now a member of Cap’s graduate board, said she did not consider running for office when she initially joined the club.

“Then, halfway through first semester junior year, I saw a need for cohesion in the club,” she said, noting that club members from different athletic teams and student groups tended to associate with friends from their outside groups. She added that because she had friends in many different groups, she was “uniquely positioned to bring those groups together.”

The speakers also noted that they faced challenges their male counterparts do not.

Former Colonial Club president Tracy Dowling ’05 said that being a female president required “a very delicate balance for women who, if they are too assertive, can be labeled as bossy or pushy, but if they are not assertive enough, are not taken seriously.”

Biney-Amissah also noted that while she did not feel the need to “push a feminine agenda,” she felt certain pressure when interacting with her club’s graduate board.

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“There was a generation that wasn’t used to these gender roles,” she explained.

But, she noted, the pressure was about more than just being a woman.

“I felt like I had a responsibility, like I had to be the best one, not only being female but also being black,” she explained.

Biney-Amissah compared the leadership situation of eating clubs last year, when no president was female, with the male-dominated leaderships of final clubs at Harvard and secret societies at Yale. But unlike some male-only organizations elsewhere, women at Princeton’s eating clubs have the opportunity to run for office.

“If they don’t take advantage of their positions, they’re wasting their opportunity,” Biney-Amissah explained.

Audience members had positive reactions to the panel.

Tower member Kristen McCarthy ’12 explained that she went to the event because “as a new member of an eating club, I wanted to hear the female perspective of being a leader of an eating club. I thought they were great and really dynamic, and I can see how they became leaders.”

“I think what they said was fascinating, and as people, they seemed like people I would really want to be friends with,” Tower member Sarah Van Cleve ’12 added.

The forum, which took place in Betts Auditorium on Friday, was hosted by the Women’s Center.

Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article misidentified the Terrace Club president preceding Becky Gidel '06 as Patti Chao '07. In fact, Leo Lazar '05 was Terrace's president before Gidel.