Durkee ’69: Proposal an actual change. Fo realz.

The move will revolutionize how the five selective clubs — Cap & Gown Club, Cottage Club, Ivy Club, Tiger Inn and Tower Club — will accept new members.

Under the new system, students will have the opportunity to bicker one of the five selective clubs. If they are not accepted to their first-choice bicker club, they will then be assigned to a sign-in club with remaining spots, based on their preferences.

Under the old system, students had the opportunity to bicker one of the five selective clubs. If they were not accepted to their first choice bicker club, they could then be assigned to a sign-in club with remaining spots, based on their preferences.

“This is huge,” former Interclub Council adviser Tim Prugar ’06 said in an interview. “I don’t think we’ve seen a game-changer like this since they invented the plastic Solo cup.”

The reform is virtually identical to the one suggested last spring by the Task Force on Relationships between the University and the Eating Clubs, Durkee said.

The task force, which was chaired by Durkee, recommended an alternative to Bicker in which sophomores, either individually or in groups, would rank their preferences among all clubs, while clubs would have the option of submitting rankings of the students that they would most like to admit. Based on the preferences of both, a computer program would match students with clubs.

The task force’s report said this system would allow current bicker clubs a path to reducing selectivity while offering prospective club members greater privacy in the selection process.

The new system achieves essentially the same purpose, except that it neither reduces selectivity nor offers prospective club members greater privacy in the selection process.

Durkee likened the significance of the change to the 1969 decision by former President Bob Goheen ’40 to accept women to the University.

“When Goheen told me, in an off-the-record interview, that he’d be making Princeton co-ed, I could see this incredible glint in his eye and I knew that I was witnessing one of those great moments in University history where the path of our venerable institution would be inexorably altered,” Durkee recalled. “This is another such moment.”

Executive Vice President Mark Burstein lauded Durkee’s achievement in pushing through the revolutionary proposal. “This is why we pay Bob $373,552: to enact really life-changing policies like these, that immediately impact every staffer, student and squirrel on campus,” he explained.

“If he did anything bigger than this, well, then we’d have to pay him as much as we pay me,” joked Burstein, whose salary was $521,233 during the 2008-09 academic year.