Cannon Club offers discounted fee option

Still short of its goal to recruit 75 to 100 upperclassmen to become social members this spring, Cannon Club will now be offering a discount to members of the Class of 2013 who decide to join the reopening club.

Warren Crane ’62, chairman of Cannon’s Board of Trustees, announced the “special deal” in an email to all juniors sent out on Monday afternoon.

Juniors who sign up to become social members will pay a fee of $850.00 for the remainder of the 2011-12 school year.

Under the deal, 75 percent of these dues — or $637.50 — will be subtracted from the membership fees that the students would pay for a full year of membership in the 2012-13 school year. This would mean that as long as junior members choose to stay in the club for their senior year, they would pay only $212.50 for this spring’s social membership.

While the remaining $637.50 will be credited toward the student’s membership the following year, neither the email nor the attached fact sheet indicates how much the club’s full fees will be. The fact sheet suffices to say that “the full Membership Fee that the Club will charge its full members for the 2012-13 school year will be consistent with, similar to and competitive with the full year membership fee that the other ‘Bicker’ clubs on the ‘Street’ will charge their full members for the 2012-13 school year.”

In the email, Crane referred to this discount as “a helluva deal, considering you will eat over 40 meals at the Club, participate in over 40 parties at the Club and have six months’ usage of the Cannon facility during the 2011-12 school year.”

When Cannon first announced its intention to reopen in March 2011, Crane said the club would open its doors after conducting Bicker in February, just like the other eating clubs on the Street.

However, the fact that new members will have six months of access to the facilities this year indicates that the club is intending to hold Bicker significantly earlier, possibly in November or December.

Crane could not be reached for comment on the discount or on the potential of an early Bicker.

Last month, Crane told The Daily Princetonian that he had received many applications from upperclassmen — including over a dozen from seniors — to be considered for social membership this year.

As of Monday, the club has received 50 applications from the junior and senior classes combined, Crane wrote in his email.

In addition to announcing the discount, the email served to encourage juniors who had not yet applied to send in an application.

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“You should submit your application, if you have not done so already, right away so that you are included in the Social Membership Applicant Pool for Cannon for Social Membership during the 2011-12 school year,” Crane said in the email.

Upperclassmen who gain admission will also be able to join the Bicker committee and become officers of the club. Cannon is planning to enroll approximately 110 members of the Class of 2014 for the spring semester.

Initially, Crane was not planning to allow upperclassmen to join the club, but over the summer practical considerations forced him to reconsider, he said.

“We viewed the situation from two perspectives,” Crane told the ‘Prince’ on Sept. 15. “[Firstly] the capacity of the club ... and recognizing that the Class of 2014 would not fill out that capacity. Secondly, we want to have members of the club who are 21 years of age.”