Quad discloses sign-in numbers; requires members to commit through junior fall

After several years of maintaining a policy of nondisclosure, Princeton’s Quadrangle Club has decided to publicly release this year’s sign-in numbers.

According to Quad president Branden Lewiston ’14, 68 students signed into Quad this year. 63 are sophomores and 5 are juniors.

“A lot of people on campus thought that because we didn’t disclose, we had terrible sign-in numbers. In reality, that’s not true,” Lewiston said. “We’re just trying to make sure that people realize that Quad is pretty healthy in terms of the numbers we have. We’re a pretty popular club on the Street.”

Though still the smallest sign-in class on Prospect Avenue, Quad is not behind by much. The next smallest sign-in class this year was at Charter Club, which had 72 sign-ins. Terrace Club had 183 sign-ins, Colonial Club had 106 sign-ins and Cloister Inn had 77 sign-ins.

Though Lewiston declined to disclose the club’s total membership or the sign-in numbers of previous years, he said that the club had approximately the same number of sign-ins last year.

Lewiston added that Quad is still accepting new members, and he expects the numbers to increase over the next couple weeks.

Quad added in its contract this year a clause stipulating that members may not cancel club membership during the fall of junior year and will be responsible for paying club fees regardless of other circumstances.

“The goal is not to have you join as a sophomore and then not have you stay as a junior,” Quad graduate board chair Dinesh Maneyapanda ’94 said.

He added that the adjustment was intended to give the club a clearer idea of its longer-term membership numbers, rather than the figure for just this spring.

The contract also stipulates that the membership rate for the junior year will be lower for students who sign in this spring than for students who sign in next fall. Students who sign in this spring will have to pay $6,600 next year.

This year’s contracts for Terrace and Colonial did not include a stipulation requiring students stay on for the junior year. Students who had signed in to Charter and Cloister said they had not yet received contracts.

Eric Wang ’15 signed in to Quad with the hopes of trying the club out for a semester, and then possibly going independent or joining a different club next year. Now that he is not afforded that flexibility, Wang intends to drop out of Quad and sign into Colonial.

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“I wanted that flexibility, the option to try new things and I guess the contract for Quad doesn’t really allow that so that was a disappointing aspect,” he said. “It’s not anything about not liking Quad or thinking that another club might be better, it’s really just wanting that flexibility.”

This change in the contract follows Quad’s decision to raise sophomore fees by $200 and regular fees by $900 before this year’s sign-in season. This change came after Quad decreased its fees significantly before sign-ins in 2012 in an attempt to attract members who otherwise would not have been able to afford membership in an eating club.

This fee decrease resulted in a sign-in class that was 40 percent larger than the previous year’s, Maneyapanda told The Daily Princetonian last February.