Students to vote on re-establishment of campus pub

In addition to voting for senators and executive positions in the upcoming Undergraduate Student Government election, students will also be able to vote on a referendum question regarding the re-establishment of a campus pub.

A referendum is a vote sent out to the student body to gauge their support for a particular policy or project. Whether or not the referendum passes has no effect on whether the policy or project goes forward.

University Student Life Committee chair Ella Cheng ’16, who is also one of three USG presidential hopefuls, said that the campus pub would serve as an alternative to the Street, where undergraduate students over 21, graduate students and faculty would be able to socialize.

She noted that although students under 21 would not be able to purchase alcohol at the campus pub, they would still be welcome to socialize at the pub.

“That’s the main reason why the administrators are very willing to go with the idea,” Cheng said. “The type of atmosphere in a campus pub will be very different from the atmosphere of the eating clubs. The purpose of the pub is to give people who are of legal drinking age an opportunity to drink in a very normal environment, like the real world.”

Cheng added that any central location on campus — such as Café Vivian, Campus Club or Chancellor Green — would work well for the campus pub. The administration has not yet made clear whether they will build a space specifically for the pub or convert an existing space on campus into a pub, Cheng noted.

Cheng is also a former staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.

Doug Wallack ’16, one of the students who helped Cheng collect signatures for the referendum, said that a campus pub would be a common drinking space for students.

He added that the pub would provide a very different dynamic from Murray-Dodge Café, saying that, while undergraduate students are willing to indulge in tea and cookies, people who go to Murray-Dodge are not representative of the people who would go to the pub.

The rebuilding of a pub on campus was proposed in May 2011 in the Report of the Working Group on Campus Social and Residential Life, co-chaired by Vice President for Campus Life Cynthia Cherrey and University Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee '69.

Durkee deferred comment to Cherrey, who deferred comment to University spokesperson MartinMbugua.

Mbugua said that the administration has decided to move forward with the pub project, but has not decided on a location for the pub. The administration has not taken further steps to open the pub, due to disagreements regarding the location of the pub.Cheng said that she got involved with the construction of a campus pub as soon as she was elected to her position. She added that she pursued the referendum and began collecting signatures as a way to show that there is a lot of support behind the idea of bringing back a campus pub.

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“Working with the administration ... has been too slow, and there have been no guarantees. The issue is that they’re too ambiguous about what’s going forth,” Cheng said. “I know they’re aware, but no promises have been made, no follow-up.”

She explained that this year’s election period proved to be the ideal time to pursue the referendum because the University is currently working on a new 10-year plan for potential architectural changes. Cheng said she wanted to bring the campus pub idea to the administration’s attention once more so that it could fit into the 10-year plan, even if current students do not see the changes immediately implemented.

The Graduate Student Government plans to release a statement in support of the campus pub if the referendum passes, GSG president Sean Edington GS said.

Edington said that a campus pub should be a top priority because it would bring together many different elements of the University community that do not normally interact.

“The idea of having some kind of centrally located social space that would be attractive to graduate students has been one of GSG’s priorities for a long time,” Edington said. “It would be somewhere graduate students can socialize and mix with grad students from other departments they wouldn’t normally meet in the course of their day. And also importantly, it would be a place where graduate students and undergraduates feel they are on equal social ground.”

Voting for the campus pub referendum will begin on Nov. 24.