<p>i fail to see the relevance.</p>
<p>Many suggest that the excitement of the Cambridge/Boston setting is an important reason why Harvard kills Princeton with cross-admits.</p>
<p>Who knows?</p>
<p>It might not make a big difference for you or me, but perhaps the proximity of "dance clubs" is a plus for some potential applicants to Harvard, just as the "eating club" scene - fairly or not - turns off some potential applicants to Princeton.</p>
<p>Maybe Ms. Rapelye will share the results of the ongoing market research with alumni, telling us why people either select or reject Princeton, and you will share them with us!</p>
<p>This has come to resemble a Noh drama, where all dialogue is a long series of set pieces.</p>
<p>Haha, seriously, alumother...I can anticipate the flow of conversation every time. I still can't figure out why it hasn't gotten old yet...</p>
<p>A Noh drama indeed ... with Alumother as the chanting chorus and Byerly wearing the demon's mask!</p>
<p>A chorus who narrates the story by chanting. Indeed. Indeed. Indeed.</p>
<p>does any1 else find the eating clubs attractive? saying that the eating clubs turn away some applicants is a valid statement, but saying that the grandeur and culture of the eating clubs ATTRACTS many applicants is also valid. </p>
<p>at least they're not Harvard Finals Clubs where women are second-class citizens who are made to enter the clubs through inferior entryways. My sister goes to Harvard, she finds the Finals Clubs extremely disrespectful and discriminatory. All of Princeton's eating clubs are co-ed and, if i may add from personal experience, much more elegant in terms of atmosphere, behaviour, beauty, and partying.</p>
<p>Sometimes the chorus weeps and wails, in the Greek manner!</p>
<p>Oh, and MightyChip: comparing Princeton "eating clubs" - which dominate the social scene for good or ill - with the "bickering", drinking etc, with either the "final clubs" at Harvard or "secret societies" at Yale is absurd. At HY, these groups involve only a tiny fraction of the student body, and social life revolves around the residential "houses" at Harvard or "colleges" at Yale.</p>
<p>Princeton is now striving to emulate the Harvard and Yale models in this respect, hoping to marginalize its exclusive "fraternities" and semi-exclusive "eating clubs" in the process.</p>
<p>Time will tell whether Princeton can achieve these reforms.</p>
<p>First off, let me say as a Princeton '08er that a lot of this discussion is kind of silly. I think we know that both schools have ample social outlets.</p>
<p>With that said, I think it's telling that Byerly strawmans MightyChip's point. MightyChip, in her post, noted that the Finals Clubs are disrespectful and discriminatory, and though I have no first-hand experience of these finals clubs, a look at Wikipedia would tend to support this. It notes that most clubs are male-only, that some allow no non-members to enter, and that all of them have rooms where non-members are never allowed. This is troubling, but Byerly never responds to this, instead noting the greater emphasis on residential-college style housing at both Harvard and Yale. I would hope that he is familiar with the residential colleges at Princeton, and while Princeton's colleges are only for two years, as a member of Wilson College I'd note that our residential colleges do provide a lot of social outlets and the like.</p>
<p>Also, Byerly, why do you put quotation marks around words like "fraternities" and "eating clubs?" It's not gramatically correct.</p>
<p>Thank you, tunanfish! That's Princeton for you, hehe.</p>
<p>And Byerly, I do not think Princeton is attempting to "marginalize" the eating clubs at all, as you say. In fact, in the letter the freshman class received recently concerning Greek life at Princeton, it contrasts the established history of the eating clubs with the rather tumultuous one of campus fraternities and sororities. It also notes the different opportunities offered through them, so I believe the Princeton administration recognizes the eating clubs as fine, established parts of university life (as they should). Like MightyChip said, while some may be detracted by the eating clubs, there are some who are attracted to the rich tradition and grandeur of the clubs. I'd say that's pretty valid.</p>
<p>The "eating clubs" have had their troubles with the law, and had to be prosecuted not that long ago in order to force the end of discriminatory practices.</p>
<p>See: Frank v. Ivy Club, 120 N.J. 73, 576 A.2d 241 (1990), cert. denied, 111 S.Ct. 799 (1991) (desegregating Princeton eating clubs under New Jersey anti-discrimination law);</p>
<p>that's a deliberately misleading statement ("troubles with the law," "prosecuted," "discriminatory practices"). what happened, for those not in the know, is a female student sued one of the few (3 of 13) clubs that, at the time, remained all-male, to force it to open its doors to women (this, despite being a private organization with associational rights). your statement seems to suggest that the government prosecuted all the clubs for some more insidious practice. the opinion in the case states that ALL single-sex organizations, including fraternities and sororities, could be "de-segregated" (your words) under the law, if only someone sued them. assuming a counterpart exists on the massachusetts books, harvard's (still) all-male final clubs could suffer that fate. care to take the case, counselor?</p>
<p>Frank v. Ivy Club speaks for itself, and my prior post was in no wise "misleading". The law is different in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>Byerly, this is another red herring. I recognize that Princeton's clubs were originally all-male and that, until recently, they still were.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that's not an argument in Harvard's favor.</p>
<p>First, even if Princeton's eating clubs were still all-male, that wouldn't justify a similar outlet at Harvard from doing the same. Note that I'm not saying that the finals clubs have permeated the social life at Harvard to a similar degree as the eating clubs at Princeton. I'm just noting that they have some similarities, namely in being self-selecting -- and selective -- institutions.</p>
<p>Second, Princeton's eating clubs are no longer segregated by sex. As you probably know, cases against clubs like Ivy and TI forced the clubs to admit women. The issue here, however, is not whether Princeton's institutions were all-male in the past; it's whether Harvard's are <em>now</em>. You still haven't addressed MightyChip's claim, and you need to make some sort of response to this if you want to keep up this line of argument.</p>
<p>Again, words like eating club, or finals club, don't need quotation marks around them. I noted this in my last post, but neither stopped doing it nor said why you do it. This suggests to me that you either aren't reading others' posts in a thread you've really ignited, or that you're placing the quotation marks around eating club in an effort to delegitimize them. I ask you again: why do you place quotation marks around "eating club?"</p>
<p>Tunanfish. Intelligent approach to an argument. Examine the rhetoric of the opponent rather than taking up the bait they put in front of you.</p>
<p><em>the chorus weeps, wails, and gnashes her teeth</em></p>
<p>There is a distinction in the eyes of the law, which apparently eludes you.</p>
<p>In my judgment (and I've had some experience in these matters) the "eating clubs" were deemed discriminatory and directed to cease and desist because their effect on social life at Princeton was (and remains) so pervasive. The same cannot be said of either the "final clubs" at Harvard or the "secret societies" at Yale; hence they do not practice "invidious discrimination" and the right of free association adheres.</p>
<p>Listen, we can argue about the differences between Massachusetts and New Jersey state law, what logic a court uses to say that a group doesn't practice "invidious discrimination," or whether the finals clubs are merely exercising their right to free association.</p>
<p>But I'm just a college sophomore. I'm not a law student or a lawyer, so I don't know anything about those sorts of differences. I don't think it's very reasonable to expect a college sophomore to have a grasp of differing state laws, so I while the distinctions of the law may elude me, for now, it doesn't really matter.But in any case, these legalities are irrelevant to the discussion we're having.</p>
<p>What we're discussing here isn't about why one institution was ordered to desist and why another was not; we're discussing whether Harvard's finals clubs practice a sort of discrimination against women and non-members. You have yet to directly address any of my, MightyChip's, or f.scottie's arguments showing how the Harvard finals clubs practice de facto discrimination against women and non-members, and it would make your line of argument a lot more effective if you did so instead of throwing out legalistic red herrings. We've shown you that the clubs don't admit women and that they foster a climate designed to ostracize non-members. Whether or not the clubs are as ingrained in Harvard culture as the eating clubs are in Princeton culture is irrelevant; the debate is about whether the finals clubs discriminate against women -- yes or no? -- and until you provide us with some sort of substantive evidence to the latter, you're going to have trouble in this thread.</p>
<p>This will be the third time I ask you why you use quotation marks around words like eating club, secret society, and finals club. So that there is no lack of clarity, these words don't need quotation marks around them. I've expressed my thoughts on this twice before in a direct manner, and you've ignored me both times.</p>
<p>sounds like it's actually a matter of perceived jurisdiction:</p>
<p>"At Princeton, Yale and Brown, which require that private clubs admit members without regard to their sex, women may join established clubs. But at Harvard, where in the 1980's the independently run finals clubs chose to sever ties with the university rather than go coed, women had to start their own groups. (In 1990 a female student lodged a complaint against the Fly with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, which ruled that it had no jurisdiction.)" </p>
<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/fashion/20SORO.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=7965a1ac701967ba&ex=1266555600&partner=rssuserland%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/fashion/20SORO.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5090&en=7965a1ac701967ba&ex=1266555600&partner=rssuserland</a> (attributing the recent growth in sororities and female-only clubs at harvard to a "desire to address age-old discrepancies at Harvard between social opportunities available to men and to women" and characterizing it as "a reaction to the dismal state of social options for women at the college, which is still dominated by eight musty, male-only finals clubs with names like the Porcellian and the Fly.")</p>
<p>Right, the state laws for this sort of thing are bound to be different, which is why it doesn't sense to analyze this thing from an "is it legal" standpoint. If I'm not mistaken, you can't house more that twelve or thirteen girls in a house in Massachusetts before it qualifies as a brothel, which goes to show how different state laws and approaches can be :-).</p>
<p>Byerly you were in my dreams last night. You were telling me that Boston needed more clubs to hide out in because you were on the run from the cops due to some incident at Princeton :P Hahah</p>