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<p>I guess I’m not convinced that people wanting to / choosing to associate with friends of their own choosing is “less than admirable or immature or base.” Seems like human nature. Take away eating clubs, and fraternities, and finals clubs, and whatever, and still - not everyone is going to be best buds with everyone else; people find their own association groups. Such is life.</p>
<p>Mini</p>
<p>Not sure what you mean by 5%ers. Are you talking income? Most of the students who bicker do so because they are affiliated with a campus group that already has members that belong to that particular club. Think athletes or dancers or writers for the school newspaper.</p>
<p>Thanks Pizzagirl</p>
<p>My son is signing into a club with his friends. What is so wrong with that. The challenge of any school is to make it smaller by finding like minded people. Honestly my son has no desire to hang out with football players. He is very happy with the friends he has made in his 1 1/2 years on campus.</p>
<p>I was not talking about eating clubs. I was talking about being rude, arrogant, snobby, etc.</p>
<p>I don’t care who wants to hang out with whom. Its a free country and a Constitutional right.</p>
<p>I do think it is different at Princeton, where the administration actually supports the exclusive clubs (even with $$ via FA), as opposed to H and Y, where they pretty much ignore or try to eliminate the Greeks and Final Clubs (not secret societies, but those are much different).</p>
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<p>Why not? …</p>
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<p>I guess the administration can’t win. If they don’t give financial aid that covers the cost of eating clubs, then Bay would accuse them of not allowing students with financial need to join the clubs, perpetuating economic segregation etc. However, now that they do give financial aid to cover the costs of the eating clubs, they are deemed to be supporting these exclusive horrible clubs.</p>
<p>And all of this from one article where a Princeton freshman felt that a few people weren’t nice enough, an article that probably could have been written about hundreds of schools in the country.</p>
<p>So if school association is just as significant and socially determining at places like Notre Dame, Penn State and Mizzou, where are the multitudes of forum posts where students and their parents fret over how to improve their chances of getting in, or bemoan their rejection, or express their disappointment over some flaw once they arrive? Only Northeasterners with outdated Yankee views of aristocracy post on College Confidential? And I love how certain posters who constantly assert they are ho hum unimpressed with the Ivies and who have already posted a hundred times that the Ivies aren’t the end all and be all, never fail to read or post on a single Ivy thread.</p>
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<p>No I wouldn’t. </p>
<p>I don’t care a whit whether anyone or everyone can join an eating club at Princeton. It is a private college and it can do what it wants in this regard, and students can apply or not if they don’t like it. I was responding to the intimation that these types of organizations exist at all colleges in the same manner. They do not.</p>
<p>I don’t really care about eating clubs at Princeton, and I don’t really think they have much to do with the writer’s beef about how she was treated as a new student at P. She didn’t make that connection, as far as I remember.</p>
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<p>LOL, TheGFG :D</p>
<p>Ah, yes, the eating clubs. I must say when I was a grad student at Princeton in the 1970s there was a lot of social snobbery associated with the eating clubs. I don’t believe any of them admitted grad students, so that wasn’t an issue, but campus social life was dominated by undergrads, and undergrad social life was dominated by the eating clubs. Undergrads who couldn’t afford eating club dues and took their meals in the University dining halls were definitely looked down upon in those days; the university’s FA wasn’t then what it is now, and even for those on FA it certainly didn’t cover eating club dues, so that was a definite socioeconomic divide. Then there was a distinct divide between the selective (“bicker”) and non-selective clubs; the bicker clubs tended to look down on the non-selective clubs. Then among the bicker clubs there was another hierarchy, with Ivy and Cottage at the top, widely perceived as the most exclusive and “prestigious” places to bicker, but also the most difficult to bicker successfully. They were followed probably by Tiger Inn, then the rest. Selectivity was dominated by “affiliations”–who your family was, where you “prepped,” membership in certain “feeder” clubs and activities at Princeton, legacy status (and in some cases how many generations of legacy), as well as appearance (were you slim, athletic, and attractive?). Not many Jews or racial minorities in the bicker clubs in those days. No women in some of them.</p>
<p>As a grad student I was an onlooker, but especially coming from egalitarian Ann Arbor, I found the whole system really offputting, reflective of values that I found . . . well, repugnant wouldn’t be too strong a word for it. Deeply elitist, and deeply antidemocratic.</p>
<p>How much has it changed? I don’t know. I haven’t been back to Princeton in years. Maybe it’s different. Though it’s worth noting that the University’s administration has had a somewhat strained relationship with the eating clubs since forever. The eating clubs grew up to fill a vacuum left by the forced shutdown of Princeton’s fraternities in the 19th century, inter alia because the fraternities were perceived by the administration as too elitist and exclusionary. The eating clubs grew up off-campus and unregulated by the Princeton administration. By the time Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton (1902-1910) the eating clubs had themselves become so elitist and exclusionary that Wilson tried to shut them down, and pretty much got run off campus for it by old-guard trustees. So it was interesting to see the Daily Princetonian story linked in post #123 by Hunt, indicating that the Princeton administration would still like to modify the bicker process to make it less brutal and more of a straightforward “matching” system in which the bicker clubs would still have a lot of influence over which students to admit, but in which no one had to undergo the public humiliation of “failing” bicker. The administration seems to have more of a love-hate relationship with the eating clubs these days; they’re celebrated on Princeton’s web pages as a unique feature of campus life, and some of their most extreme discriminatory impulses have now been curbed by law (NJ courts have held the eating clubs are subject to state anti-discrimination laws). The university’s relatively recent decision to extend FA to cover the average eating club dues (but not the highest eating club dues) can also be seen as a step to mute the socioeconomic exclusion that the eating clubs once fostered. But the university administration still seems to view the bicker process as too elitist and exclusionary in its current form. The administration has also taken steps to curb Princeton’s fraternities and sororities which are not officially recognized (still banned) but are said to be important “feeders” for some of the selective eating clubs. But it’s not all-out war as in Woodrow Wilson’s day.</p>
<p>I think every college has something that is either a bug or a feature, depending on your point of view.</p>
<p>FA at pton covers an average eating club for jr/sr year. The club’s themselves also have FA to make up the difference between what is offered and what is remaining. Can also come in form of lowering fee/waiving fees…depends on the club and the member(desirability).</p>
<p>Each club allows some of the officers, usually executive, to live in the clubs. Some have more than others. Senior officers are extended the privilege of being able to visit/eat/entertain at all the clubs. So a non-bicker officer can spend time(sizeable time) at Ivy, Cottage, TI if so desired. Something a bicker member cannot do. </p>
<p>So for someone on FA, it can provide a view of the world not seen before. </p>
<p>Son moved around alot, went to high school in Vegas, matriculated to pton from the south and had the best 4 years of his life in undergrad. Life changing not just for him but our whole family. He is now an MS1 and sees his classmates from UG at least every other month if not more often. When he was interviewing for med school, they hosted him for every interview, made sure he was picked up at airports bus stations and when funds were tight they always were there for him, still are.</p>
<p>They all knew he didn’t have disposable income, knew he had work study and played a varsity sport and had his back, then and now. He’s seen stuck up brats in So Cal, Vegas, SEC territory, pton, harvard and yale (summer research).</p>
<p>He figured the best way to make friends was to remain open-minded, non-judgemental and always be himself. Those that took to his crazy personality were his friends then and now. I owe a debt of gratitude to the school, they took my absent-minded, head-in-the-clouds flip-flop wearing “boy” and returned a thoughtful, driven, confident, academic scholar and leader.</p>
<p>For what is worth he and I felt the school provided an opportunity to grow in ways we didn’t know you could. As a point of contrast he graduated and attended another institution where he obtained 2 more degrees and a minor not offered at pton. He had enough units so it only took the following year to receive 2 more BS. HUGE, huge difference. No comparison.</p>
<p>For him, he found a great fit and will be one of the grads that returns for reunions every year. He is also part of the contingent that make a great effort to all contribute to annual giving. Truly a remarkable place. And what made it so was his fellow (sometimes bratty!) students.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>“Think athletes or dancers or writers for the school newspaper.”</p>
<p>I’m sure athletes, dancers, and writers for the school newspaper were the audience for the Ralph Lauren event.</p>
<p>And all Yale students are neurotic whiners and all Harvard students arrogant, driven, *******s.</p>
<p>I’m sick of this stuff.</p>
<p>That word, BTW, is rectum, plural.</p>
<p>The more I think about this thread the angrier it makes me. How would you all feel if I, without any first-hand knowledge of, let’s say, your kids’ second-tier college, started saying that I have heard all the kids at said college were dumb? Or partiers? Or the kinds of stereotypes that people apply annoyingly to state schools? </p>
<p>Look, if you don’t have a kid at Princeton, or know anyone well who attended, or didn’t go there yourself, you’re just kicking stereotypes around. For fun and profit, I suppose. If anyone wants any real sort of thought, I wrote two posts here reviewing the good and the bad of the place. I tried to be as honest as possible. FWIW. YMMV. And any other acronyms you feel like digging up.</p>
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<p>Wait… there’s a profit involved? How come no one told me? :)</p>
<p>WOW
post 154 & 155 
- Hamlet, Act III, scene II.</p>
<p>^^ LOL Modadunn :)</p>
<p>See, here we go again. People enjoy discussing any real or imagined faults the Ivies have, and then others get really, really worked up about it. Why does anything said about a school or its students reflect on you or your kid as an individual? As I said in post #130, I really wouldn’t care if you all said that people who go to my alma mater are stupid or snobby or rude. First of all, few people take broad generalizations like that seriously. Secondly, internet strangers have no status in my life such that their opinion matters more than as a diversion or fodder for debate. If I examine myself honestly and conclude I’m not as accused, then I simply decide you’re not talking about me. If the shoe fits, wear it. If not, ignore it.</p>
<p>But it IS curious that it seems easier for people to think they can generalize about Ivy students than about Penn State students or Notre Dame students (beyond the fact they probably like football). The Ivies are distinctive, like it or not, and as such become targets. If you’re at the top, there will always be people who want to take you out. If people are always talking about my school, that means the school is important enough to warrant discussion. I’d take that as a compliment.</p>
<p>Finally, Alumother. I have been waiting for your presence and for this message:</p>
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<p>Yes, and is there some memo I didn’t receive, that described a CC parental contest about how truly unclassy one could be?</p>
<p>Amazing.</p>
<p>Alumother, I didn’t meet your daughter on my trips to P’ton, but I believe she and my D met “in a former life,” shall we say, pre-college & quite by accident. I’m sure that if yours were some particularly “arrogant, obnoxious” type, my D would have gently hinted that to me, because she herself has zero use for such people, as she has told me more than once. She ignores such people and avoids them.</p>
<p>Hmmm. How is it that she has managed to find friends with her same values at that same school? Should we assume that only her friends share such traits? What a mathematical concidence! She found the only non-arrogant students on the entire P campus. (Not.) And I wonder why, when I myself met them, the one trait above all which they all shared was:</p>
<p>MODESTY.</p>
<p>Wait. Maybe I was on a different campus. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Not to mention the gross generalities about eating clubs. My daughter tried several, and in the end decided that they really weren’t all “that,” at least for her own preferences. There was a lot of build up to them (perhaps some “hype” even), but whatever her expectations were, the experience didn’t quite measure up. She most certainly was not excluded from eating clubs, and even less so excluded from social life. What a crock some of the (uninformed) opinions are on this thread.</p>