<p>My son is a conservative and ethnically underrepresented. When he was there for Princeton Preview, his observation was that Princeton seemed quite ethnically diverse and quite liberal (at least most of the clubs he saw were liberal leaning).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>siliconvalleymom, please refer to my post #15 to where I list the main differences between the two systems, the most important being that anybody can join half of the Eating Clubs. Princeton students obviously perceive a difference since only 15% go Greek, while about 70% of upperclassmen are in Eating Clubs. My D is an example of someone who would never consider joining a sorority but contemplated joining a club before deciding against it. She chose not too because she thought it was more efficient and cheaper (as compared to even a meal plan) to cook for herself. After all, that is the main function of the clubs–to provide meals to EAT (hence the somewhat indelicate designation).</p>
<p>All juniors and seniors on financial aid are given the same boost and can decide what to do with it. This policy was instituted a few years ago to make sure lower income students did not feel they had to sacrifice more to join a club.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, the key word there is “exclusive”. Only half are selective, and as far as the connotations of exclusive–which I suspect are meant here to imply snobbish and elitist–there are one or two that have those reputations but they are hardly dominant in the Eating Club culture–again 70% of juniors and seniors belong to a club and many of them never “bickered” or had any interest in certain clubs.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why is it so hard to understand that the Princeton administration wants freshmen to experience the diversity of their residential colleges and campus groups before self-selecting into social organizations? In any case, this policy was announced about a year ago so any student considering the school who has done their basic research would be aware of the policy and can choose accordingly.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>These stereotypes continue to be perpetuated on CC and I admit that they touch a nerve with me as I hate to think of my progressive, independent-minded daughter, who loves Princeton and the people there, associated with this kind of stigma. </p>
<p>I will just note that Princeton provides financial aid to more than 60% of students with the average grant being $35,000. It has the lowest COA of at least the top 15 schools and is as racially and ethnically diverse as any tier-one private school. The trend toward economic and cultural diversity began long before 10 years ago although policies toward that end continue to evolve and improve.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Perhaps they were that way at Wisconsin, barrons, but that’s not universal. Even 25 years ago, H’s mostly-Jewish frat had a black president and several Asian brothers, and no one thought twice. In my sorority, we had a black president one year, a Hispanic president another year, and again no one thought twice. S joined the same fraternity and I can tell by looking at his pictures that there are students of a variety of ethnic backgrounds.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Some of this may also be a matter of perspective. </p>
<p>For instance, I’ve heard plenty of complaints about Columbia U being a bastion of the radical-left.* So many people who said that in the media and those I’ve encountered tended to hold heavily conservative/libertarian views and were the types to only be happy at places where they overwhelmingly dominate the discourse. </p>
<p>By the same token, several former classmates from my LAC well-known for its genuinely radical-left progressive student body when I attended in the '90s and before who ended up at Columbia and even NYU for grad school complained bitterly about how most students there were “too damned conservative and right-wing” for them.</p>
<ul>
<li>No one I knew in HS who was genuinely radical left would have gone to Columbia. Most of them would have preferred schools like Oberlin, Swarthmore, Reed, Berkeley, Brown, Harvard, Cornell, or other schools of that political ilk.</li>
</ul>
<p>Like Wildwood11, I also cringe when I read these forever rehashed stereotypes of Princeton. My also very progressive son is finishing up his sophomore year and couldn’t be happier. He has joined an eating club too! His eating club is known as the club for “Hipsters”! He signed up and he was in. This place couldn’t be less snobby.</p>
<p>He has made friends in his club, but most of his friends are from his main EC and also from people he has met in his classes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think many people are really splitting hairs here. My younger son has just accepted a spot in Stanford’s class of 2016 so I have been over on that board a bit. Over there they are constantly fighting against the perception that Stanford is somehow “anti intellectual”.</p>
<p>Really I don’t think the student bodies at these places are that different.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hipsters being equated with “less snobby”. </p>
<p>ROTFLOL. Not the ones I’ve seen around Williamsburg, the Village, or even a few of the younger alums from my undergrad. IME…they tend to be snobby fashionistas/arbiters of culture of a different bent.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Jumping off the concept of snobbish and elitist. You know, people who are going to be snobbish and elitist are going to be snobbish and elitist whether they have clubs, fraternities, or whatever-else organization. So if they are “pulled out” of the rest of the socialization pack by virtue of belonging, so what? They weren’t going to hang with mere mortals like us anyway. </p>
<p>This also reminds me of things like the Porcellian at Harvard - where I suspect the kids who get in already knew one another (or of one another) before they got in - that is, the club wasn’t a transformer of social status but a reflection of it.</p>
<p>Cobrat,</p>
<p>Actually, this club is one of the most welcoming places on campus. Perhaps the way this plays out at Princeton is very different than the way it plays out in Williamsburg. I do think that not everyone on campus is attracted to the culture here, but for those who are it’s an open welcoming environment.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to slag on that particular eating club. </p>
<p>Rather, I found it amusing that Hipster and not-being snobby were equated with each other as from my observations and artist/musician friends who are part of the Indie scene in NYC…hipsters are the opposite of welcoming/open-mindedness if they feel your tastes in fashion/music/art aren’t up to their particular standards. </p>
<p>It’s something my artist/musician friends rant about/poke fun at in their art/music for that very reason.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The Princeton Greeks are not housed on campus and are already unrecognized and prohibited from meeting on campus. The action is banning freshmen from taking part in off-campus activity.</p>
<p>^The Greek groups absolutely do meet on campus in dorm rooms and lounges. It’s just that they can’t sign up for the use of university space. It’s not like they rent properties off-campus–or if they do, it is for for special events.</p>
<p>“The Princeton Greeks are not housed on campus and are already unrecognized and prohibited from meeting on campus. The action is banning freshmen from taking part in off-campus activity.”</p>
<p>I could be wrong (I have seen them firsthand but I am not sure of the legal status), but I believe all the eating clubs are “off campus”, on Prospect Street (with the exception of the one on Washington.)</p>
<p>Fraternities and secret societies were totally banned at Princeton for a hundred years, until the 1980s. I don’t know why they were allowed back.</p>
<p>@JHS</p>
<p>“The grand compromise reached a few years ago was having students not join the eating clubs as full members until their junior years (maybe the end of their sophomore years? not sure).”</p>
<p>A “few” years ago? Students have not been able to join eating clubs until their sophomore springs for at least since the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who entered Princeton in 1913.</p>
<p>“Apparently some of the un-recognized fraternities also align themselves as unofficial affiliates of particular eating clubs, and I think there is a suspicion that the fraternities, or some of them, are part of a scheme by which some of the eating clubs are cheating on the grand bargain.”</p>
<p>The eating clubs do not recruit freshmen via the frats, the frats recruit freshmen via the eating clubs. Explanation: the frats don’t have houses, and a freshman might think, “Why should I join a frat? All the big parties are in the cool eating clubs, and are free. You guys don’t even have houses, and you want me to pay $800 to get hazed.” In response, the fratter says, “Hey freshman boy, join us and we’ll take you to those eating clubs no one will give you a guest pass to (because you’re a freshman boy, aka, a nobody). And when you bicker an eating club next year, well, we got your back. We’ll get you in!”</p>
<p>“The eating club system is way more democratic than than it was in my day, but I think it’s pretty clear that there remains a current of thought among some students in some clubs (and some alumni of those clubs) that things are a little too democratic now and it would be fun to be snootier.”</p>
<p>I graduated last spring, and by the end of my Princeton career, regularly went to events at all of the “exclusive” clubs, so I can tell you that this is absolute bunk. No one wants to be snootier. Some would like to be more fratty, as in “party-hard”, or perhaps have more attractive female members, or have fewer restrictions placed upon them by their stewards, house advisors, and graduate boards, but that’s about it.</p>
<p>So if all the above is true, the eating clubs are “off campus” and the fraternities meet “on campus”. And that wouldn’t change under these rules.</p>
<p>Where do the sororities hold their weekly chapter meetings?</p>
<p>NEWS FLASH - D is an undergrad at P and guess what? It’s a rigorous academic environment and she works hard. I’m baffled by discussions about Princeton’s elitism or snob factor by people too old to be considering the place for themselves and don’t understand the fixation. Yet when these statements are posted others feel a natural need to defend or explain, most likely because they fear HS students trying to get a feel for campus culture might actually believe what aged, anonymous internet posters are spewing as fact.</p>
<p>Please, youth of the world, do not believe everything you read (though my opening statement is, in fact, true, I can’t bring myself to describe D’s experience on a thread like this. Go see for yourself.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I really don’t know. I know they do not have any permanent installations off-campus.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Of course, one is officially frowned upon, while the other is officially recognized and supported.</p>
<p>I must admit that I really don’t understand this. To me, the eating clubs look like fraternities, some with rushes (called “bicker”) and some totally open. What is the need that fraternities (which don’t have their own houses) are serving that the eating clubs aren’t? </p>
<p>Of course, my alma mater has done okay without either (though still saddled with old fraternity houses for housing which has bent the social scene into something it would not otherwise need to be). But between “bickered” clubs and “rushed” fraternities, isn’t that an awful lot of time expended on being part of institutions inside an already exclusive institution that trade on exclusivity? I don’t mean that as an attack; I’d kind of like to know from current students what needs the fraternities are serving that the eating clubs and Princeton itself aren’t.</p>