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What’s wrong with relying on EC clubs for this? Virtually everybody at a school like Princeton is going to be involved in ECs.</p>
<p>@MizzBee:</p>
<p>*The university takes this opportunity away, yet doesn’t put anything in place that addresses the initial need for fraternities and sororities had filled.</p>
<p>It seems that administration has some work to do if they truly care about the freshman experience. I could see those exclusive eating clubs becoming less diverse if there is no easy way to break in to the social circle.*</p>
<p>The administration wants the residential college system to fill the need that frats and sororities currently fill. In fact, the administration wants the residential college system to fill the need that the eating clubs currently fill. Lost in the whole Greek mess recently is the fact that the administration really doesn’t like bicker, and wishes the clubs were less influential in general. I once attended a dinner with President Tilghman where she said her vision of Princeton would be one where: </p>
<p>1) everyone lives in a residential college for all four years
2) eating clubs only offer shared meal plans
3) there is no more bicker</p>
<p>@Hunt:</p>
<p>Any dorm not attached to a residential college (and not specifically allocated to students without a meal plan/club contract) is considered part of this general hodgepodge of dorms called “upperclass housing.” This is where club members live, and they can live with whoever they like, members of their own club or not. For my part, I had six different roommates at Princeton, none of whom were in the same eating club as me.</p>
<p>The University purposely renovates many residential college dorms while ignoring dorms for eating club members. In addition, the University absorbs attractive dorms in upperclass housing into the residential college system. These practices are done to incentivize students to eschew eating clubs and stay in the residential colleges, as the residential colleges can’t be socially influential/fulfilling until they can retain upperclassmen more effectively.</p>
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<p>For most student’s that’s pretty much what determines which eating club they join. What are their friends doing. (After all, only 15% of students are involved in Greek life.) And friendships at Princeton, like all colleges are often based on ECs.</p>
<p>If you’re more curious about all this:</p>
<p>[Characteristics</a> of the Students in the Clubs - Reports - Princeton University](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/reports/2010/ectf/facts/students/]Characteristics”>http://www.princeton.edu/reports/2010/ectf/facts/students/)</p>
<p>So could we see an end to bicker? I wonder how the alumni would react to that? I am curious if the eating clubs consider themselves members after graduation, like a fraterntiy or sorority member signs up for life (even though most are not active).</p>
<p>@Hunt:</p>
<p>What’s wrong with relying on EC clubs for this? Virtually everybody at a school like Princeton is going to be involved in ECs.</p>
<p>You can rely on exclusive EC clubs (sports teams, dance companies, a cappella groups) for helping you get into an eating club, but you cannot rely on non-exclusive EC clubs (various campus publications, political interest groups, volunteer organizations, etc) for this purpose. When an EC club isn’t exclusive, the older members tend not to feel obligated to look out for their younger members when it comes to helping them get acquainted with the eating clubs. </p>
<p>In sum, almost any EC that you can get rejected from can help you get into an eating club, but not all ECs reject people. Also, not everyone has the talent necessary for an exclusive EC club. Hence… fraternities and sororities.</p>
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<p>Absolutely not. There are a range of upperclassmen dorm options, including the 4-year residential colleges, all may have members of various eating clubs and independents mixed. My daughter will be living in a four-bedroom suite with a kitchen–two of her roommates are in two different eating clubs. She lucked out with a fluke in capturing the room although her “draw group” had a bad number for that particular dorm. Other dorms have kitchens down the hall for independents. Some kids join coop eating groups in which they take turns cooking (and may choose to live near them) and of course anyone can get a meal plan wherever they live. Btw, all upperclassmen automatically get two free meals a week in any dining hall.</p>
<p>What lefthandofdog said a few pages back. Yes. That. Sigh. I’m not even participating in this thread.</p>
<p>@MizzBee:</p>
<p>So could we see an end to bicker? I wonder how the alumni would react to that? I am curious if the eating clubs consider themselves members after graduation, like a fraterntiy or sorority member signs up for life (even though most are not active).</p>
<p>I think the alumni would fight tooth and nail to preserve bicker, at least in some form. The University recognizes this, and is pushing a multi-club bicker compromise very hard right now. Multi-club bicker, which has been gone for close to 40 years, would allow students to once again bicker more than one club.</p>
<p>I just got an alumni dues notice from my eating club, so I guess we’re still members lol. I know that we’re allowed to go back any time we want and eat/drink for free, provided we don’t abuse our privileges by eating all our meals there (if you’re still living in the Princeton area).</p>
<p>Based on the numbers, what is the reason behind the lower income students not participating in eating clubs, even the sign-in ones? As an administration, I would think those numbers are disturbing at first glance, so I hope I am missing something here. From an outsider looking in, since eating clubs appear to be a big part of campus life, those not involved seem to be overwhelmingly lower income, which questions how well Princeton addresses class issues. </p>
<p>I have no real opinion on Princeton, so please don’t think I am bashing it. I am just amazed at both the fraternity income levels and the lower income participation rates.</p>
<p>If bicker goes away, the Greek system may get stronger, as students make efforts to find and create social groups with students like themselves.</p>
<p>Harvard has very strict rules against sororities meeting on campus, I think they go so far as to define a certain number of members congregating for a meeting as violative (but not 100% sure about that). The chapters either own/lease houses off campus, or meet regularly in Final Clubs, and hold rush events at commercial venues. Despite their on-campus banishment, the number of women going through rush continues to increase.</p>
<p>Yale also has a healthy off-campus Greek life, despite its famed residential college system. Not big, but healthy.</p>
<p>@MizzBee:</p>
<p>Based on the numbers, what is the reason behind the lower income students not participating in eating clubs, even the sign-in ones?</p>
<p>Eating club contracts average close to $8000 a year, whereas a meal plan costs around $5500. While students on financial aid (i.e., lower-income students) receive extra financial aid during their jr/sr years to help cover the cost of an eating club, they receive this extra money regardless of whether or not they choose to join an eating club. So there you go: the University dumps an extra $2000 or so in your lap and tells you to do with it as you please. You can use it to reduce your tuition payments, or you can use it to eat, drink, and party. The eating part probably doesn’t matter so much to most students; it’s really the drinking and partying (as well as the community). If you already have an abundance of friends who are in eating clubs, you can go to many of the events for free (and probably aren’t feeling so starved for friends that you’d be willing to pay, in essence, to meet new people). Formals and semiformals will cost you $40-$100 a pop, but even if you go to every formal and semiformal, it’s not going to cost you $2000.</p>
<p>Thank you Ray, that makes a lot of sense now.</p>
<p>Even without the University adding $2000 to cover the cost of an eating club, it is much much cheaper to go “independent” (cook for yourself). </p>
<p>I was in this situation many years ago. I fed myself for next to nothing for two years by getting a job in the dining hall (you get to eat there before your shift) mooching off of friends who were in eating clubs (if they miss a meal they can bring a friend for free) and eating Wawa subs and cheap pizza.</p>
<p>I graduated with very little debt and didn’t feel like I missed out on a thing.</p>
<p>^^^This definitely played a role in my D’s decision not to join a club. We are not low-income but she does receive a finite amount of money for her schooling and has to choose how to spend it. For her it simply isn’t a big deal, she knows she will have plenty of opportunities to eat meals and party at clubs as she has many friends in different ones. Neither spending on a meal plan nor a club was worth it to her.</p>
<p>(I will repost what Alumother refers to):</p>
<p>by lefthandofdog:
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<p>Ultimately, campus culture is the product of perception. As such, it’s particular to a time and place, to the person(s) perceiving. Two different people may have subtly different or vastly different perceptions of the same campus. Our personalities and our cumulative experiences filter our perceptions, as do prejudicial assumptions, urban legend, and comments by others before and after a campus encounter. This is true of all the HYPCSM’s, not to mention the highly rated LAC’s, about which opinions differ as to campus culture. </p>
<p>I’m sure I can find pockets of snobbery or elitism on many campuses, but especially at any highly rated private college, since ‘the elite’ tend to populate such schools more densely than they populate publics. That doesn’t mean that elitism dominates every private college, nor does it mean that any particular student will encounter such people there. Depends on what one’s own chosen social group is.</p>
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<p>Actually, I think that campus culture is the product of what goes on on campus. The problem with the negative comments about Princeton, as lefthandofdog has so eloquently pointed out, is that they are made and repeated by people with no particular connections to the campus who are often simply repeating comments they heard when they were younger or hearsay from a friend of a friend of a friend etc. So, their comments do not reflect their actual knowledge of anything that happens on campus–rather, they are repeating stereotypes that have no current basis in fact.</p>
<p>Princeton is currently an ethnically diverse school with great financial aid, filled with the same sorts of kids you have at Harvard, Stanford and any number of other schools. The people on this thread who actually attended the school or have children currently at the school are fairly unanimous in their view that Princeton is an academically rigorous school, where the kids are relatively low-key, nice, normal and quite happy.</p>
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<p>The only tragedy in that is that the attempt had to be thin-veiled as opposed to a full-fledge attempt with permanent result. The objective for the entire academic realm should be to rid every school of frat/sorority influence altogether. </p>
<p>And once for all.</p>
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<p>It addresses the need to achieve an even greater level of social eliteness. After all, someone must be the elite of the elite.</p>
<p>I’m sure most people were just joking about Princeton’s snobbishness, though I’m sure there are traces of the old money society still there.</p>