On the Campus - December 2, 1998

Past editions of On the Campus, Online

Looking Homeward...
What do you do when your parents live fifteen minutes from your dorm?

by Nancy Smith '00

Going away to college is supposedly all about gaining independence, finding yourself, and realizing that you're the only person you have to answer to. "Your parents are miles away," say RAs and fellow freshmen during orientation week, intended partly to caution, partly to tempt. But for some students, that mantra has just the opposite of the intended effect, reminding them that their folks are, literally, just a couple miles down Route 1.

This is something that my friends regularly tease me about, jokingly asking if my odometer can handle the trip as I drive off for the weekend. My parents now live in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, which is about a 15-minute drive from my dorm. I could feasibly catch the student government-sponsored mall shuttle home for dinner. People often ask me whether I like the arrangement, and my answers usually reflect my mood at the time rather than a strong opinion I've spent lots of time pondering. After all, a student's permanent address isn't something they have very much influence over.

Halfway through my freshman year, however, it was a frequent conversation topic around the kitchen table in my old house in Bedford, New Hampshire. As my dad weighed job offers from Colorado and New Jersey, I often heard him joke with people about the irony that they might end up living in the Princeton area. "We decided we'd just follow Nancy," he'd sayand I felt like I was missing the punch line. Initially, I felt sort of violated, though not out of a fear that my parents would find out about drunken revelries or try to break my habit of late-night procrastinating. It was more the idea that my dad saw it as a joke, and I worried my parents would act out this "funny coincidence" by showing up on my doorstep unannounced, not to check up on me but to take me to lunch on Nassau Street or to take me home for the weekend. I wanted Princeton to be "my" Princeton; I wanted to be able to tell my parents about the funny things my professors said in lecture, but I didn't want them auditing my classes. I wanted to come to visit my parents; I didn't want them coming to me. I feared I would lose control over my college experience if my parents moved into my area code.

Although I didn't want to admit it around our kitchen table, the convenience of being able to go home to pick up a winter coat when it got cold or to curl up in one of my mom's quilts when I got sick began to appeal to me. I recalled every time I'd wished I had my copy of Airplane! that I'd left in the VCR or that green sweater I'd left in my top dresser drawer. And the idea of having to fly all the way to Colorado on school vacationsand maybe seeing my parents less oftendidn't appeal to me either.

In the end, I told my dad to stop worrying about how it affected me and to make the choice based on the job. After all, this was what would make it possible for me to attend Princeton at all. So a year after they'd helped me load up the car with too many clothes and too many high school mementos, I helped my parents pack up their 8-tracks and family heirlooms and once again make the drive to New Jersey.

Strangely, what I now miss most about living in New Hampshire is the change of scenery it offered me on my vacations, rather than the freedom it may have given me in its distance from Princeton. I miss marveling at brilliant red and yellow trees during fall break and scooping snowballs from the driveway over Christmas, as well as the green exuberance of a late April spring. New Jersey's almost indistinguishable seasons leave me with only midterms and finals to mark the passage of time, adding to the feeling that, even when exams are over, I've never really left the Princeton campus.

But I've found that having my parents physically closer to campus doesn't necessarily change their relationship to my college education. Discussions about room draw still elicit puzzled expressions, and the only time my mom has shown up on my doorstep unannounced was to drop off chocolate croissants for me and my roommate to get us through midterms. A little over a month ago, my mom attended a Woodrow Wilson School lecture about the Clinton crisis, at my urging. We laughed over how she had become one of the "old people" who get there early and make the students sit in the aisles.

So I guess I don't consider it a bad thing for my parents to be in the same area code; at the very least, I can make my friends jealous with my thirty-cent phone bills. But this aspiring politician has set one ground rule: the détente is over if my parents follow me to Washington when I graduate.

Changing values on the Street
Bicker clubs thrive, but the future of sign-in clubs is less certain

by Daniel A. Grech '99

Not long ago, Princeton had 16 eating clubs. Last year it had 12. In September, DEC -- itself the consolidation of the defunct Dial, Elm and Cannon Clubs -- shut its doors.

And then there were 11.

The "Street" -- the five bicker, or selective, eating clubs and the six sign-in, or nonselective, eating clubs -- is among Princeton's most enduring institutions. But evolving administrative and student attitudes and the opening of a new campus center next year could make DEC the first in a series of sign-in clubs to close.

Last spring, Princeton's Board of Trustees formed a subcommittee on alcohol abuse to determine how to curtail underage and binge drinking -- most of which happens at the eating clubs. When the subcommittee announces its recommendations in coming months, the Street will be its primary target.

The university administration has fired a volley as well. An undergraduate admission study group chaired by President Shapiro issued a report in October arguing that highly qualified candidates, especially minorities, aren't applying to or enrolling in Princeton because of three "long-term problems in campus climate." The report defined these problems as "the limited range of dining and social opportunities, the alcohol-centered nature of social life, and the less than fully comfortable climate for minority students." The eating clubs exacerbate all three.

Moreover, several top administrators and trustees have privately expressed their dissatisfaction with the eating clubs, and the university's long-term planners are considering the possibility of a future without the Street.

Many students themselves aren't happy with the eating clubs, largely for financial reasons: eating clubs cost an average of $2,000 more than the residential-college dining plan of their freshman and sophomore years. With a Princeton education topping $30,000, many juniors and seniors are reluctant to spend the extra money. Last year, a new and greatly expanded financial-aid program went into effect, and it promises to bring more students from middle- and lower-income families to Princeton. Will they be willing to borrow thousands of dollars to join an eating club rather than explore less expensive options?

For now, the question is moot. Those unwilling to join an eating club or cook for themselves have no good options -- or two bad ones: to eat with freshman and sophomores in the residential-college dining halls or with mostly graduate students in Stevenson Hall. Even for those willing to cook, the only dorm with private kitchens, Spelman Hall, is limited almost exclusively to seniors, and no supermarket is within walking distance of campus.

The issue of upperclass dining also has an often-ignored racial subtext: the majority of African-American students don't join eating clubs. Princeton doesn't offer a viable dining option to them, or to any other students who don't identify with the Street's dominant culture of beer guzzling and random hook-ups.

The new Frist Campus Center, slated to open next year, could offer a viable upperclass dining alternative. If its food court serves a wide enough variety of food, more sign-in clubs will close.

But the bicker clubs -- and the stratified, binge-drinking social environment they create -- will survive. For one, bicker clubs have the most dedicated membership, since exclusivity breeds loyalty. Members will continue to ignore the bicker clubs' legacy of racism, sexism, and antisemitism, focusing instead on their better qualities (beautiful surroundings, good food, and regular social events). But mostly the bicker clubs will survive because Princeton will always be plagued by an elitist subculture that thrives on exclusivity. Just as Harvard has its finals clubs and Yale its senior societies, Princeton will have its bicker clubs.

Or will it?

Before class one day, I was talking with a bicker-club friend outside Chancellor Green. "You see her?" he asked, pointing to a junior walking toward Firestone Library. "I black-balled her from my club." He did so, he explained, after getting a bad first impression of her during their half-hour bicker interview. "A half hour," he said, shaking his head. "Whenever I see her, I wonder if I did the right thing."

More and more, students view bicker with ambivalence. Perhaps there once was a time when students could, with a clear conscience, hand down judgments of character -- judgments that fundamentally change other students' social experience here -- on the basis of a 30-minute interview. But that era died with F. Scott Fitzgerald '17.

My friend claims to be part of a generation that values open-mindedness and rebels against elitism of any form. Yet he fought to become a member of an exclusive social club in a Gilded Age mansion, to eat meals cooked by a private chef served to him by minority employees. Yet he degrades fellow students through a bicker process that is little more than an elaborate popularity game.

My friend is plagued by his own hypocrisy. And I by my own: I bickered Ivy. I helped keep alive an awful tradition -- and I am not quite sure why.

Daniel A. Grech is president of the University Press Club. He invites comments at dangrech@princeton.edu.

paw@princeton.edu