Eating Clubs at Princeton University

Eating Clubs At Princeton University

The eating clubs at Princeton University are private institutions resembling both dining halls and social houses, where the majority of Princeton upperclassmen eat their meals. Each eating club occupies a large mansion on Prospect Avenue, one of the main roads that runs through the Princeton campus, with the exception of Terrace Club which is just around the corner on Washington Road. This area is known to students colloquially as "The Street." Princeton's eating clubs are the primary setting in F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 debut novel, This Side of Paradise, and more recently, the clubs appeared prominently in the best-selling 2004 novel, The Rule of Four.

Princeton undergraduates currently have their choice of eleven eating clubs. Six clubs—Cannon Club, Cap and Gown Club, Princeton Tower Club, The Ivy Club, Tiger Inn and University Cottage Club, —choose their members through a selective process called "bicker," involving an interview process, though the actual deliberations are secret. Four clubs – Cloister Inn, Colonial Club, Quadrangle Club, and Terrace Club – are non-selective "sign-in" clubs, with members chosen through a lottery process. Charter Club chooses its members through its own system of weighing applicants. While nearly three-quarters of upperclassmen (third- and fourth-year students) at Princeton take their meals at the eating clubs, the clubs are private institutions and are not officially affiliated with Princeton University.

Read more about Eating Clubs At Princeton University:  Social Functions, History, Alternatives

Famous quotes containing the words eating, clubs, princeton and/or university:

    Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)

    Neighboring farmers and visitors at White Sulphur drove out occasionally to watch ‘those funny Scotchmen’ with amused superiority; when one member imported clubs from Scotland, they were held for three weeks by customs officials who could not believe that any game could be played with ‘such elongated blackjacks or implements of murder.’
    —For the State of West Virginia, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    The men—the undergraduates of Yale and Princeton are cleaner, healthier, better-looking, better dressed, wealthier and more attractive than any undergraduate body in the country.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    Priests are not men of the world; it is not intended that they should be; and a University training is the one best adapted to prevent their becoming so.
    Samuel Butler (1835–1902)