I met a lot of cool people while rushing St. A’s. And not just cool in the stylish sense; I met genuinely thoughtful and engaging and unconventional people. Which is exactly why it’s a shame that St. A’s is what it is.
St. Anthony Hall, colloquially known on campus as “St. A’s” or just “A’s”, is a coeducational fraternity found on ten elite college campuses throughout the country. It bills itself as a “literary society” whose main goal is to “promote life-long learning” and “lasting relationships.” It is also a semi-secret society—one that, at least on Princeton’s campus, wraps itself in an alluring aura of mystery and the sort of elite exclusion that places like this one founded themselves upon.
It’s that last point that kept troubling me about St. A’s. And last Friday night—the night that the elite cohort of current members was “deliberating” on who they would accept and who they would not—I decided I just couldn’t do it. I sent a message to a friend in the group asking her to take me out of the running. I didn’t want to be judged and found wanting. I also just didn’t want to be part of a group that represents what St. A’s must, by definition, represent.
The moment I made the decision to drop out, it felt like the right one for me. But up until then, I had been wavering dramatically. My ambivalence was extreme. I felt the draw of a potential community—this oblique promise of a group of smart, literary, slightly-weird bohemians who talked about and did things that mattered, who filled in the gaps of a pervasive loneliness that oozes everywhere in this place. I felt the allure of the mystery—what could it be that must be kept so secret? What, exactly, was so meaningful about the group? What covert magic could they possibly be wreaking? What went on behind those closed doors? I must admit, even the exclusivity excited me. Did I have what it takes to be among the chosen ones? Was there something special within me that made me superior somehow, worthier somehow?
These are questions I will now never know the answer to. (What a shame.) But on Friday night as that group of people was thinking about whether individuals in another group of people were cool enough to be among their dues-paying friends, I was thinking about my own answers to another set of questions: Who do I want to be and what do I want to stand for?
Now, of course I don’t have the complete answers to these questions either, but I at least have a start. And on Friday night I was reminded of the importance of seeking these answers—but also of remembering the questions.
For Princeton is a place that can easily make us forget to ask them in the first place. In our breathless rush of action and assignments and “commitments”; in our long days and our full plates and our hurried “I’m fine’s”; in thinking aboutbeingan EEB major orstandingfor diSiac, we forget what it means to wonder—in the largest, most audacious (and perhaps ridiculous) sense—about how we go about living and how that is in itself an unavoidable statement of values.
I am part of many communities that exclude people. We all are, especially at Princeton. I am also part of communities that my social skills helped get me in to. What St. A’s does is fetishize these things while refusing to acknowledge what it’s doing. As a result, it is a bundle of contradictions that are hard to swallow: It is a “literary society” founded on exclusion when the best literature is a profound act of inclusion. It is an elite, competitive, stratified group that furthers the elitism, competitiveness, and stratification of the institution it calls home. It is part of a deeply troubling national organization (just Google “Columbia St. A’s”). It is a group whose very existence not only perpetuates but actuallydepends onmystery, exclusion, and self-congratulation. It is a group that deems it acceptable to judge people on their social competence and “coolness” while insisting that it’s “not personal.”
Ultimately, though, Iwantto be friends with the people whose skills (social or otherwise) may not be up to St. A’s (or even Princeton) standards, or whose surface demeanor may seem terribly average. The process of judging and being judged that A’s demands—that obfuscated, deliberately mysterious process of personality evaluation—necessarily sets its members apart, creating an unavoidable power differential (even if it’s an imagined power differential, as most are). I know that if I had stayed in the process and gotten into A’s, it would’ve instantly changed the way I related to those who did not (and even those who weren’t interested in the first place); if I had stayed in the process and not gotten in, it would’ve strained my relationship with those who are in the group. Passing by people, I would never have been able to say “hi” in quite the same way again. And it’s simple, but anything that would make it uncomfortable for me to say “hi” to any other human walking by is something I don’t want to stand for.
None of this is meant as an attack against the many amazing and admirable—and, yes,cool—members of St. Anthony Hall. I do not mean to suggest that joining the group is some sort of moral failing. I understand why it exists and I understand the power that it wields. I simply wish to articulate my own reasons for questioning that power. For on this campus and in this world, St. A’s is far from the most questionable or pernicious of powers; it is not unique in what it stands for, and yet there are so many other things that stand for so much worse.
Still, you have to start small with where you are and what you know. Princeton is where we are and what we know. Wouldn’t it be pretty cool if we took a second to look around and see what we’re standing for?
Kyle Berlin is a sophomore from Arroyo Grande, Ca. He can be reached atkmberlin@princeton.edu.
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