Tower Becomes Last Club to Join Double-Bicker System

In an email to students who plan to bicker Tower Club this coming spring, Tower Bicker Committee Chair Diego Negrón-Reichard ‘18 announced Tower will participate in double bicker.

“For the first time, Tower will be officially double-bicker!” Negrón-Reichard wrote. “The Bicker Committee is ecstatic about this change – it’s an opportunity to further promote an inclusive and diverse environment at Tower.”

Negrón-Reichard deferred comment to Tower President Romie Desrogène ’17.

Bicker is a weeklong process through which new members are chosen by current members of the club. Of the 11 eating clubs, there are six selective bicker clubs and five sign-in clubs. While all of the selective clubs hold bicker in the spring, some hold another round of bicker in the fall as well. Tower is the final eating club to change from single bicker to double bicker.

Desrogène emphasized that the club’s desire to be more inclusive was central to its decision to change to a double-bicker policy.

“It’s a decision that Tower had thought of in terms of thinking about ways to facilitate inclusion in the club,” Desrogène said. “We thought that joining the multi-bicker system would be a great way to have more inclusion.”

“Tower was always proud to be a club where anyone could join regardless of if they knew people in the club before bickering,” Desrogène said. “The Tower [alumni] graduate board is also passionate about Tower being that kind of place.”

According to Desrogène, the decision on the policy change was ultimately made by the graduate board, although there had been a lot of discussion on the issue between Tower officers and the board.

She noted that the current board has always been thinking about ways to make Tower more inclusive, but that the specific decision to join the double-bicker system only became the focus in the last few months.

“I haven’t spoken to bickerees personally, but in terms of club members, a few people have approached us and the response seems to be positive,” Desrogène said. “The general feeling in the club is we want more people to be included and we want to meet people we have not met before.”

She noted that although Tower is the last club to join the double-bicker system, the trend toward this policy among the selective clubs is a recent change.

“I think that the general trend has been more inclusion among the clubs, so that might be a reason why the clubs have gone double bicker but I wasn’t in the room during discussion so the reasoning might vary from grad board to grad board,” Desrogène said.