Students must be able to seriously weigh the consequences of joining a Greek organization. Current University policy, however, discourages some students from doing so, which serves to exacerbate the very stratification that the University is trying to prevent.
The administration's goal here is a worthy one; the problem of class-based segregation was recently highlighted by the USG's Committee on Background and Opportunity (COMBO) survey. The COMBO survey found that students from wealthier backgrounds are more likely to be more knowledgeable about social life at Princeton and more comfortable with Greek organizations than other students, in part because they are more likely to have attended schools that traditionally send a large number of students to Princeton.
This knowledge gap, which is largely along socioeconomic and racial lines, serves to partition the campus even before students arrive. The University's letter is more likely to be taken seriously by those students and families who have little knowledge of campus life - students coming from high schools that rarely send students to Princeton and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
The University's policy thus aggravates the existing stratification by dissuading incoming students with little understanding of the Princeton social scene from making informed choices regarding whether joining fraternities and sororities would contribute to their college experience. Thus, the University's letter may be a contributing factor to the stratification seen in Greek life, which may in turn influence the decisions students ultimately make regarding eating clubs. An investigation conducted by The Daily Princetonian last year confirmed that sorority members hail disproportionately from private schools and tend to join certain bicker clubs.
If the administration's goal is to create a more open and diverse campus atmosphere, then the administration must foster diversity - socioeconomic, racial and geographic - across all parts of campus life. The University should recognize that its letter has an impact on a limited audience and only worsens the problem it means to solve. In light of this, the University should further investigate the effect of its current policies on student behavior and modify the way it presents Greek organizations to incoming students.
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