I didn't really give much thought to my disloyalty until my second or third week here, at which point I noticed an interesting phenomenon: Nobody in my dorm, or in my college for that matter, eats in Wu very often. Even more astonishingly, many Butlerites seem to spend almost no time at all in Butler common areas. They study in East Pyne or Firestone, eat in Whitman and socialize in up-campus common rooms. As I met more and more freshmen, this trend continued: Butlerites and Wilsonites eat in Whitman; Forbesians, anywhere but Forbes; and everybody eats in Rocky/Mathey for lunch.
But the true problem is bigger: As far as I can tell, there really isn't any residential college unity at Princeton. Princeton underclassmen, instead of learning loyalty to their individual colleges, seem to have learned a sort of Social Darwinist philosophy toward campus residential facilities: The nice buildings are overcrowded, and the less nice are left empty - "selected-out", if you will.
Absence of residential college unity is a problem because it runs counter to the purpose of the system in the first place: to facilitate easy friendships and socialization, to provide a smooth transition from high school to college, to build University unity and to easily micromanage the academic affairs of Princeton undergraduates. Fundamentally, residential colleges are supposed to breed familiarity. When you never see the people you're supposed to become familiar with because you both eat and work in another college, the system fails to serve its purpose.
In my short time here, I've observed two major causes. The first cause is a real disparity in the quality of college facilities and the stereotypes that these inequalities generate. The Rocky/Mathey and Whitman dining halls and common rooms are simply nicer than those in Forbes, Butler and Wilson. Though the food disparity is debatable, there are certainly more options in Whitman's dining hall than there are in Wu. Furthermore, even when Wu's food is great, its library clean (rare) and its common room - "Wu Cafe" - attractive (rarer still), the stereotype perpetuated about Wu prevents kids from going there.
A second cause is a lack of geographical unity. Unlike the colleges or houses at two insignificant rival institutions in Cambridge, Mass., and New Haven, Conn., in our residential colleges, it's tough to tell where they begin and end. Rocky and Mathey are essentially the same (and why is Witherspoon Hall part of Rocky?), the Butler-Wilson boundary is nebulous, and Whitman wants to annex Spelman halls. Geographical cohesiveness is a great way to promote unity quickly, and our colleges, for the most part, lack it.
I think there are two plausible solutions: one short-term and one long-term. In the short term, the University should aim to equalize residential college food. This would eliminate the disincentive for kids to eat in their own dining halls. The "undesirable" dining halls - Wu, Wilcox and Forbes - will need to overcompensate to combat their stereotypes.
Long term, though, the University needs to start a cohesiveness initiative. Adding more amenities to the non-gothic colleges would eliminate the redistribution problem, as would encouraging competition among the colleges. A weekly contest to see which college can get the greatest number of its own students to eat in its dining hall, with the sweet prize of more great chefs' nights, would create a revolving door with higher attendance leading to better food leading to higher attendance. As our campus evolves, gradually creating more cohesiveness geographically - using the Quad system - would help as well.
Observing the real lack of residential college unity here is as simple as going to the Whitman dining hall for lunch. Among the chic windbreakers Whitman gave its residents the first night, you'll inevitably see blue Butler zip-ups, black Wilson hoodies and even the occasional Forbes jacket, faux lamb's wool and all. The fatal blow for me, though, came when a kid in my politics class last week showed up to lecture wearing a "Harvard Class of 2012" shirt. I guess there are worse kinds of disloyalty.
Charlie Metzger is a freshman from Palm Beach, Fla. He can be reached at cmetzger@princeton.edu.
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