Race and the Street

Abiodun Azeez ’12 knew even before she arrived on campus last fall that she didn’t want to join an eating club.

“I don’t think eating clubs are the place for me,” she said in an e-mail. “I guess part of it had to do with what I’d read about eating clubs — elitism, rich white kids —and I’m not elite, rich, or white.”

Instead, Azeez, who is also a co-president of the Princeton Association of Black Women, will stay on a University meal plan next year.

“The dining halls are definitely more diverse [than the clubs],” she explained, noting that both the cost of membership and the social scene were also important factors in her decision. “The eating clubs are largely comprised of upper/upper-middle class white students, and so I think that it’s catered to what they as the majority want.”

There are persistent racial disparities on the Street, especially in the bicker clubs, according to an October 2009 evaluation of the Committee on Background and Opportunity (COMBO) survey results by the USG’s Analysis of Princetonian Attitudes Committee (APAC).

The COMBO II data show that a greater proportion of white students are members of bicker clubs compared to other students across all income brackets.

Seventy percent of survey respondents in bicker clubs were white, while 58 percent of those in sign-in clubs were white. This figure reflects the demographics of the campus population, which is 60 percent white, according to statistics provided by the University.

Among COMBO II respondents, 35 percent of white students but only 19 percent of non-white students were in bicker clubs. But there is much less of a discrepancy at the sign-in clubs: 34 percent of white students and 32 percent of non-white students are members of these clubs.

Additionally, white students in all income brackets below $500,000 were more likely to bicker successfully, though non-white students were more successful if their parents’ income was above this value.

“I think that because many black students aren’t in eating clubs, you don’t have black upperclassmen telling black [underclass] students about the process and what being part of eating clubs entails,” Azeez said.

Trenton Arthur ’10, a black student in Tower Club, also said he thinks that black upperclassmen in eating clubs should reach out to underclassmen as a way of addressing the existing racial disparities, noting that this was one reason he decided to bicker.

“In the same way that certain groups feed into clubs, the black community has traditionally fed out of clubs,” Arthur said. “[Some upperclassmen] brought me to Tower and I was introduced to several people, and I sort of got to know the black community in the club. It has never been a very big population so I was able to meet all of them with no difficulty.”

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Several students and administrators said they thought the situation for minority students on the Street was improving, if slowly, noting that many of the clubs have very diverse memberships.

“You don’t want clubs to be, like, ‘Oh, we’re going to have this many members of this ethnic group, and we’re going to set quotas.’ That would cause a lot of drama, and I don’t know what a better solution would be than that,” said Bianca Williams ’11, a black student in Cap & Gown Club. “It’s hard just because it’s been the way it has been for a while ... It’s just going to take time.”

One APAC report examining the COMBO I data singled out three of the bicker clubs as having memberships that are disproportionately white and of high-income background. Only 10 percent of the members of Cottage Club, Ivy Club and Tiger Inn are not white. By contrast, the members of Cap and Tower are 31 and 25 percent non-white, respectively.

Seventy-five percent of Cottage, Ivy and TI members came from families earning more than $150,000 per year, and that figure is comparable to those of the two other bicker clubs. Finally, 22 percent of members were white and came from families earning more than $500,000 annually.

But members of several clubs explained that, despite what the data show, they feel their clubs are diverse, in terms of ethnicity and socioeconomic background as well as interests and extracurricular activities.

Ted Price ’10, who is a member of Ivy, said he thinks his club is “pretty diverse” in terms of ethnicity. “I know in the ’90s … Ivy was all, like, white people and wealthy, but … it’s really changed,” he said.

Williams said she found Cap to be a “very diverse and accepting environment.”

“Of all the clubs on the Street, I just felt the most at home, the most comfortable, in that environment,” she explained. “We’re definitely racially and ethnically diverse — every race and ethnicity I can think of.”

Cap president Andres Perez ’10 said in an e-mail that his club tries to be open to all prospective members, but students choosing to bicker Cap is ultimately what determines the makeup of the club.

“I think it is hard to say that ‘self-selection’ is not at least a small factor, since choosing to bicker this club, or any of the others, is a choice left up to those people — as individuals, not as part of a group,” he said.

Minority students may be discouraged from bickering clubs with less racial diversity, Arthur said.

“If it’s a process you go into where you feel like you’re going to be the only black person there, it becomes more daunting,” he explained.

COMBO I revealed stark trends in the choice of dining plans among members of different ethnic groups. The survey found that, in 2007, less than half of black students were members of clubs and more than half of Asian students were in sign-in clubs.

“Since many eating clubs have been disproportionately white for quite some time, and acceptance into bicker clubs has a lot to do with ties developed with students already in clubs, the demographic of the bicker clubs tends to perpetuate itself,” Black Student Union president Charles Wright ’11, who is in a residential college, said in an e-mail. “Black students who do not feel they fit in because of their income, race, or interests might be deterred from joining clubs.”

Hyeon-Ju Ryoo ’11, co-president of the Asian American Students Association, expressed a similar sentiment. “People tend to think that knowing more people in the bicker clubs improves your chance of getting in,” she said in an e-mail. “If students in bicker clubs are already non-minority students who are less likely to know minority students, then I suppose it makes sense that more minority students are deterred from bickering.”

Interclub Council (ICC) adviser Tim Prugar ’06 explained that the clubs are aware of these trends. “I think it goes without saying that all the clubs are interested in having the most diverse, interesting membership they possibly can,” he said.

“While I think the clubs are outstanding institutions, there are definitely places to improve, and that may be one of them,” he added.

Students’ approaches to Bicker may be partly responsible for the disproportionately low numbers of minority students in some bicker clubs, Azeez said.

Though she said she does not know much about the club selection process, “I would guess that one factor in evaluating candidates is trying to determine how well they would fit into the scene,” she explained. “There might be a certain set of criteria by which to judge this, and I think that socioeconomic status and background would be one.”

Current club members might wonder, “Can [bickerees] relate to the rest of us? Will they be able to appreciate what the clubs have to offer? Would they be offended by some of the things we have to say?” Azeez said.

“I mention that last question,” she added, “because I’ve heard some stories about a few racial remarks made in some of the eating clubs from members of eating clubs.”

USG president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10, who is also a member of the University’s newly created eating clubs task force, said he was concerned by the racial disparities between bicker and sign-in clubs shown in the COMBO data.

“I think that we as a campus community need to begin asking questions, such as why the membership of bicker clubs appears to be disproportionately white and high-income and, perhaps more importantly, what aspect of sign-in clubs negates this phenomenon,” Diemand-Yauman said in an e-mail.

“I don’t know what would motivate black or Asian students to join or not join a club,” Cloister Inn and ICC president Aran Clair ’10 said in an e-mail. “I don’t think the eating club system as a whole deters minority students because half of the clubs are by nature inclusive. That is, it is in the interest of the sign in clubs to accept as many new members from a variety of backgrounds as possible.”

Members of the administration are also considering the issue of racial diversity in the clubs. Associate Dean of Undergraduate Students Maria Flores-Mills, who also serves as the University’s liaison to the clubs, said, “I think these are issues that I’m pretty sure clubs are aware of, and I think there has been some movement towards thinking about these issues and what to do about them and how to move forward on a variety of levels.”

Perez cautioned against stereotyping the membership of a given club.

“Stereotyping clubs can have nothing but a negative effect on people bickering, since those who are turned off by the stereotypes will likely choose not to bicker and never learn that what they thought was not the case at all,” he said. “And those who choose to bicker precisely because of these stereotypes will be sadly disappointed when they find that they are most often not true at all.”

University Vice President and Secretary Bob Durkee ’69, who also chairs the eating clubs task force, said that in his experience, trends like these are not permanent. “I’ve lived long enough to be skeptical that almost anything is inevitable, so I don’t know that this distribution is inevitable. I don’t want to get ahead of my knowledge here. I think what [this data points to] is something that I’m sure [the task force and I] will be looking at.”

Durkee noted that one reason the University adopted a financial aid plan that provides students with funds to cover the cost of an eating club contract was because there was interest in increasing diversity in club membership. “A concern that we had — ‘we’ meaning the administration, so did leaders of the clubs — was that the demography of the clubs didn’t fully align with the demography of the student body,” he said.

“If there is a different demography in the clubs than in the student body, how much of that is related to issues of affordability, and how much of that is driven by other considerations?” Durkee wondered, noting that this was a subject the task force might pursue.

Both the administration and the clubs themselves have identified the demographic disparity between the Street and the larger campus community as an area of concern, but many are unsure how these trends can best be addressed.

“I think it’s something that’s going to take time [to modify]… This institution as a whole took some time to evolve to where it is today,” Flores-Mills said. “I think the ideas and the drive have to be organic among the students for [any change] to be really successful.”

Durkee explained that the administrators had already discussed this issue when implementing the expanded financial aid policy. “The student body was more diverse — more diverse with respect to income, more diverse with respect to ethnicity — than the students who were in the clubs, and if there was something that was shaping that demography that we [the administrators] could do something about, [it should be investigated],” he explained.

Angela Groves ’12, a member of the task force, said, “I think what’s important is to take the survey further and find the reasons why [the demographics are] like that.”

Azeez and Wright both said they thought students needed to take a more active stance on the issue to see real change.

“Students would play the largest role in diversifying clubs, as they are in charge,” Wright said. “However I’m not sure what would convince them that the benefits of diversity would be worthwhile and encourage them to take action.” He added that the University also has a “tremendous amount of influence” on the clubs and could try to foster more diversity on the Street by increasing financial aid to cover all club costs.

“I think that the discrepancy will remain as long as eating clubs are expensive and exclusive, and as long as those who decide who gets in accept those who are most like them,” Azeez said.

“Students need to demand more diversity from eating clubs. And I think that members of eating clubs need to be more accepting of people who don’t automatically appear to be ‘eating club material,’ ” she said. “When change happens internally, it will be easier to accept and adapt to—though it might take a while.”

This is the fourth article in a five-part series on the eating clubs and the COMBO data.