Independent perspective

I am fairly out of the loop. The vast majority of my friends are signing into Terrace Club, staying on a residential meal plan or going independent. The full extent of my exposure to the pressure of finding a good fit — and being found a good fit — for an eating club could be written up in a page or two of conversations passively overheard or unenthusiastically engaged in. Most of this stressful, sophomoric rite of passage has sailed right over my head.

I am as close to indifferent as any Princeton student can be with regard to the eating club selection process. As I counted the number of my friends who are joining a club, however, I became more and more aware of the social impact that the changing meal situation is going to have on my independent-oriented life.

The social power of food is tremendous. During freshman year, most of our relationships develop around the people we eat with. The trend continues, although generally to a lesser extent, during sophomore year. Many sophomores’ friend networks shift dramatically by the end of this year or the beginning of the next. The change is understandable but not necessarily positive. Nobody really likes the idea of watching certain friendships weaken as a result of a changing, more exclusive meal situation. Students often apply for a club or meal option based on their friends’ choices. Inevitably, however, one or two of your currently close friends will not be following you to Ivy, Tower or 2D, and your chances of staying close are thereby exponentially lowered. Second semester sophomores have many meal options to choose from, but every choice requires some level of break with our current eating community.

I am not joining an eating club. Rather, as an observant, kosher-keeping Jew, my eating club is the Center for Jewish Life. My fellow “members” are CJL frequenters, Jewish and otherwise. We span four generations of Princeton students instead of two-and-a-half. As a freshman, I entered a community as tight-knit and supportive as a sports team, if somewhat larger and less intense. The intimacy is in large part owing to the fact that we hang out, eat and study together in the same building for the entirety of our Princeton careers. I originally believed that the mid-sophomore year meal change would have little to no effect on me. After all, I can stay on a residential college meal plan and keep my social life intact because my religious, cultural and food communities happen to share a base. However, many of my friends aren’t in this situation. The openness of the residential college meal plan allowed us to conveniently grab food together at any dining hall whenever we needed a chance to catch up or hang out. This semester, that dynamic is going to change. I’m not yet sure how, and quite frankly, I’m concerned about the relationships I have built through my residential college.

The openness of the Princeton social environment during our first semesters is rooted in our meal plan structure. The fluidity of the residential college meal plan is part of what makes my group of friends so diverse. The University and the eating clubs should work together to try to sustain this diversity. The option to combine a limited University meal plan with club membership is a step in the right direction. All clubs should have a similar option or some alternative that allows students with different eating setups to easily and conveniently eat with their friends. This comes at some cost to the traditional exclusivity of the clubs, but we gain a more stable social environment.

Tehila Wenger is a sophomore from Columbus, Ohio. She can be reached at twenger@princeton.edu.