There’s an existential threat to the eating clubs that you need to know about

The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.

I am writing in my personal capacity as the former President of the Interclub Council to give the University some feedback on an important matter they are currently reviewing. From late 2023 to early 2024, the University hired an outside consulting firm, Huron Consulting Group, to examine the housing and dining undergraduate experience. Last summer, the Huron Group quietly released a 25-page report detailing their findings. The report is as opaque with its methodology as it is sweeping in the scope of its recommendations, the most extreme of which is a proposal on the last page to require all students who reside on campus to purchase a campus dining meal plan — including juniors and seniors currently on an eating club contract.

This course of action would be harmful to the undergraduate experience and poses an existential threat to the eating clubs, potentially forcing many into financial ruin. If implemented, the report’s recommendation would sever past and present generations of Princetonians from their unique and tight-knit communities, reverse decades of progress towards diversity in the clubs, and throw the undergraduate dining system into disarray. I respectfully call on the administration to disavow this course of action, since the relationship between the University and the eating clubs is ultimately one of mutual benefit.

The eating clubs play a vital role in nurturing Princeton’s undergraduate and alumni communities. The Huron Report itself emphasized that “students who are a part of [an] eating club are more satisfied than those who identify as Independent or have selected a meal plan.” The eating clubs provide a convenient location to eat, as well as a vibrant campus social scene with robust safety measures, including hiring professional bouncers, running SHARE training for members, partnering with PSafe, and defining policies around after-dark events. The rich and longstanding history of the eating clubs also helps members feel a sense of investment in a beloved campus tradition. There’s a reason Princeton has the most loyal alumni in the Ivy League — long after graduation, students who were in eating clubs have a lifelong home on campus to come back to.

However, requiring all juniors and seniors to purchase a campus dining meal plan would threaten these benefits. Few Princetonians would be able to afford both their eating club fees and a campus meal plan, so requiring such a plan is tantamount to forcing most students to give up their eating club memberships. Notably, the Huron Report does not recommend that the University readjust their increased food budget for juniors and seniors to be higher, which could shield students on financial aid from the worst of the effects. With a decimated pool of potential members, most if not all eating clubs would simply not be able to continue operation — especially in the face of sky-high property taxes, multiple forms of insurance, and rising inflation in the food industry.

The report is, at the moment, a recommendation. But the stakes are high. Every time in the past a club has closed on the Street has been a heartbreaking experience for its undergraduate and alumni members. In particular, stripping alumni of their “home away from home” at Princeton would lessen their connection to campus and the University. According to the Huron Report itself, “Alumni eating club members expressed a high degree of affinity for their club, describing it as a defining element of the residential experience. The eating clubs were cited as motivators for alumni to return to campus.” This is due in no small part to the fiercely proud and tight-knit communities we are able to form at the eating clubs, which remain near and dear to alumni hearts even decades after they graduate.

Furthermore, following the Huron Report’s recommendation would reverse decades of painstaking and fruitful progress on eating club diversity. The eating clubs today are more diverse in terms of race, gender, and socioeconomic background than they have ever been before. But if all students were required to purchase a campus dining plan, only the most wealthy and privileged Princetonians would be able to afford an eating club membership on top of it. Instead of being able to serve large majorities of Princeton’s student population, the clubs would only be able to cater to the “one percent,” turning into regressive and anachronistic versions of themselves that nobody, especially the current and increasingly diverse membership of the clubs, wants them to be.

Lastly, requiring all juniors and seniors to purchase campus dining plans would negatively impact the general undergraduate dining experience, including first-years and sophomores, as well as the students who choose to remain on a dining hall plan in their upperclass years. The current dining hall options are already crowded, with long lines winding through the serveries and teeming with unfamiliar faces. Jamming several thousand additional juniors and seniors into an already overburdened and crowded campus dining system would exacerbate these issues, no matter how many gleaming new dining halls rise at Hobson or other farther locations.

Both of us, the University and the eating clubs, ultimately share the same goal: making the undergraduate experience as enriching and rewarding as possible and fostering an enthusiastic and involved alumni community. Adopting the Huron Report’s recommendation to force every student to purchase a campus dining meal plan, even if they have another full meal plan, would be counterproductive to that mutual goal. It would take away one of the most beloved Princeton traditions, reversing decades of progress and worsening the Princeton experience for all students, regardless of whether they participate in an eating club. I am, respectfully, offering my advice to the University to reject this ill-conceived recommendation.

Vincent Jiang ’25 is the President Emeritus of the Interclub Council, the organization composed of the eleven undergraduate eating club presidents at Princeton University. He can be reached at vincentjiang[at]princeton.edu.