Word: bicker
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...idea is to achieve 100 per cent Bicker -- everyone who signs up for Bicker is supposed to get into a club. Last year only one Princeton man didn't make it. He seemed resigned to his fate. He had effectively rejected the system and even developed his own rational. "The clubs strike me as being an escape hatch, as being void of any kind of reality. The idea of being buddy-buddy just bothers me," he said...
...didn't make it--a music major from St. Paul's--is now a member of the Woodrow Wilson Society, the University's alternative to the clubs, which was established after the anti-Semitism scandal of 1958. If a Princeton man doesn't want to go through with Bicker or becomes dissatisfied with the system he can join Wilson or he can go Indepndent and eat in his room or in the town. The Wilson Society costs $830 to join, including board and fees. Most of the clubs cost over $1000. An Independent spends $400-$500 on food...
...present Bicker system, by which the clubs pick the sophomores they want, perpetuates the hierarchy and the stereoyptes. Bottom clubs are forced to "top cut"--not give bids to campus big shots they know will opt for one of the top five (Cottage, Ivy, Cap and Gown, Colonial, and Tiger Inn). The top clubs are pretty well assured of getting the men they want, and during Bicker they send out their best members to get the desirable sophomores...
...committee that drafted the new Bicker proposals objects to the system's selectivity. "Built upon the selecton process, the hierarchy is the testament to the ethic generated by Bicker--the nebulous concept of 'coolness,'" the proposal reads. What the committee wants is a system similar to Harvard's House application system. Sophomores would list their first three club preferences, which would be respected as much as possible. The effect, of course, would be to make the clubs far more heterogeneous. The proposal would destroy the hierarchy, and a lot of the trauma of the Bicker ordeal. But it would also...
...Bicker is an ordeal that you have to be prepared to take. The sophomore committee sponsors panel discussions on the morality of it, the psychology of it, the history of it. Representatives come around to all the sophomores' room with advice: "Just act yourself now. Don't panic or anything. Don't try to be anyone you really aren't. Just act yourself and everything will be all right." The talk in Commons during the weeks before is always about Bicker--getting Bicker groups together, figuring out chances...