Come One, Come All

One day in 1906 President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton University made what he called a "heretical" proposal to bis trustees: abolish the campus eating clubs which for a quarter of a century had flourished proudly along Prospect Avenue. They were contrary to the "democratic spirit," said Wilson; they had become a "side show" which seemed "to be trying to control the performance in the main tent."

The row that followed was long and bitter ("Must a gentleman eat with a mucker?" cried the clubmen). In the end, Ivy, Cap and Gown, and the rest of the clubs continued to flourish for the benefit of juniors and seniors who as sophomores had been lucky enough to get elected.

Last week, the old row broke out anew. With the annual elections still more than a month away, 605 out of 788 sophomores signed a petition declaring that they would join no club at all unless bids were extended to every student seeking election. It was true, said the sophomores, that the 17 clubs now took in 87% of those who wished to belong, but it should be 100%.

Some student and graduate clubmen howled in protest. The sophomores were infringing upon the clubs' "basic right of selectivity." But there were plenty of other clubmen who disagreed: 217 said they would themselves resign unless the sophomores had their way. By week's end, the sophomores seemed to be winning the battle that Woodrow Wilson lost. Said Chairman William Wallace of the Undergraduate Interclub Committee: "The clubs will try their best to fit their election machinery to the sophomore aim."

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