The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-28
PRINCETON CLUBS
 UNDER CRITI CISM President Wilson Wants Them Turned Over to University Officials.
LIKE YALE FRATERNITY
A Mature Scheme to Stimu- late the Intellectual
 Life.

A@A%Ss
 Princeton, N. J., June 25.-President Woodrow Wilson proposes to do away with all of the upper class clubs in the university. These clubs are to Princeton what fraternitles are to Harvard and Yale and other large uni versailles. The announcement of President Wilson's intention is con tained in the last issue of the Alumni Weekly, which appeared yesterday. The plan for social reorganization of the university, it is said, was present. ed to the board of trustees at their commencement meeting by sub-com- mittee of which President Wilson was chairman. The plan was approved by the board, and the subcommittee was continued and authorized to take such action as it might deem necessary.
 The doing away of the upper class | clubs is the most radical suggestion that President Wilson has yet made in l the development of his general scheme | HUI eJ PAONERIDA leAl S9o oAGllA GU lAllNItRAs l There are now thirteen of these upper i class organizations, each with it's own clubhouse. In all probably $500000 is 1 invested in these undergraduate club i houses, One club, alone the Cottage, spent almost $l00,000 for new house i about year ago. These clubs are run on an elective system, about fif- l teen men being selected each year from the sophomore class. The members eat in the clubhouses, but do not sleep there. Some of the clubs are elabor- 1 ately furnished, About two-thirds of the members of the two upper classes | belong to the clubs.
 1 It is President Wilson's plan to have l the clubs turn their properties over to the university and to incorporate them in a general dormltory scheme. In the Alumni Weekly he says:
 My plan is to draw the undergrad uates together into residential quads' I (quadrangles) in which they shall eat as well as lodge and in which they shall under the direction of member of the faculty, regulate their own cor- porate life by some simple method of self-government. For this purpose it i would be necessary to place all future | dormitories in such relation to those already erected as to form geographi- cal units and to erect in connection with each group kitchen, dining and serving rooms and a handsome com mon room for social purposes. Every undergraduate would be required actu- I ally to live in his quad and the resi- { dents would be made up as nearly as possible of members of every class.
 The objects of this arrangement would be to bring the faculty In close l connection with the students, to brins the members of the four classes to- gether, to give the university the hand of common consciousness which appar- ently comes from closer sorts of so- cial contact and to rid the university of combinations, cliques and separate class social organizations.
 President wilson's reference to "com- binations, cliques and classes" is the keynote of the situation. Fraternities are forbidden at Princeton; upper class clubs are developments of the last twenty years or so, and with their growth there have gradually been ap- bearing at Princeton the symptoms of class feeling so often complained of at 1 other universities where the fraternities prevail A good many of the older grad 1 uates are behind President Wilson in l his plan to abolish the club system, but there is strong opposition among the ] n Fl DT4c fsO q fng nA t,a | alumni
 | President Wilson's system will re- | semble a good deal the social organiza- tion of English universities into col leges Each group of dormitories will be a college or a ''quad." President Wilson hasn't explained yet how the men will be selected for these 'quads" but there will be no elective system.
 Speaking of the present club system, President Wilson in the Alumni Week. ly article says that it has become com mon for sophomores to ask their in- structors in the last few years whether they shall choose the life of a student or that of the clubman.
 "This," President Wilson adds, lis not so because the clubs try to exclude study, but because the life there is so expressing and so tempting, Study has to take it's chance in competition with these pleasures"
 President Wilson says further:
 Group rivalries break the solidarity of the class. The younger classes are in no point made conscious of the in- terests of the university. Their whole time is concentrated upon individual ambitions upon the means of prefer ence, upon combinations to obtain indi- vidual ends, and the welfare of the university is ignored"
 President Wilson will not attempt to make the transition too quickly. He believes that it will require several years. 1 The situation suggested by President Wilson of Princeton is the same as if Dean Chittenden of the Yale Sheffield Scientific school should ask the societies