According to legend a group of students, after they were ejected from their boarding house after a chicken croquette fight, rented an old house, hired a Negro cook, bought a stove, and Ivy club was in business.

Tiger, Colonial Cap and Gown, and other social groups soon followed suit and by 1900 Prospect Street was tabbed "The Street" with almost half the college belonging to clubs.

1917: Sophomore Revoit

Club abolition movements soon started. In 1913 President Woodrow Wilson tried to establish a house system similar to that adopted here. Four years later saw the first sophomore "revolt." Petitions, Club board resignations, and 'Princetonian' editorials ensued, but World War I prematurely ended the fracas. Fruitless revolts materialized in 1925 and in the '30's. The words "100 percent" were never mentioned, however; the demand was only for increased sophomore bids. Fifteen percent of the class, however, remained classed as "unworthies."

By 1940 pressure was applied again. A faculty-student fact-finding committee formed, but accomplished little except to issue the virtual platitude that, "all, or as many as possible, members of the upper two classes should belong to eating clubs."

Meanwhile Dean Gauss created an 18th club to absorb the 10 percent that weren't making the grade at the time. Gateway turned out to be not such a bad club after all, and until the first war class of 1942 almost 100 percent of the college were clubmen.

The next year, without coercion, '100-percent' was finally achieved; 1942 followed suit and 1943 had 99.5 percent. The sophomore fear of being cast into social limbo vanished. Then World War II arrived.

With war came more important problems. When it was ever there were only 17 clubs again--a temporary housing project had absorbed Gateway--and no 100 percent.

Perhaps irritated by the fact only 80.2 percent of the sophomores made the grade in 1949, the Class of 1952 started to agitate for "100 percent" almost as soon as they arrived. By December 605 sophomores had pledged not to join a club unless every classmate received a bid.

On the night of March 3, 1950, Dean Godolphin announced that the Undergraduate Interclub Committee had agreed to issue club bids to all sophomores; the controversial bicker was over.

In making the announcement Godolphin warned that "this success provides no precedent for the future . . ." The previous December President Dodds, strongly backed by Princeton's Club alumni, had proposed to solve the problem by building a non-elective 18th upperclass eating club.

Undergraduates greeted the Dodds plan with mixed feeling, many fearing the club would turn into a "dumping ground" for "undesirables." Club presidents blandly stated they "would welcome the new club as integral part of the Princeton Club system . . ."

The Korean war made all talk of a new building out of the question and the 18th club scheme was gradually dropped. As one sophomore said, "there is no talk of it anymore--even from Dodds."

Next year both the sophomores and the bicker period were relatively passive but again 100 percent was achieved. In 1952 all sophomore eligibles received bids on the second night of open house, in what the "Princetonian" called "a precedent-shattering climax."

All these changes have done much to democratize the clubs: no longer can they be characterized as F. Scott Fitzgerald did in the '20's: "Ivy, detached and breathlessly aristocratic; College, an impressive melange of brilliant adventurers and well-dressed philanderers; Tiger, broad shouldered and athletic, vitalized by an houest elaboration of prep school standards; Cap and Gown, anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful; flamboyant Colonial; literary Quadrangle; and the doxen others, varying in age and position."

The age, position, and prestige may vary, but Princeton's clubs remain.