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 to get in, on and on.
Scares Some
The talk bores some sophomores. It scares many others. There is always uncertainty. It is like applying to college all over again, only worse. Failure in front of peers is horrible to think about.
After exams, Bicker begins. Representatives of the clubs come in and check out your brand of rep striped tie, yellow shirt, gray trousers, navy blazer, and freshly shined shoes. Talk starts with the room. "Not a bad room for sophomores. Nice picture over there. Nice carpet too," the club man will say. Then there are nods and "thanks" and the talk changes.
The interviewer clears his throat. "Well, what do you fellows think about clubs anyway. Why do you want to join Ivy?" And in five or ten minutes it is over. Another club representative comes in and the ordeal begins again.
The club men report back to their clubs and write comments about you in Bicker Book right under your picture cut out of the Freshman Herald. The next night, if you're lucky, Ivy will come around again and talk to your group. And then maybe again and again. And maybe you will get in.
F. Scott Fitzgerald describes Amory Blaine's bicker in This Side of Paradise:
"With visitors from Ivy and Cottage and Tiger Inn he played the 'nice, unspoilt, ingenuous boy,' very much at ease and quite unaware of the object of the call. When the fatal night arrived early in March, he slid smoothly into Cottage with Alec Connage and watched his suddenly neurotic class with much wonder."
In the end, everyone or nearly everyone gets in. Not so easily as Amory Blake, but they get in. Those who get into bottom clubs soon develop a rationale. One of them told me: "Of course, Dial isn't one of the top clubs, But you know, I wouldn't fit in Ivy or Cottage. I'm not that type. I feel comfortable where I am."
Bicker selections are superficial judgments. But, even though many people are condemned to life in a bottom club because of the system, it doesn't bother Clinch S. Belser, chairman of the Interclub Committee and president of Cottage: "Bicker judgments are partially based on the superficial qualities of people. However, superficial compatability facilitates social interchange and relaxation. Thus, it is not totally adverse that superficialities influence Bicker decisions."
The System
So that is the system. However cruel and arbitrary it might be, few Princeton men reject it. There has not been a major change in its structure since Ivy Club was founded in 1879. Once a sophomore has gone through Bicker, he settles down in his club and is very content and comfortable. The club stereotype seems to crystallize his personality. He may have come to Princeton vaguely thinking he was preppy, but when he made Ivy he was sure of it. Patterns form. The club man begins to think he cannot get along with anyone outside his circle of club friends. "I just wouldn't feel comfortable," the Dial man would say. So he doesn't try to mix with other people.
"The club is your whole world here," one Colonial member told me. The town of Princeton has three movie theatres, a few magazine stands, and assorted hamburger joints. New York is a 90-minute bus ride away. There are no girls' colleges anyway nearby. The college is isolated and so all social life, and soon, all life, revolves around the clubs.
The ten men who tried to change the system this year took on a mammoth task. Because of new admissions policies and a zephyr of twentieth century elagitarianism, they thought that they stood a chance. But the monolith was immobile, and the Gentlemanly Revolt wouldn't work. The attitudes of the students, the administration, the aulmni were not easy to change.
When it was all over last month, and the committee knew it could not do a thing, one of the members said it would be at least ten years before the system would change. And he was being optimistic. Very optimistic.
(Tomorrow: A timid administration, a fanatic alumni, and a complacent student body caused this year's Bicker revolt to fail, and could keep Princeton's peculiar anachronism around for a long, long time.)