At the heart of the system, unquestioned by even the 100 percenters themselves, lies the principle of selectivity. As a member of Key and Seal expressed it. "In a democracy we are supposedly free to become as exclusive or as gregarious as we like, and if in a club situation we choose to be exclusive, this is our privilege." From that bit of casuistry--more often expressed as an innocent belief that "you've got a right to choose your friends and the guys you're going to eat with"--the code of values can be relentessly deduced which summarily condemns certain personality traits, ethnic groups, and even scholarship, intellectualism, and originality themselves per se....

Flurries of protest have arisen subsequently on the Princeton campus. In 1918 and again in 1949, it was the demands of the students themselves which forced the clubs to consider the necessity of 100 percent, and finally compelled them to adopt it over strong alumni opposition. The principle has long since, however, degenerated from the intent of its founders, and this year was openly exposed as a patent farce.

At 2:10 in the morning, the meeting above at last breaks up and the decision descends. The sophomores in Ivy's dining room are hushed as they hear the verdict:

"...The ICC will take no responsibility for those who have refused to take bids to Prospect. They consider any reasons for reusing as invalid..."

And so the sophistry predicted by The Princetonian is made complete. Prospect held an open Bicker. Therefore any sophomore wanting to join a club could have gone to Prospect. Therefore 100 percent.

"...The ICC can determine no valid reason for distinguishing between Prospect Cooperative Club and the other 16 upper-class eating clubs, and holds that a bid to Prospect is as good as a bid to any other club. Nor can the ICC determine any valid reason for refusing an opportunity to join Prospect Club..."

They word the statement as firmly as possible, for they already know that no one, no one--least of all themselves--believes a single word of it. But the lie sustains the system for another year.

After a Bicker that took five extra nights of haggling to get a bid for everyone in 1955, The Daily Princetonian and other university organizations demanded the provision of an alternative to the club system. The result was the creation of the now discredited Wilson Lodge. It is in the rapid physical improvement of the Lodge plant, however, and the dim hope that it may eventually evolve into something akin to a Harvard House, that The Princetonian and most of the other critics of the clubs still look for salvation. Just such a project was placed before Woodrow Wilson as a suggested compromise with his demand that the clubs be abolished altogether and the "Quad Plan," as he called it, be made universal. Wilson rejected it. He thought such a "sample quad" would be doomed from the start since only men not in the clubs would join it. The proposal merely dodged the issue, left selectivity untouched, prolonged the evils of exclusion for both those who were in and those who were out--availed nothing, in short, toward the solution of the problem that tormented Wilson at Princeton: "the blighting of the intellectual interests of many of her best minds and finest spirits."

A petition passes among the 100 percenters (100 percenters, whatever other name illogic may give them). It objects that racial and religious discrimination has been exercised in excluding them from the clubs, and pleads for a reply, a public review, a denial or an explanation.

Fifteen sign it.

The ICC flatly refuses to recognize it.

If history and circumstances show anything, therefore, they clearly demonstrate that the evils of the club system will be effectively eliminated only if: 1) the reforms well up directly from the students themselves; and, 2) they strike at the central doctrine of the present system, the basic axiom of selectivity. Compared with all previous reformers, this year's freshman class could usher in the millennium immediately by unanimously signing a petition which would declare they will not join a club unless Bicker is abolished and the university administration is given unqualified authority to assign sophomores to the various clubs by applying the distribution principle to the applications submitted, just as is one in the case of the Houses and the "colleges" at Harvard and Yale.

But the Princeton conscience, both official and actual, has long grown jaded.

A few hours pass and despite going late to bed and the throb of stubborn hangovers, hundreds of undergraduates drag themselves to chapel Sunday morning, signing little white cards at the door to prove they've been there to get credit.

"The university is vitally concerned with all aspects of Bicker"--William D'O. Lippincott, dean of students, Princeton University--"but it has been, and still is, the policy to leave the conduct of club elections completely up to the undergraduates. We do not plan to use pressure to have these men integrated."