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...
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