Cap and Gown Club

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Cap and Gown Club
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Location61 Prospect Ave, Princeton, New Jersey
Coordinates 40°20′53.9″N74°39′03.6″W / 40.348306°N 74.651000°W / 40.348306; -74.651000
Built1908
Architect Raleigh C. Gildersleeve
Architectural style Norman Gothic revival
Part of Princeton Historic District (ID75001143 [1] )
Added to NRHP27 June 1975

Cap and Gown Club, founded in 1890, is an eating club at Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Colloquially known as "Cap", the club is one of the "Big Four" eating clubs at Princeton (the others are The Ivy Club, University Cottage Club, and Tiger Inn). [2] Members are selected through a selective process called bicker. Sometimes known as "the Illustrious Cap and Gown Club," it was the first of the currently selective eating clubs to accept women. Though personalities of eating clubs certainly change throughout the years, Cap and Gown is described in F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise as "anti-alcoholic, faintly religious and politically powerful."

Contents

Cap was the most bickered eating club in 2011, 2013, 2014, and 2015. It has been the most selective club since 2013, with 287 students bickering in Spring 2019, thirty-five percent of whom were offered membership. [3]

History

Cap is located at 61 Prospect Avenue between Cloister Inn and the University Cottage Club. It is the only Princeton eating club to have stayed in the same geographic location for its entire existence. [4] Three Cap clubhouses have occupied this location. The first was completed in 1892. In 1895 when the club outgrew this clubhouse, the structure was moved across the street, and William Ralph Emerson was commissioned to design the second clubhouse (completed in 1896). Ten years later, Cap was ready to expand again. The Emerson building was moved away, and Raleigh Gildersleeve designed the clubhouse that Cap still occupies today. A major renovation and expansion of the clubhouse to increase the size of the clubhouse in step with its growing membership was completed in February 2011. [5]

On December 9, 2020, the Cap and Gown Club Board of Trustees unanimously approved a new financial aid policy that provides a grant to every member of Princeton University financial aid, guaranteeing that no member on full financial aid pays any out-of-pocket costs for club membership. [6]

Notable Cap and Gown alumni include Dean Cain '88, Brooke Shields '87, and Donald Rumsfeld '54. Neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield, who pioneered the concept of the brain homunculus, was also a member of Cap and Gown. [7]

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Sally Frank sued the three all-male eating clubs at Princeton University in 1978 for denying her on the basis of her gender. Over ten years later, in 1990 the eating clubs were defined as "public accommodation" and court ordered to become co-ed thanks to Sally Frank, her attorney Nadine Taub and the Women's Rights Litigation Clinic of Rutgers Law School. The eating clubs argued that they were completely private and separate from the university, giving them the right to sex discrimination. After many rounds in the courts, this argument eventually failed. The winning argument stated that the clubs were in fact not separate, and instead functioned as an arm of the university itself. This meant that the clubs were in the end covered by New Jersey's anti-discrimination law and forced to admit women.

References

  1. "Princeton Historic District". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service.
  2. Donaldson, Scott (2001). Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald . Bloomington, IN: iUniverse. pp.  27. ISBN   978-0-595-18170-4.
  3. "Admittance rate to bicker clubs drops by seven".
  4. Princeton University: An Interactive Campus History, 1746–1996
  5. "Cap and TI projects on schedule, Charter to begin construction soon - the Daily Princetonian". Archived from the original on 2011-03-01. Retrieved 2011-03-01.
  6. "The Cap and Gown Club".
  7. Shenstone, Allen Goodrich (Autumn 1982). "Princeton University Library Chronicle" (PDF). Princeton 1910-1914. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-05-18. Retrieved 2013-11-26.