Wilson College turns 50

Mostly, Princeton made an impact on me. But there was one point at which I may have made a small contribution to the University. It had to do with the establishment of Wilson Lodge.  

In the spring of 1957 a small group of sophomores decided not to participate in bicker. Since I had never been interested in the clubs or anything like a “rush,” I joined the group. The University was thrust into the position of having to provide a place for us, and by the beginning of our junior year (fall 1957), Madison Annex provided our well-appointed and comfortable dining quarters. (And we had provided the University a safety valve for the failures of bicker when the handful of students were left unchosen.)

The Prince reported the election of a public school grad (me) as president, as well as the election of a Kent School preppie (my roommate, Mike Ellis) as secretary. We won with backing by “various radicals and anarchists in opposing the more stable group of boys which began the whole operation last year.”

A November 1957 Prince editorial termed this “an alternative to the club system, rejecting the selectivity of the Bicker and seeking a setting in which independence and socialization with faculty could flourish [that] flew in the face of entrenched notions.” One of our first acts was to prepare “A Word About Wilson” – an informational pamphlet that explained Wilson Lodge as a place that was not to be the “dumping ground” for those considered unacceptable on Prospect, but a viable new alternative based on a different vision. We also needed to draft a constitution. By the end of November, one of our goals was in place: Wilson had become a place where faculty regularly accepted invitations to dine.  

But there was soon conflict in Eden: On Nov. 11, the Prince reported that seven of us were at odds with Dean Lippincott’s latest plan to structure the new facility. Originally dorm rooms and eating facilities were to be housed together. Then it was announced that they would be separate. I think we feared there would never be a place to call our own. Thus the cry, “Double cross!”  

We were warned by the chair of the bicker committee not to make Wilson Lodge “a battleground of ideas.” To which a name-withheld letter responded by praising the lodge’s chaos of ideas and expression, proclaiming “battleground in Wilson better than cemeteries on Prospect.”

Wilson was a battleground: I was accused of incompetent leadership and was embroiled in personality conflicts with other members.   An effort to oust me failed by one vote. The exact specifics of the conflicts are not well described in the Prince, nor are they clear in my memory. Undoubtedly they had to do with the challenges of starting something radically new and trying to do it in a way that was satisfactory to a dozen independent-minded sophomores (by now, juniors).

On Dec. 17, the Prince reported that I and the secretary had resigned after splits over how the organization should operate.

I continued as a member of Wilson Lodge throughout my junior year, enjoying the setting, the food, and especially the opportunity to host University faculty at meals. The following names of guest faculty appear in my letters home: George Thomas, W.D. Davies, Horton Davies, Paul Ramsey, Van Harvey (all of the religion department, my major), Holland (geology), Pittendrigh (biology), and Julian Hartt (visiting from Yale). During my senior year I left Wilson and was independent.

That was my “15 minutes of fame” on campus. I have nothing but positive memories re: Princeton in general or Wilson Lodge in particular. Perhaps there were insights and facts in the above that will enhance the historical record.

I hope the organizers of the 50th anniversary celebration of Wilson College will at least give a nod to the actual birthdate of Wilson Lodge, which would be spring 1957. That was when around half a dozen intrepid sophomores, after a couple of years of especially horrendous bickers, announced to the University that they would refuse to bicker and that they believed the University owed it to them to provide an alternative “facility” for their dining and socializing. In support of this mini-movement, a couple of them did original research in the library of the effort by President Woodrow Wilson [1879] to alter or eliminate the club system. The University, much to our surprise, responded well; and by the fall, the old Madison dining hall of Commons was renovated and made into a comfortable two-room facility with, I recall, excellent meals. The name Wilson Lodge clearly began to be used then. Lacking faculty “masters,” as Wilson had hoped for, members were permitted and encouraged to invite their favorite faculty members to join us for dinner and informal conversation from time to time; I can recall Richard Blackmur and John Wheeler (Einstein’s associate) and some other eminences making some memorable evenings.

The rest, as they say, is history. Though I have not visited Princeton over the years, I have followed with great delight the accounts in PAW of the development of the college system. And when a Princeton alumnus asks me what my club was, I am proud to answer: “Wilson Lodge.”

So congratulations to Wilson College! And don’t forget the little band that likes to imagine that we got it all started.

I look back on my Wilson years with much fondness. The comfort and community, as a scared and nervous freshman, of having not one, but six suitemates, and soon knowing hundreds of familiar and friendly faces ... and the continuing pleasure, as a sophomore, of being able to choose as roommates not one, but five, of my best friends.  

Best memories? The after-dinner volleyball games: people of all ethnicities, ages, fashions, studies, talents, and interests, sharing a friendly competition, every evening, until the last trace of light had disappeared and we no longer could even pretend to see the ball.

I was present at the birth of Wilson College. So the PAW letter (Nov. 17) from Owen Curtis ’72 and the news of a 50th-anniversary celebration for Princeton’s first college prompted a rush of warm memories of my years at Wilson.  

Toward the end of my freshman year (1968), wild rumors began to circulate about the Wilson Society becoming something called a “college.” It was to be nonselective (first-come, first-served or lottery if oversubscribed), open to all four classes in near-equal proportions, and encompassing what were then the best residential facilities on campus:   stylish suites, great dining/party facilities, comfy game and TV rooms, and even a little satellite library with study areas. Freshmen and sophomores, joyous at the prospect of never again having to make the trek to Commons, and upperclassmen politically opposed to the elitism of Bicker, quickly signed up. So did I and many of my friends.

On our return the next fall, we found we not only had amazing rooms and great food just across the quad, but we were now members of a community that embodied and helped to enable the radical changes that Princeton (and the nation) were experiencing at that time. Wilson, it turned out, attracted a high proportion of the radicals, black students, artists, hippies, and intellectuals. And most importantly, many of the new coeds were to join Wilson as well. It was the home base for subversives and outliers of all stripes. But Wilson wasn’t just the locus of leftist revolution.

Owing to the likes of Greg Felch ’70, our well-connected social chairman, Wilson’s parties became the talk of campus. Who can forget the several appearances of the Philly band Cat Mother and the All-Night Newsboys; or the famous Tom Jones Night, where we screened the movie at dinner and served roast chicken, boiled potatoes, corn on the cob, and chocolate pudding … with no silverware? By the time we got to the sexy oyster-eating scene in the movie, a spirited food fight was in full swing. For months afterward we were scrubbing pudding out of the corners of the ceiling and retrieving food projectiles from light fixtures. So it was soon clear that notwithstanding our commie sensibilities, we knew how to have a good time. And we were formidable jocks, too.   Since Wilson was so much larger that the clubs, we routinely beat them at virtually all the intramural sports.   This seemed to grate on Tiger, but it did serve to cement Wilson’s reputation as a happening place. Well, that and the women.

Before the end of my sophomore year, Wilson held elections for “officers” (I use the term loosely, because there wasn’t much respect for anything “official.”) Just for the heck of it I ran for chairman, in large part because the title sounded so attractively Maoist. To my surprise, due to an electoral fluke I won. Votes were split between the several cool upperclassmen (who should have won), while underclassmen voted for me (as one of their own, I suppose, but mainly because my stock had soared when my freshman prom date – from Sarah Lawrence and a former Miss Arizona – had become the stuff of legends by doing the gator in an iridescent silver miniskirt).  

As the second chairman of Wilson (the first to serve a full-year term), I was given the extraordinary privilege of working closely with Julian Jaynes and John Fleming, the first and second masters of the college. Julian gave selflessly of his time and wisdom despite being consumed in the writing of his monumental book, The History of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind – a  work that presaged current neuroscience at a time when nobody in academia wanted to talk about evolving brain structure and function as impacts on human cultural development. In memory of Julian, I recommend we all join the Julian Jaynes Society (http://www.julianjaynes.org/).  

And how can I praise John Fleming in some new way? It has all been said before. I suspect that everyone who meets John comes to love him. He looms in my heart as one of the most admirable and amiable people I’ve ever known. His gawky, good-humored, immensely intelligent warmth made all us outsiders feel like we were welcome, like we belonged.  

We should also praise Marvin Bressler, Neil Rudenstine, and of course then-President Goheen who, like Woodrow Wilson before them, bucked the entrenched social system to offer a new form of residential life at Princeton.  

Wilson failed in his efforts to establish residential colleges (some say that failure was the main reason he moved out of Prospect down the street to Drumthwacket, and then to the White House). But everyone who cares about Princeton should be proud that Wilson’s successors did create a genuinely egalitarian, vibrant new community on campus, appropriately named in honor of him.

When my intended roommates and I got a low number for room draw, we joined forces with others and drew a 10-person, two-level suite in 1939 Hall – 131 1939, to be exact. While Wilson College would not have been a top choice for any of us, it turned out to be a great year socially. Across the way were 12 female classmates in Gauss in a suite called the Zoo, downstairs were six football players, and in the next entry some basketball players and their roommates.

I remember the food in Wilson College being accessible and good by the standards of the day – never having had a cheesesteak before Princeton, I ate four for lunch one day. We had a lot of knitters, watched All My Children (I think; I was not a devotee) religiously, made tons of popcorn illegally, and watched the news when Reagan was shot.  

Almost all of us are still in touch after almost 30 years. We have a photo of us on the stairs at Wilson College that we have replicated in later years as well: Pretty ’80s fashions abound.

Fun to remember that year – probably the year when we had the most college fun at Princeton!