Following an atypical and probably unique pattern, I transferred in the fall of 1959 into the Princeton Class of 1961 from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, as a junior-level English major, whereupon I joined the newly established Wilson Lodge because it seemed to me to offer the most inclusive and non-discriminatory context for living as a Princeton undergraduate during my junior and senior years. At the time, without being deeply intrenched in the school’s history of eating clubs, I was grateful to my 1961 classmates for having made this option an alternative for me and for others in the future. Aware as I am now of the ironies inherent in the fact that the most liberating option on campus in 1959 for an upper-level student was a society named “Wilson Lodge,” bearing the name of an avowed racist, I fully support the University’s decision to dissociate itself as much as possible from Wilson’s reactionary policies. Time moves on. We gain perspectives on ourselves and society and what is right, and we keep trying to do better than we did in “our salad days,” when we were “green in judgment.”
In Response to: Princeton Renames Wilson School and Residential College, Citing Former President’s Racism