Tilghman appoints working group on campus social and residential life

President Shirley M. Tilghman has asked a 13-member working group composed of undergraduates, faculty and staff to review Princeton University's goals regarding undergraduate on-campus social and residential life, and to consider several questions that were raised but not fully addressed last year by a task force that focused on relationships between the University and the eating clubs. 

In her charge to the new working group, she asked it to examine, among other topics, the following issues that were raised by the task force:

  • How can undergraduate social and residential life be enhanced and improved on campus?
  • How can the University enrich the social and residential experience in the residential colleges?
  • What is and should be the role of fraternities and sororities at Princeton?
  • Is it desirable, and if so, feasible, to reintroduce a campus pub?

Tilghman indicated that "these questions are timely, in part because they arose out of the campus-wide conversation that was facilitated last year by the Eating Club Task Force, and in part because the four-year residential college system is now fully in place, as are other recent additions to campus life like the Carl Fields Center and Campus Club."

Tilghman asked the working group "to provide ample opportunity for members of the campus community to offer comments, perspectives and suggestions," and to aim to issue its report during the spring semester.

The working group will be co-chaired by Vice President for Campus Life Cynthia Cherrey and Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee, who chaired the Eating Club Task Force and co-chaired an earlier Task Force on Health and Well-Being

The undergraduate members will be Cesar Devers '11, a residential college adviser in Rockefeller College, vice president of the Black Box Theater Dance Club and events chair at Charter Club; Samuel Dorison '11, vice president of the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) and a former chair of the Whitman College Council; Angela Groves '12, a member of the Eating Club Task Force; Cameron Hough '13, junior coordinator of the Leadership and Mentoring Program at the Fields Center and former social chair of the Class of 2013; and John Monagle '12, chair of the USG Projects Board.

The other members of the working group will be Christina Davis, director of student life in Whitman College; Thomas Dunne, associate dean of undergraduate students; Jeff Nunokawa, professor of English, master of Rockefeller College and a member of the Eating Club Task Force; Michael Olin, director of student life at Wilson College; Robert Sandberg, lecturer in English, theater and the Lewis Center for the Arts; and Susan Teeter, head coach of women's swimming.