The decision is admirable, but the provided justification utterly evades accountability.

In a Corner post published earlier this week titled Princeton's Nurseries, I criticized a policy adopted at a Princeton University eating club called Charter Club. An undergraduate Charter member brought conservative professor Robert P. George in for a meal, prompting overly sensitive students to file complaints. In response, the club adopted a policy requiring that the leadership approve guests for mealtime hours who are not friends or family. Although the policy might have been facially neutral, I doubted it would have been enforced neutrally with respect to political ideology, given that it was instituted because of a conservative's presence. I noted the irony that Charter made George an honorary member in 2012, and as recently as 2017, it sponsored a dinner with him as part of a fundraising initiative. I also emphasized that people – like the Charter students – who claim to support inclusivity want to exclude anyone who disagrees with them.

I obtained an email that was sent on Tuesday by Rodrigo Menezes, a Princeton alumnus and the chairman of the Board of Governors of Charter Club, which conveys that the board is intervening to reverse the policy. Now, all dues-paying members may continue to bring guests without any preconditions. The decision is admirable, but the provided justification utterly evades accountability.

Menezes wrote, The Club was considering a guest pre-registration policy and the Board has decided that the Club will not implement this policy. This is deceptive. Charter adopted the policy and was no longer considering it. It was already implemented, so the board decided to revoke it. Moreover, it was designed as a pre-approval – not a pre-registration – policy. The club president (who set forth a stunning oxymoron by asserting Charter is an inclusive private club ) simultaneously claimed that it would never deny a member's request to bring a guest and that prior review would be required. What is the purpose of review in the absence of approval or denial?

Menezes continued in his email, It is regrettable that the motivations of this policy may have been misperceived. I made the argument that it was precisely because of George's conservative views that complaints were raised, since he wasn't engaging in any disturbing conduct. And according to the student-run newspaper the Daily Princetonian, Menezes confirmed that the policy was in response to members' discomfort at the presence of Professor George, which they expressed to club officers. So where exactly is the alleged misperception? Maybe if either Menezes or the current Charter president had responded to my email requesting a comment, I could have better characterized the motivations in question.

Menezes told the Daily Princetonian that the board's decision was based on civil discourse within the community, not pressure from national coverage, and the Board would have reached the exact same conclusion without national coverage. He continues, Our members and alumni reached out, telling us that this procedure could discourage members from bringing potentially controversial guests, limiting the club's capacity to act as a forum for civil discourse on campus.

Maybe – just maybe – the board did not consider the criticisms printed in conservative publications such as Fox News and National Review when it was debating whether to revoke the policy. But some alumni reached out to Charter because they were alerted to the policy by a national news outlet. I know this because I received direct messages from alumni telling me as much. So would the board really have reached the same conclusion in the absence of national coverage? I'm skeptical.

So, what's next for the club? One Charter alumnus, who is an LGBTQ+ activist with over 1 million social-media followers, stated in a TikTok video, If you are forced to include bigots and people who are not inclusive in your space, the best thing you can do is to be as loud and proud as you can to make them so uncomfortable that they don't want to be included anymore. So my advice to the current members of my former beloved eating club is that if you see this man [Robert George] or the kid who wrote the article in the club and you want to make an impact, put on some renaissance and a glittery thong and give it, girl.

Abigail Anthony is the current Collegiate Network Fellow. She graduated from Princeton University in 2023 and is a Barry Scholar studying Linguistics at Oxford University.