Last week in these pages, my fellow columnist Pavan Ahluwalia wrote about his experience bickering for a place in Ivy. He put forward the idea that all clubs should be bicker clubs, on the grounds that a free market system would somehow leave everybody better off. I'm not quite sure how the analogy was supposed to work - it was unclear whether the market was for clubs or for students - but he seemed to think that things would work out because 'if you didn't get into the Bicker club you wanted to join, 'chances are it wasn't your kind of place to begin with.' As it turned out, Pavan failed to get in to his club, but he wasn't bitter.

I'm a graduate student, which means I'm bitter by definition. It also means that I am above (well, certainly outside) what passes for undergraduate social life at Princeton. The eating clubs cannot touch me. Nor would they want to, I'd imagine. To a naive observer like me, Pavan's idea seems a bit misleading. It makes Bicker sound like a hard college course rather than a nasty social process. If you failed PHY 304, then fair enough, maybe it wasn't for you. However, the same can't be said about something like Bicker. You might as well say to a woman in Saudi Arabia 'Well, if they won't let you have a driver's license, cars probably aren't your thing anyway. Or voting, either.' From my perch high on Cleveland tower, it looks like the whole point of Bicker is to introduce some arbitrary social distinctions that leave some people excluded and unhappy, largely because there are other people who get a kick out of being in a club that no-one else can join.

All of which is obvious to undergrads, I suppose. It's completely bizarre to me, though. I come from a university system without frat-boys, eating clubs, exorbitant tuition or an insultingly high legal drinking age. The people there are so strange that it's not unusual for undergrads to drink in the same pubs as grad students. Or at the same tables, even. The thing that horrified me most about Pavan's article was his claim that the eating clubs 'have identities of their own' and that if people end up in a club not of their choosing, they are `unlikely to have much to say to each other.' What's more, he said, 'it isn't as if students are not exposed to enough diversity on campus.' I spilled my tea all over myself when I read this. But it didn't matter because I was laughing too hard to notice. Princeton! Diverse! Ivy and Cottage members having nothing in common! It was almost too much.

I suppose there's some evidence in support of this idea: some undergrads have blue Jeep Cherokees, and some have green ones. Some wear grey sweatshirts that say "Princeton" and others wear ones that just have a big orange "P" on them. A few rebels have ones that say "Yale Sucks" But, no, it won't wash. I'm from Ireland, and I can recognise self-satisfied homogeneity when I see it. I'm afraid that when I'm asked for examples of the stunning range and variety of the human condition, Princeton and its eating clubs do not spring to mind. After all, any campus where right-wing student organisations can successfully pass themselves off as an oppressed minority (as happened last year with the "Advocacy versus Tolerance" nonsense) has a seriously skewed distribution of political opinion.

Which is why the eating clubs, once again, are so interesting to me. People enjoy being different, at least as long as a few other people will be nonconformists with them. In the absence of any real grounds for difference, though, people will create it out of whatever comes to hand. Freud called this "the narcissism of small differences" In the generally stultifying political atmosphere around Old Nassau, clubs and residential colleges offer a pre-packaged identity and a peer-group of fellow clubbies. People can feel satisfied that they stand out from the crowd. It certainly works: alumni seem to identify with their clubs almost as much as with their class year. Even worse -- perhaps to justify the whole ridiculous exercise to themselves -- people sometimes appeal to a notional great tradition of club life at Princeton, which makes them sound like their grandfathers. Ah, the good old days -- no women, no Jews and a servant to bring you your dinner after class.

Perhaps I'm wrong: I'm only a grad student. What do I know? Maybe undergraduates are well aware of the tiny, worthless status distinctions which seem to structure their social lives. Or maybe there's life beyond the tiger regalia, brown Docs and birkenstocks. After all, these people aren't stupid, right? Surely they don't voluntarily buy those "Princeton 2000" flags and hang them on their walls?I'm afraid I remain unconvinced. From the outside, it looks like most Princeton students just open their mouths and cheerfully swallow the deal the University sells to their parents. Old Nass, ivy-covered halls and 250 years of smug, complacent conservatism. Looking around at the moment, I don't see much to contradict this view. But go on -- surprise me.