jks wrote:
> I believe it is my own undergrad alma. Tigertown, that
> has the dining clubs. You can read about them in
> Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise. He attended but did
> not graduate. The clubs had not changed much, apart
> from the admissionof women (to some of them) from his
> time when I went there. I never joined one. What they
> have at Hahvahd, I wouldn't know.
Yes, Princeton has the eating clubs, Harvard has the finals clubs, and Yale has the secret societies. Princeton's clubs primarily serve as private dining halls. Harvard's primarily serve as private bars.
The Yale clubs have a potential tax problem if the IRS ever thinks about why they're classified as charities. In essence, they have all the worst aspects of frats without the possible redeeming virtue of going bankrupt anytime soon. The Yale clubs have real operating costs but don't provide enough value to actually charge the members. The Harvard and Princeton clubs survive like most clubs do, by charging for what they provide the membership.
With one exception, the Harvard clubs have a very limited tax exemption (as social clubs, they are not taxed on receipts members, but donations to them are not deductible). The exceptions are the Signet Club, which has 501(c)(3) status for no discernible reason.
The Princeton clubs are taxed similarly (although there is a small "charity" set up to funnel exempt contributions to the various Princeton clubs. According to an article in the Daily Princetonian a few years back, the IRS agent in charge of an audit of one of the entities involved signed off on this relationship as long as 50% of the contributed funds actually went to lectures and the like. It's not clear what the justification was, although I suspect it was because the money involved was relatively small.)