Elena Eiss ’28
Chaos broke out at Tiger Inn last Sunday at what was intended to be a light-hearted, unassuming Groundhog Day-themed rager. Fueled by sports betting-inspired rage, at least thirty Princeton undergrads were sent to the new Frist Health Center following a major brawl over the six-more-weeks-of-winter verdict from Punxsutawney Phil.
The Groundhog Day Darty has long been a tradition of Tiger Inn (TI), with similar celebrations by the eating club dating all the way back to when the quintessential Pennsylvanian rodent was given his legal name of Phil in 1961. Past events have involved everything from costumed weather-predicting reenactments to groundhog-themed trivia to screenings of the hit 1993 film Groundhog Day. TI has even sponsored trips for members to Punxsutawney on February 2nd for the holiday on multiple occasions in the past.
The 2025 TI Groundhog Day Darty was supposed to be no different with one exception: the introduction of sports-style betting on Punxsutawney Phil’s prediction.
TI’s doors opened at 6:25 am Sunday exactly one hour before sunrise in Punxsutawney when Phil would make his prediction. TVs and projectors were set up in every room of the eating club to broadcast news coverage of Phil’s prediction, and speakers blasted what the club could only assume would be Phil’s choice in music: the deluxe version of the Charlie XCX album Brat (given the similarity in name to the groundhog’s species relative the rat). Students quickly filed into TI despite the early hours given the occasion and the social capital gained by making it onto the Groundhog Day Darty list. Morning beers were passed around the tap room along with heaping plates of the traditional Pennsylvanian delicacy of scrapple, but the real showstopper was a massive, seven-tiered, hyperrealistic, groundhog-topped cake.
Just past the eating club’s bouncers sat TI treasurer-turned-bookie Nancy Taylor ‘25 at a table with an old-timey cash register and an Excel spreadsheet pulled up on her 2024 MacBook Pro. The plan was simple: party guests would place bets on whether Punxsutawney Phil would see his shadow or not.
In an exclusive interview with Tiger Mag Sunday evening, Taylor told us “I didn’t think it would be that big a deal! The thing sees its shadow or it doesn’t. But people took it so seriously… There was one guy who handed me five Benjamins and gave me the exact number of nanoseconds he thought it would take for that lame groundhog to see its shadow.”
By sunrise in Punxsutawney, TI had received over $20,000 in bets.
For the first time in an hour, the whole club went silent as everyone waited anxiously for Phil’s prediction: six more weeks of winter.
TI erupted in shouts. At first, they were the shrieks of the year’s lucky winners and ill-fated losers. Rita Hanson ‘26, who had bet $1.5k that Phil would predict six more weeks of winter after eleven seconds seemed to be the biggest victor. Hanson got up on the table where the hyperrealistic groundhog cake resided and screamed louder than everyone else “You don’t know groundhogs like I know groundhogs, you schmucks!”
Ned Ryerson ‘27 shouted back “It was ten seconds, you phake Phil phan!” Soon enough, the shouting turned argumentative as friends turned on friends, ten-seconders turned on eleven-seconders, and hands went flying as things got feisty.
Though no one managed to see which unlucky early-spring-guesser grabbed Hanson’s ankle, one tug was all it took to send her careening into the seven-tiered groundhog cake. The cake—whose chocolate-frosted layers were meant to look like Phil’s famous tree stump—crashed into the crowd, leaving dozens knocked to the ground with cake concussions.
The TI Groundhog Day Darty Incident has served as the new Frist Health Center’s first real test since it opened in January. Students were treated for wounds earned participating in the initial slap fight-turned full-on brawl, falling victim to the falling layer cake, and stampeding out of TI as fast as they could. Additionally, one student who has asked to remain anonymous out of threat of embarrassment had to undergo rabies treatment after the real live groundhog he tried to smuggle in bit him. “Turns out: not the vibe,” Buster Green ‘28 of Yeh College Hariri 2nd floor said as he showed Tiger Mag reporters the small wound on his arm. “Youch.”
Class of ‘27 Phil Connors, who was not in attendance, told Tiger Mag he wasn’t surprised by the turn of events. “Eh, same thing happened at yesterday’s Groundhog Darty. And at the one the day before. And the one the day before that.”
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