Universal and Environmental Influences on Star Clusters

There is now evidence that some aspects of compact star cluster formation and destruction are quasi-universal in nature, and some aspects depend on environment. But what do we mean by these terms, environmental and universal? Is one the dominant influence? How can things be both universal and environmentally dependent? In this contribution we first provide a brief historical overview, then examine evidence for both universality and environmental dependences, and finish by examining a new approach that both demonstrates the degree to which cluster mass functions are universal (i.e., to a level of roughly 0.2 in the Log over three orders of magnitude when normalizing by the star formation rate), and enables a method for quantifying 2nd-order environmental effects.