Already it was becoming difficult for an entirely new club to gain acceptance. In 1885, five men from Beck Hall who had not made a final club formed what has become Delphic. Since candidates were leary about joining such an upstart organization and members were few, the steward kept the clubhouse lights turned up all night to simulate activity within. Even later when J. P. Morgan and others had lifted the club to success, it was known by its early nickname, The Gas.

To become a final club, each organization merely decreed that its members could not join another final club. Other clubs, like Hasty Pudding or its rival in the class elections, Pi Eta, were considered "waiting clubs," and a man could join any number of these as well as all other organizations.

Since the undergraduate cannot belong to more than one final club, there is competition every year among the clubs for some candidates. For this reason, the sophomore often hears of how the clubs rank within the system. Any list of the "best" clubs, of course, varies with who is doing the rating. Porcellian, A.D. and Fly are frequently ranked together by members of all clubs as the most desirable three. Though other clubs will usually go along with this appraisal, they then rank their own club as fourth. Financial considerations as well as traditions play a part in these rankings. The A.D., with revenue from its downstairs barber shop and Briggs and Briggs, has both wealth and years behind it. The Bat, on the other hand, though its initiation fee of $30 and $10 monthly dues are comparatively low requirements, does not have the reassuring flow of revenue that marks many of its rivals. And because of the club's youth, Bat alumni cannot be counted on for heavy donations. Since prestige has been a consideration for so many years, all club members worry about the standing of their organization in the eyes of the College. Even Porcellian, once the end-all of the socially ambitious, realizes that it must now sell candidates not only on Porcellian in particular but on the merits of the club system.

Roosevelt Rejected

If times have radically changed from the beginning of the century when Porcellian could turn down Franklin Roosevelt for having an unbecomingly wide acquaintanceship, there are two causes. The first, President Lowell's House system was the most serious set-back; the second world war was the second. President Lowell, himself an honorary member of Fly, had long considered the club system undemocratic. "A club is useless," he once wrote, "unless you can keep somebody out." With the Harkness millions, Lowell saw a way to fill in the social chasm between the Gold Coast of Mt. Auburn street and the less wealthy students in the Yard. At first, the new House plan caused no decrease in club popularity. Men were still allowed to live in "rat houses"--the local boarding houses--and tended to choose those houses where their club friends were boarding. In the College dining Halls, a student was able to sign for 7, 14, or 21 meals a week, so that even if he lived in a House he could take his meals inexpensively at his club. When every undergraduate was forced to live in a college room and pay for all his meals, some club members could not afford the double expense and several clubs had to shut down. The thirties were also an era of merger and expansion. For example, the Phoenix and the Sigma Kappa, this latter a hold over from the fraternity years, combined and went final. And the clubhouse of Spee, a group which 80 years before had been the Harvard chapter of Zeta Phi, was typical of the building and decorating of the 1930s.

And so while clubs like Stylus, K.G.X., and Alpha Phi Sigman dropped from the College roster, the more established clubs retrenched. With the beginning of the war and the occupation of the College by the navy, however, additional read-justment was necessary. The Hasty Pudding was converted to an Officer's Club, the Signet, Harvard's undergraduate literary society, turned its building over to the Red Cross. Again, it was only the active and loose-fisted alumni that pulled many of the final clubs through the three-year occupation by the military. With the end of the war and the upsurge of the veteran, the clubs edged back into activity but most members realized that the cycle was now complete. The clubs, which had started as pleasure-bent groups of little import and which had swelled to become the leading center of activity in the College, had been stripped of much prestige, importance, and self-importance. The clubs have settled on the even plateau of the past seven years, with claims of service to members and no disservice to the rest of the College.

To everyone, of course, the clubs have not waned in importance, as the Deans' Office found out several years ago. In the Rollo book, University Hall made the error of belittling the influence of the clubs on the undergraduate. Outraged alumni of the final clubs would not hear of such heresy. They beleagured the deans with protests, pointing out that many of the most active alumni and boosters of the College have been members of final clubs.

According to Robert B. Watson '37, associate dean and a past member of A.D., "the club system doesn't hurt the College at all." He points out that the status and number of the clubs is now quite stable. Bat, with rooms above the Gold Coast Valeteria, is the only club begun since World War II. The last previous addition was in 1941 when Iroquois went final.

"No Club" Club

Besides Hasty Pudding and Pi Eta, there are three other non-final social clubs in the College, Speakers, S.A.E. and the N.C. S.A.E., the only fraternity which has survived at Harvard, is affiliated with the national organization, but has successfully petitioned that its rules be freer, particularly as to discriminatory clauses. As a result, S.A.E. at Harvard has no race or religious restrictions. The N.C. club was first begun in 1940 and resurrected after the war. It is the "No Club" club, lists itself as a secret organization, and meets occasionally in the rooms of its members, in Dunster and Lowell House.

Dean Watson meets a few times a year with the undergraduate presidents of all the final clubs and occasionally sits in on joint meetings of this group and the eleven graduate presidents. One of the chief duties of these men is setting up a workable agreement between the clubs to cover the weeks of punching. Until 1947, the punching rules held only that no student could be elected before the fifth Monday of his third term in the College. Some clubs held elections at that time, a few held off until after the Yale game, and the rest elected in December. Since this meant that a sophomore had to decide on an early invitation before receiving possible others, revised rules changed all elections to the same night, the first Wednesday in December. To case the long term of punching, the clubs had a moratorium of about three weeks, from the end of October untily Armistice Day, when no club could punch sophomores. Even with this revision, some members were victims of the system, spending too much time dining prospects and not enough time studying to keep off probation.

Cut Season

This year, after surveying last year's expenditures in money and man-hours, the club presidents voted to cut the punching season drastically. As a result, though the clubs began sifting through last year's Freshman Register early in the term for likely candidates, no canvassing could begin before Friday, November 13th. But after that no graduate of what the College terms "Special Preps" is safe: an alumnus of the Episcopal schools, St. Paul's, St. Mark's, Groton, may receive punch invitations from a majority of the clubs. Preliminary punches are generally held in the College room of a club member, since non-members among the undergraduates are not allowed within the club houses. If he passes close scrutiny at the punches, the candidate is then asked to a club dinner, sometimes held at the Signet or the Boston Harvard Club. Should he reach the final dinner the candidate can be quite assured of an invitation to join; but there are frequent exceptions. Election night (this year it was last night) the members gather at the club to discuss all the candidates who have survived the punching. Since there are no quotas, the clubs invite as many or as few as they wish. The average is about 15 invitations in those clubs which get a majority of the sophomores they invite. Porcellian, however, will sometimes take only four or five in what members call a "lean" social year. Clubs not so well-endowed financially must send out greater numbers of invitations and must invite more members throughout the year since dues are essential for club up-keep.

In voting on candidates, the clubs follow tradition. Members are handed a basket of black and white balls. To approve a candidate, the member picks out a white ball; the negative action in this type of voting has added an unpleasant word to the vocabulary. Two black balls are usually necessary to keep a candidate out of the club. Candidates sometimes make agreements that they will join only that club which will take their friends. "In voting," one member said, "you must often ask yourself whether it's worth taking two or three people you don't want to get one person you do; usually, of course, you decide it isn't."

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