World War II came as another shock to the system. The Hasty Pudding Club, normally the first step towards Final Club membership, was turned into an Officers' Club, and undergraduates were speeded through college in an accelerated military program.
Today the Clubs' problems are not so dramatic as wars or depressions. Rather they are the result of gradual changes in the College itself. With rising standards of admission at Harvard, less and less "club material" from the Eastern prep schools is being accepted into the University. And the "preppies" that do come are often so interested in their academic work or else forced to spend so much time on their studies that they don't use the Club as much more than an occasional convenience. There is a good deal of grumbling from graduates in the Club lounges that "Things are not what they used to be here. In my day, you could come into the Club and find the bar filled from five o'clock till midnight."
Nor is the new type of "Clubbie" interested in devoting a lot of time and money to the punching season, and Club presidents often have to scramble around to recruit members to attend the various punching functions. Of course there is still a hard core of devoted members who haunt the Clubs morning, noon, and night--but they seem to be a slowly-dying breed.
A great many of the more liberal Club members are also eager to dispose of some of the stuffer rules of the Club game. Abortive movements have recently been started in some Clubs to admit ladies more frequently, and a few members feel that the Clubs would enjoy a friendlier place in the College if classmates could be brought in for meals. At least, they say, older guests should be invited more often. But these movements generally run into polite but firm opposition from the graduates, who remember a day when the Clubs were close-knit little bands of intimate friends, which might be broken up by frequent intrusions of outsiders, no matter how attractive and pleasant. The Clubs, tradition-bound as they are, are strongly tied to graduate opinion.
The punching season also seems to be lagging in a world gone by. There once was a time when practically all the sophomores punched were convinced from the very start that they wanted to join a Club. They had been brought up in families or schools where the Clubs were considered an integral part of a Harvard career. But this is no longer true today. A great many punchees have little idea of what goes on in a Club and, because of the general mystery that surrounds the Club's inner workings, they are never really told. And so they join for rather shallow reasons--all their friends are doing it, or they hope their Club connections will help them later in a business career. Later some of shot-in-the-dark types grow to like Club life, but a few are disillusioned.
Finally, the Clubs are being caught in a financial squeeze of varying proportions. Real estate taxes are extremely high, the upkeep of those massive brick buildings is pretty exorbitant, and the maintenance of a steward and staff of waiters and cook does not come cheap. The average Club bill totals between $35