Amid all the uproar over Harvard's links to exclusive all-male final clubs last year, one elite Harvard institution stood quietly by, unaffected by the campus hoopla. Everyday around noon its male and female members, like their male cousins in adjoining stately homes, took out their keys and entered the hidden side entrance--into the world of china and teeny tea cups, oriental carpeted libraries, faithful servants and ancestral portraiture.

The place is the Signet Literary Society--or Siggy as its members affectionately refer to it--and for the last 116 years in its quaint yellow cottage on Dunster Street has been a better gathering place for some of the Harvard intelligentsia, than Ticknor Lounge, and yes, even better than Adams House.

Go to the Signet at 46 Dunster Street on any weekday afternoon, peek in a window, and gaze at a couple dozen students, faculty members, and guests sitting at two long tables nibbling on chicken salad and sipping chablis from goblets.

Don't go in the main door; it's locked. But walk in the side door to see what the Signet looks like inside. Perhaps you should tell a member-friend of yours that you're coming or you'll be asked to leave. Members cherish the exclusive nature of their club.

Leave your coat in one of the two cloakrooms, one for men and one for women, take a powder in the spacious bathrooms, and then enter the main dining room. Listen to the an editor of the Advocate chatting with Professor Adam Ulam about Moslem migrations in the Soviet Union. Hear a campus actor talk about the upcoming commencement orations with Richard C. Marius, head of Expository Writing.

Move to the library, where members are reading literary criticism magazines or books from the collection of old volumes sitting on decaying book shelves. Test the grand piano in the corner. The walls are covered with pictures of past Signet gatherings, mostly at one of the two big dinners held for present and past members each year.

If you look carefully, you'll see that a fair number of well-known figures who graduated from Harvard also graduated from the Signet--like Norman K. Mailer '43, George A. Plimpton '48, T.S. Eliot '10, and John H. Updike '54, Caspar W. Weinberger '38. Teddy Roosevelt Class of 1880, and Harvard presidents Percival Lowell Class of 1876 and James B. Conant '14 were honorary members.

Social or Literary Club?

Today, most Signet members stake their claim to fame by belonging to another literary, artistic or dramatic organization, or knowing enough members to get elected. As a result, the distinction between membership in the Society and the nine all-male final clubs has become increasingly blurred, spurring efforts on the part of some members to increase the cultural activity of the Society while opening up the election process.

Memberships on various campus publications like the Advocate, and the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatics Club are held at a premium by the members, who hold elections four times a year to determine whether students "put up" by other members should be asked to join the Signet's ranks. For an initiation fee of about $100 and a monthly charge of $40, members are entitled to eight lunches and invitations to other less frequent Signet events, like Friday afternoon teas.

Thirty-five sophomores, juniors and seniors form the core of the society's membership, which first assembled in 1871 when several juniors became fed up with the final club scene. More than 300 faculty members, administrators, and teaching fellows are called associate members after being handpicked by student members.

The election process is largely ritualistic, from the secret ballot by which candidates are elected or rejected to the initiation ceremony in the darkened Signet library where each member-elect must read an original piece of writing before an invisible crowd of taunting members. At the end of the ceremony, a red rose is given to each new member to be saved for posterity and one day returned to the club with the member's first book or significant work. T.S. Eliot's initiation rose is on display in the library today.

There are now 2000 living members, including both undergraduate and associate members, says John R. Marquand, an assistant dean and an associate since 1964. "Once you're a member, you're a member for life," he says.

Many members journey to Cambridge twice a year to participate in the annual spring and Christmas dinners. The most recent dinner Saturday night featured chicken by the Faculty Club, poetry by Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Seamus Heaney, and a speech by Helen H. Vendler, professor of English and American literature and language. The annual award for service to the arts was presented to Agnes Morgan, curator of the Fogg Museum for 50 years.

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