"Hi. This is Josh Shenk from The Crimson. Listen, I'm doing a story about the Bee club and I understand you're a member."

Silence.

"Are you a member of the club?

"I'm sorry, I don't have anything to say."

"Does the club exist?"

"I'm sorry," they would finally say, "I can't help you with your story."

Kristen L. Silverberg '92, who is listed by the state as president of "Bee Corp.," gave me this answer. So did the club's treasurer, Allison K. Hughes '94. Clerk Bryn G. Zeckhauser '93 didn't return my phone calls. Neither did Silverberg's successor, Honey East '93.

I didn't really have any leads in this story, but I tried my best anyway. Some friends on The Crimson began to dig around, too.

Two sophomores got particularly excited. I would get messages on my machine like "Josh, call me immediately. I've got a real break in the Bee story."

I would call. The "break," was usually something like this: "Okay, now I've got a friend, I can't tell you her name, but I'm sure she's in the Bee. She won't exactly tell me she is. In fact, she won't really tell me anything. But I'm working on it. Call you tomorrow,"

One reporter was 100 percent certain that the club was being funded by the Fly.

A Fly member told me he heard some Porcellan alum bankrolling the whole operation. A Radcliffe Union of Students source said the entire Inter-Club Council was in on the act.

The only Bee member who would give me the time of day spent an hour trying to convince me that the Bee wasn't anything unusual. I told her that, with the century-old tradition of all-male final clubs, the first-ever female final club would be news.

She wanted to know, though, if we would spend so much time reporting on a new newspaper. I said probably, but this was quite different.

"How?" she said. "Some people are good at writing newspaper stories. Some people are good at going to cocktail parties."