But Ambroseno says very few young people actually show up to these events.

"Younger members seem to be more interested in getting out and finding a job," he says. "They don't have the time or desire [to join a club].... They still have the feeling of a stodgy club, or they're too busy trying to find out what they're doing in life."

In hope of changing the current trend, some Harvard alumni clubs have been trying to exorcise their old boys' image.

The Harvard Club of New York now has a "recent graduates' room" with a pool table and wide-screen television, according to the Times.

Committee Created

McDougall says the Harvard Alumni Association has created a Recent Graduate Committee, whose mission is to entice younger graduates to involve themselves with alumni clubs.

The Harvard Club of Washington, D.C., has followed suit. Marks says the 2,500-member organization has set up its own committee of recent graduates to develop hipper activities for twentysomething consumption. The club is the nation's third largest, with annual membership dues of $50.

Other clubs have also tried to increase their appeal to Generation X graduates by electing younger alumni to their boards, McDougall says.

Activities at alumni clubs have branched away from traditional dinner-lectures and gatherings.

Members of the Washington club have arranged white-water rafting and bicycling trips, community service work and beer-tasting gatherings, Marks says.

Gillberg says the Boston club has sponsored Thanksgiving and Easter buffets, mixers, ballroom dancing instruction and wine-making dinners.

But the movement to attract the young is not confined to Harvard alumni clubs.

The Yale Club of Boston planned an advertising campaign last year for which they developed a "jazzier, more appealing" mailing for graduates, says Murray Wheeler Jr., president of the club. And MIT alumni clubs jumped on the band wagon with bungijumping outings and Shakespeare festivals, according to Janet L. Serman, associate director of the MIT alumni association.

Still, the two Harvard alumni clubs that have their own clubhouses--the New York and Boston clubs--have retained some of their tradition, if not necessarily their stuffiness.

The older of the Boston club's two buildings, a five-story clubhouse built in 1913, boasts old-world mahogany furniture and paneling. It also requires members to wear coats and ties on the first floor and above, Gillberg says.