Playboy magazine has become part of the latest controversy surrounding the prestigious Harvard Club of New York.

Members of the Club have complained that the magazine, which is available to members in the club's basement barber shop, is an inappropriate purchase for the club.

The club is open to all dues-paying Harvard alumni and began allowing women to join in 1973.

According to Steven L. Singer '57, the club's house committee chair, members have never voiced concern about the magazine before. In fact, Singer said the club has subscribed to the magazine for many years.

"No women have raised the issue," he said. "No one has ever complained."

Josselyn G. Simpson '88, a vice-president of the club, said that ever since members became aware of the magazine's presence in the club's barber shop, female members have spoken up to oppose spending further club dues on Playboy.

"There is a general concern that it is inappropriate for a club with a growing women's membership," she said.

Other members see the push to remove the magazine as an attempt to censure the reading of the club's male membership.

According to Singer, some members have said that removing the magazine would be tantamount to "an abridgement of the First Amendment."

President Peter S. Heller '48 said most complaints voiced to him about the magazine were from members who objected to removing it from the barber shop.

"Some people are bothered by the censorship issues," he said. "Some people would object to Commentary or Cosmopolitan if we had those in the barber shop."

Because of the nature of the services provided by the barber shop, Simpson said it is an almost exclusively all-male environment.

Singer said the issue falls under the jurisdiction of the club's House Committee and will be discussed at a future meeting of the committee, possibly as early as the committee's meeting today.

"We're a small club," he said about the club's 10,000-member membership. "When somebody gets upset, we try to respond."

Singer stressed that the issue is not one of primary concern to the committee.