Undergraduates said graduates had been displeased with their actions in the club, including irresponsible behavior resulting in club damage.

After a few weeks the graduate board reversed its decision and allowed members inside its doors once more, but during Senior Week the Spee club followed suit and shut down to undergraduates as well.

Members said the graduates made the decision to close because undergraduates had been violating the no guest policy. The graduates, now in town for reunions, wanted to be able to use an orderly club.

Before these two incidents, the last time a club had closed to members was the D.U. club, which disbanded in 1995 after similar kinds of problems.

With comparable conflict, the A.D. and the Spee could be the next clubs to follow the route of the D.U. club, disbanded in 1995.

Early that year, a member had been involved in a violent incident with a football recruit. When D.U. Graduate President Louis I. Kane '53 attempted to implement stricter guest policy rules, the undergraduates refused to comply.

Because of the conflict, the club closed for good. Now the old home of the D.U. on 45 Dunster St. houses the corporate headquarters of Nantucket Nectars.

Mind the Gap

Phoenix S.K. (PSK) graduate president Andrew F. Saxe '87 says active graduate members tend to be in their early 20s or 50s and 60s because men with families have less time to devote to the clubs.

The graduate board, as the elder group, perhaps feels naturally compelled to act as the supervising body, enforcing rules and regulating membership and guest visits in order to protect themselves even if they may be just out of college.

Saxe says the closings have been in the works for at least three years--about the same amount of time as the D.U. closing.

Former PSK member Gregory R. Halpern '99, who left the club because they would not admit women as members, says the graduates and undergraduates were in constant conflict.

"I think there's always pretty consistently tension--like whether there is supposed to be a stereo in the main room," he says.

He says the incident last April showed undergraduates that graduates would be more willing to directly stop them from endangering the club.

"[The graduate members] got there early, and they were sitting inside saying, `I don't think there is a party tonight,'" he says. "No one invited people inside."