“I can’t really elucidate much on that,” Lamie says, referring to the auditions. “There are some things even people within the band don’t know.”

After the auditions, the senior staff then makes its decisions, although the selections don’t take place in a vacuum.

“While it’s not an election, we certainly seek input from the rest of the band,” he says.

A wide variety of organizations—from the fraternity Delta Upsilon to The Crimson—employ consensus-based systems of different sorts.

Lamie says such procedures afford current leadership a measure of flexibility in choosing its successors. They also provide some guarantee that future leadership meets certain criteria, meritocratic or otherwise.

Behind Closed Doors

And then there are those groups that don’t even come close to the middle ground.

In contrast to organizations that choose their leadership through open elections, there are also those that guard their rituals and processes jealously.

A prime example is the Lampoon, whose leadership selection procedures are insulated from the outside world. In fact, most of the titles borne by members of the Lampoon’s board of directors are inscrutable to the uninitiated.

Sean D. Boyland ’01-’03—the group’s “ibis,” or its second in command—explains facetiously that the organization’s selection process is meritocratic.

“It’s a series of fights,” Boyland says. “Sometimes there are small weapons involved.”

“We’re mainly interested in how well people fight,” he continues in jest. “That’s the merit we’re concerned about...Funny guys fight well. And funny ladies.”

Perhaps due to the secrecy that shrouds the Lampoon’s electoral process, few controversies over its leadership decisions have ever become public.

Yet freedom from public scandal is not enough to reassure some first-years that their aspirations are best invested in the Lampoon or similarly secretive organizations.

“The danger is you’re going to get small cliques running the whole thing,” Neil P. Herriot ’06 says.

—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.

This is the second article in a series examining student groups at Harvard. Tomorrow: Two years after turmoil, where does the IOP go from here?