The bubble burst prematurely last Saturday night at “Mather Lather”—proclaimed by organizers and attendees the largest House party in Harvard’s recent history.

After just over two hours of near-naked bumping-and-grinding, Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) turned off the music, cleared the dance floor, and ushered scantily-clad co-eds off into the nippy night.

Police officials said that the masters asked them to pull the plug on the foam-covered revelry because of concerns about overcrowding.

House Master Sandra Naddaff, who was not present at the party, said that HUPD was called by resident tutor Nava Ashraf, but was unsure of what Ashraf told the police.

Ashraf could not be reached for comment yesterday.

“It was overcrowded and things were getting a little out of hand,” said HUPD spokesperson Steven G. Catalano. He said that after receiving a call around 11:40 p.m., a dozen HUPD officers shut the event down around 12:15 a.m. Officers from the Cambridge Police Department monitored the breakup, but didn’t go inside, Catalano added.

The crowd numbered between 1,000 and 1,300, according to estimates by House Committee co-president Zachary A. Corker ’04 and House Committee (HoCo) secretary Darren S. Morris ’05, who also said that it took about a half hour to clear out the party.

“People were having such a good time that even after the police arrived, they kept dancing and grinding and playing in the foam,” Morris said.

Both the masters and the HoCo members worried that overcrowding might be a problem at the party.

“[HoCo] was worried that the advertising campaign had been too successful,” said Brian W. Flanagan ’04. “They were joking about being expelled, but they gleefully accepted their own success.”

The Mather HoCo began to poster two weeks before and sent all undergraduates an e-mail containing the link to a promotional website the Sunday before the event.

“It was a victim of its own success,” said Mather resident Hunter A. Maats ’04.

After only printing 600 $5 tickets—which sold out by noon Saturday—HoCo continued to sell between 100 to 200 more tickets throughout the rest of the day as well as $10 tickets at the party entrance, according to Morris.

“We weren’t sure how successful it would be, so we’d only told the box office to print out 600 tickets,” Morris said. “But once they sold out, people just started coming to Mather looking to buy tickets.”

Morris said that HoCo had “no specific set limit” for the number of students they would accept into the party. “We were just gauging that once it got full we would stop selling tickets.”