It slid under the door on a breath of cold air: a slim, cream envelope, a full name in script on the Crane-style paper. On the other side, a wax seal of a...frog?
“It was the first rubber stamp we could find,” explained Kevin Koo ’07, a board member of the Race, Culture, and Diversity Initiative, the group that organized the event.
The invitation promised all the glamour of a final club punch party, minus the exclusivity. On cottony paper, a line of calligraphy: “The Executive Board and members of The Race, Culture and Diversity Initiative request your company at a talk with Reverend Professor Gomes about the History of Final Clubs.”
The “talk” was an academic-style lecture in a crowded hall. Students sat on the stairs and perched near the projection room.
The motley crew was as disjointed as the refreshments (samosas and orange sorbet punch). Final club members clumped near the back, while on the stairs sat Mo Connolly ’06 of SASSI-WOOFCLUBS-—the group formed this year with a goal to shut down the elite, all-male social clubs.
Then there were BGLTSA members, sorority sisters, Signet literary types, UC President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 and curious freshmen—all summoned by e-mail lists, Yard posters or those classy invitations mocking the very institutions they were meant to reveal.
The 100 who received the envelopes were “student leaders, activists, people involved in the community,” said Koo, glancing anxiously at the door of Ticknor Lounge. He was supposed to be asking attendees to write their anonymous comments on final clubs on 3 by 5 index cards.
Those comments, read in serious tones by RCDI’s leaders, were as wide-ranging as the attendees: “They’re so mysterious,” read one. Another: “Final clubs make me sad.” And this one, which a freshman admitted was a joke: “They’re [expletive] hott!”
Following Gomes’ address to the packed hall was a meandering discussion, spanning everything from the sexual orientation of final club members to the reality of a student center as a social venue. Gomes couldn’t help but jump in.
“The main advantage of a final club is underage drinking,” he said. “A student union will never still that space because it can never offer underage drinking.”
John D. Cella ’08, who sat in the front row with a posse of freshmen, agreed.
“There’s just no social scene on campus that kids can be at,” he said. He left in the middle of the discussion, claiming, “I didn’t hear anything that new.”
