Delphic Club Members Hired Strippers for 2010 Punch Event

UPDATED: April 19, 2017 at 2:12 a.m.

Graduate members of the Delphic Club hired strippers to entertain a handful of undergraduates at an October 2010 punch event held in a graduate’s South Boston apartment.

In a series of emails sent in October 2010, the members describe plans to eat a late dinner together at a restaurant before traveling to the graduate member’s apartment to drink. They also discuss hiring two women from Shamrock Entertainment, a company which bills itself as “New England’s #1 source for the finest female and male exotic dancers and strippers for any occasion.”

“Shamrock Entertainment has promised me two of their finest, classiest, beautiful young ladies for tomorrow night,” Christopher J. Rouches ’10, a graduate member of the Delphic, wrote in an email to a group of Delphic graduates organizing the event. “So, the more Alumni support the better.”

“You won’t want to miss the seamless transitions on the double-ender (you’ll see what I mean tomorrow, it’s truly awe inspiring),” added Rouches, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The emails, which until recently were publicly available through the email service Google Groups, illustrate some Delphic members’ attempts to entice sophomores at the College to join their ranks in 2010. In this case, those efforts took the form of hundreds of dollars spent on food, alcohol, and erotic entertainment.

“We have entertainment lined up at our place at 11, so we’re hoping to get there at 10 and play edward 40-hands pre-show,” Thomas E. Southworth ’09, another graduate, wrote. “The entertainment is 350 before tips/extracurriculars.”

The 2010 event formed part of that year’s iteration of the Delphic’s punch—the secretive weeks—long process by which final clubs select new members at a series of events. Graduate members of these clubs sometimes participate in punch, planning and hosting events.

Southworth wrote in an email to Delphic graduates at the time that he had decided to “run point on the younger grad Boston punch dinners” for the 2010 season.

In a later email, he detailed the schedule for the evening’s festivities, and asked that each graduate pay for one punch “the whole way through.”

“We’ll have plenty to drink,” he added. “Should be a fun night… Fucking pumped.”

In an emailed statement Tuesday, Southworth wrote that he did not receive official approval for the 2010 event from the Delphic.

“This was an isolated event hosted by a small number of recent graduates in Boston seven years ago,” Southworth wrote. “The event was sanctioned neither by Harvard nor the Delphic Club and should not reflect negatively on either.”

“It should not have happened then and would not happen today,” he added.

John R. S. Jacobsson ’90, the Delphic’s graduate board president, declined to comment for this story.

In an interview Tuesday, a Shamrock Entertainment employee who identified himself as the office manager—but refused to give his name—said that he did not remember the 2010 event specifically. A 2005 Crimson magazine article described final clubs occasionally hiring strippers for punch events.

“What happens at the shows is pretty confidential. Customers do their things—it’s just our business to bring customers the entertainment,” the man said. “The adult entertainers get there, they do their job, and they leave.”

Details about the 2010 punch event come at a time when the Delphic is grappling with pressure from Harvard to accept women as members. In May 2016, University President Drew G. Faust announced penalties on undergraduate members of single-gender social organizations, barring these students from certain fellowships, leadership positions, and athletic team captaincies starting with the Class of 2021.

In a letter to alumni obtained by The Crimson last May, graduate president Jacobsson and graduate vice-president David S. DeSimone ’98 laid out reasons for and against adding women to the club. The letter also mentioned that the Delphic was exploring the possibility of a merger with a female final club, and had already held “introductory meetings” with the all-female Bee, IC, and La Vie clubs.

But recent Delphic Club members did not seem interested. The letter estimated that undergraduate members at that time would vote against adding women as members “by a healthy majority.”

In a publicly available email sent to graduate members of the Delphic at the start of the 2010 punch process in September, then-undergraduate Delphic members Nigel Munoz ’12 and John K. “J.T.” Tomes Jr. ’12, who led that year’s punch, thanked graduates for their contributions to punch events in the past. They added that they hoped members would remain involved in the upcoming weeks.

“May I just take the time to thank the large numbers of you who continue to be involved with the club and help every year to make the Delphic punch process unrivaled amongst the finals clubs,” Munoz wrote. “Both myself and J.T. were heavily influenced by dinners and trips made possible by the generosity of graduate members and this is a tradition we hope to continue.”

Munoz went on to outline a broad schedule for that year’s punch process—including trips to Washington D.C. and New York—writing that he and Tomes aimed to have “as many dinners and events hosted or aided by graduate members as possible.”

“It goes without saying that as many of our punches as possible will be wined and dined in and around Boston during that time period,” he wrote.

—Staff writer Hannah Natanson can be reached at hannah.natanson@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hannah_natanson.