Last Call for Final Clubs

It's that time of year again. Once more we find ourselves directing drunk sophomores around our Houses well past midnight. We are accosted by strange picket lines on the way to the Science Center. Not since the last issue of The Lampoon has there been a sight less funny than the signs protesting women's suffrage that were hoisted by overly intoxicated initiates this week. (Yeah, and it was offensive and misogynistic too.) Not since last year's chicken scandal (when Phoenix Club hopefuls were required to keep live chickens in their dorm rooms for a week) have we had such vivid reminders of why final clubs are the most intellectually challenged organizations on campus. Not since last year's final club punch season have we seen our normally nice Harvard guys act using so few brain cells.

That's really the problem, isn't it? I call it the "nice guy syndrome," and I'm convinced its what has kept final clubs alive against all odds. The guys in final clubs aren't horned monsters concealing cloven hooves in their wing-tipped shoes. In section, on dates and in general, they're the kind of guys who are quick to share a laugh, help out a friend or hold open the door. Lest this column be relegated to the dusty collection of feminist anti-final club diatribes, I hasten to assure the reading public that some of my best friends are final club members.

Well, okay, not best friends. But that's not the point. The point is, final clubs, while made up of individually nice guys, become entities of enormous cruelty, stupidity and tastelessness. It is truly a case of the whole being more than the sum of its parts. No member is Mephistopheles, but they have all made a Faustian bargain; their honor and integrity for acceptance into the hippest social scene at Harvard.

Over the last 10 years this theory has been born out in the press. The great chicken scandal of '99 was only the latest in a series of disturbing events in the history of final clubs. The same year that the Skull and Bones club of Yale decided to tap women into its secret society, Harvard's now-defunct Pi Eta club was settling a 1988 alleged rape suit. In 1991 final clubs voted to adopt the College alcohol policy; three days later three clubs broke it. Later that same year Pi Eta closed forever, two rapes allegedly having taken place behind its doors.

During initiation itself, several clubs have been closed by alumni members in the past two years due to alcohol abuse or club destruction--the Owl was closed during one of its initiation events last fall. Leaving aside the all-important issue of their blatant sexism, final clubs provide an important social outlet on campus. But at initiation, final clubs take things too far.

When the College wisely severed its ties to final clubs in 1984, it continued to implicitly accept their behavior by refusing to crack down on initiation week. The line on final clubs from former Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III was always the same: we don't like them, but we have no jurisdiction over them. Well, initiation week is the time of year when the boundary lines become blurry. The mock protests on campus property and the drunken initiates stumbling around in Houses late at night are both clear incursions of the initiation process onto Harvard proper.

By cracking down on these parts of initiation, the University can put pressure on clubs to change their policies. House Masters and the Harvard University Police Department could team up to make sure that initiation stayed within final clubs doors. By cracking down on students for being drunk and disorderly in public, creating public nuisances or just violating under-age drinking laws, Harvard and its police (perhaps with the help of the Cambridge police) could make initiation week a real hassle for over-zealous punch masters.

The only downside of this proposal is that it punishes the least culpable members of final clubs--the ignorant initiates. Initiates are the most sympathetic of all final club members. They just want to be cool, to have a place to party--and if it means drinking until they pass out, so be it. They aren't yet a conscious part of the perpetuation of elitism and sexism that characterizes final clubs.

Getting busted by HUPD may seem a harsh penalty for these novices. On the upside, it may deter a few of them from actually going through with the whole initiation process. If getting punched meant a booze cruise, a cocktail party and an interview with the ad board, perhaps fewer nice guys would be willing to make the plunge.

And while they're at it, the University could issue an even more important ultimatum: admit women or face even more restrictions on events and behavior. If the University is serious about both student safety and women's rights, it should be sending that message loud and clear.

Meredith B. Osborn '02 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.