OBITUARY: Fun at Harvard, 1720-2007.

Fun for Harvard underclassmen, after a terminal illness that has plagued it for the last few years, was taken off life support today by Interim Dean of the College David Pilbeam.

“It was time to let the poor bastard go,” said Pilbeam. “The Harvard social scene for minors is so strange and inhibited, that this was one of the only things keeping it going. So of course the only thing we could do was kick it to death while it was down.”

Citing a number of legitimate reasons that will almost surely enrage undergraduates further, and accusing the Undergraduate Council (of all things!) of mishandling the funds with which it is entrusted, Pilbeam administered a decanal snowjob to the Party Fund.

Fun at Harvard began in the eighteenth century, after Increase Mather left for New Haven. It enjoyed its heyday in the nineteenth century, when undergraduates engaged in activities like literary discussions, the founding of Greek letter fraternities, manifest destiny, musical theater, and binge drinking.

The founding of Radcliffe College in the late nineteenth century greatly increased the opportunities for fun on campus but greatly decreased the amount of fun on campus, due to what College physicians described as “awkward-ass Harvard kids.” Soon, Harvard attracted only nerds and geeks, while all the cool kids waited for state schools to be founded so they subsequently could attend those.

Various factors contributed to the decline of fun in the twentieth century, including the decrease of off-campus social space, the lowering of the legal drinking age, the invention of Teflon, and the rise of readily available contraceptives. The UC party fund was a desperate measure for desperate times, and for a while succeeded in propping up the social lives of hundreds of undergraduates. Thanks to UC funding, a nervous freshman could show up to a sweatbox in Mather, guzzle a Coke and vodka cocktail, and grind their frustrations away on the sweet shanks of an upperclass flooze.

Fun for Harvard upperclassmen—fun for Harvard underclassmen’s older brother—appears infirm but reasonably healthy, but sources within University Hall say it’s just a matter of time before he gets offed.

“The people who own the bars in the Square, they’ve got families, don’t they?” said a source who refused to be named. “They respond to threats, don’t they? We’re going to bring Prohibition back in a big way. Enjoy your Third Eye Blind, suckers, because jumping around a muddy New Yard is the closest you’ll ever be to ‘getting sloshed’ ever again.”