Word: finalizing
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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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...
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...
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...
...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...