Final Clubs as Conditioners

The story on "punching" in the Crimson of Oct. 8 prompts me to add my own reflections on the finals club "controversy." The basic arguments on both sides have been fairly well stated before--but perhaps I can add a personal contribution.

Two years ago I was a well-sought "candidate:" WASPy looks, elite prep school, a fair supply of alligator shirts, and a home address which--though not a "golden suburb"--was obscure enough not to be objectionable. For philosophic and admittedly economic reasons I decided not to join; though pressure on both sides was intense (from St. Paul's classmates, freshman friends, and parents on one side, and House friends and common sense on the other). Following my decision I became very antagonistic toward anything having to do with clubs and the elitism they represented. (I still have several friends who for one reason or another joined a club, but I like them not just apart from the clubbiness, but in spite of it.)

Since then my antagonism has been tempered greatly. This is precisely because I've come to realize that the finals clubs are most destructive not to those "left out" but to those who belong. Nothing helps personal development more than a "healthy" mix of peoples/backgrounds. The clubs, on the other hand, because of their de facto closed membership and the attitudes and atmosphere they engender, breed dullness, social complacency, general immaturity and the more obvious manifestations of pretentiousness.

I realize that such traits do not necessarily follow from the carefully articulated justifications of clubs. Anyone in a club who denies these feelings qua clubbie, I feel, is just not being honest with himself. My original personal hatred of the club system stems not so much from the institutions themselves, but from seeing the ugly side of me they brought out. I think most of us at Harvard have elitist tendencies hidden within us--what is important is how we come to grips with them. Clubs merely embrace them.

The article quotes one student as saying, "The only reason clubs exist is to draw off all the assholes and put them behind high walls." This statement is not so much exaggerated as it is wrong. This is not a case of "bad" people forming "bad" institutions, but vice versa. The stereotypes--they do not need to be repeated here--are all there for people to fit into them and become them.

I realize that clubs are not the only manifestation of elitism at Harvard and that all of us lead some sort of cloistered existence. However, this does not excuse the clubs--it merely increases their symbolic content.

I also realize that as private institutions clubs are legally autonomous to Harvard. I conclude, then, not so much with a plan of action as an expression of sadness that such hollow traditions have to be carried on. How sad it is that such anachronistic institutions exist at Harvard, Please, sophomores, think twice. Jim Milkey '78