Celebrating the Passing of the D.U.

Last Monday found three young men dressed only in underwear and red pointed Santa Claus hats having chicken fights in front of Widener Library. While one can be reasonably sure that they were final club punches, one can also be sure that they were not punching the D.U.

The D.U., known in recent years as the final club for football players, recently went under due to a combination of factors. The club had been shut down down since last year after an ugly incident in which a football recruit was hospitalized after a fight with club members. But the more important issue is that the D.U. served as a den of sexism, elitism and chronic drunkeness.

So it looks like the D.U. is pretty much gone for good. Which in some respects is a shame. After all, where else can stressed-out Harvard students get the chance to relax by creaming prospective first-years?

Maybe that's a cheap shot. But that aside, the D.U. was an organization that was contributing nothing to the Harvard community, and was in fact detracting from it by providing an atmosphere that hardly reflected what Harvard has become today.

We would like to see Harvard purchase the D.U. building, which is prime Cambridge real estate, and use the facilities to provide office space to some of the many civic-minded and beneficial undergraduate organizations which currently don't have a place to meet. We hope that other final clubs will soon suffer the same fate.