The Case for The Clubs

To the Editors of the Crimson:

If anyone has spoken up to defend the Final Clubs during the hoo-rah over then relation to the College. I've missed it. Yet there is something to be said on their behalf. Let me argue the case simply for tolerance, though I also believe the Clubs bring positive benefit to the University.

First, however, my bona fides. I am not now, and never have been, a member of a Final Club. Further, I did not attend Harvard College. Finally, none of my best friends is a member of a Final Club--though I harbor suspicion about one whose mannerisms are remarkably like those of George Bush.

I attended the University of Chicago, which I greatly admire and enormously enjoyed. At Chicago, in the late forties, faculty and students were united in devotion to the LIFE INTELLECTUAL. To a person, we gloried in the values symbolized by those words. We saw ourselves pilgrims in the American cultural wilderness, bound by our understanding that only the SCHOLARLY LIFE was truly worth living. Our communal joy was that of arcane disputation: though of many minds, we were of one mind on the superior virtue of living the LIFE OF THE MIND. We shared, too, genteel contempt for athletes, fraternity men, sorority women, newshawks, campus pols--any whose central (or peripheral) interests were other than THE GOOD. THE TRUE, and THE BEAUTIFUL. Few such were to be found at Chicago.

Only after some months at Harvard did I begin to recognize that it was great relief to have moved into a pluralistic society. Chicago's devotion to the life intellectual was admirable: the sense of living in a right, light community was comforting. But such homogeneity, even when centered on THE GREAT IDEAS, was containing: "boring" indeed springs to the lips! To discover an institution comprised of intellectuals, plus athletes, plus aesthetes, plus clubbies, plus careerists, plus beggars and bakers and candlestick makers, was to rediscover part of my own humanity. (My memory of Chicago reflects my narrowness at the time, no doubt, more than the University's: still, there's some justice in it.

That's a long wind-up to make a very small point. Were the Final Clubs central to life at Harvard, one could see reason, possibly compelling, for insisting they practice fairness, equity, democracy, non-discrimination, etcetera. But, nowadays, the Clubs need be central to no one's life; it is doubtful they're central to the lives of most who join them. Why, then, is it skin off anyone's nose if they are exclusive, discriminatory, aristocratic, or male chauvinist? Why not live and let live?

It's hard to resist the conclusion that he campaign to secure Harvard's purity by driving the Clubs out is simply a latter day exercise in the Puritanism of our forebears. Like those blue-nosed, grimvisaged zealors, some now cannot abide the notion that any should live by standards others than their own. Persuaded, again, that Truth is finally known (centering this time on equality and non-discrimination) the New Puritans will not rest until their principles are practiced, willy-nilly, by all.

A true polemicist, I overstate. Not all who oppose the Clubs are fanatics. Many, properly concerned about equity, have been misled into thinking it an absolute. Though almost all of us (including many Clubbies) give equity high priority, almost all of us, also, value freedom of association. When values conflict, one must look at the circumstances to decide which deserves priority. In the case of Final Clubs, it is hard to see why the claims of equity should prevail over those of free association.

Finally, I cannot resist a word in defense of the dirty-minded men of Pi Eta. Once made public, their words and thoughts must be condemned. But does anyone doubt that such thoughts will recur in young male minds? (And--equity demands--that complementary thoughts may occur in young female minds?) It is desirable to try to make all who think such thoughts feel guilt, a dangerous emotion? Surely, no one proposes action to prevent students from privately discussing such things? Did not the real fault in that incident lie with those who, stumbling accidently on what was clearly a private missive, chose to make it public? Do we want to encourage eavesdropping in an effort to cleanse the College of salaciousness? I find the former almost always offensive, while I often enjoy the latter (though not in the case of the Pi Eta's gross letter.) E. L. Pattullo