Recycle the Clubs

HARVARD has one thing to be grateful for--a residential system in which personal preference and random choice are all that decide where the vast majority of students live.

But Harvard's social space is something different. Our administrators just might put more student offices in Memorial Hall's basement and maybe--if we're lucky--a meeting room or two. But for now, student groups dedicated to useful purposes--writing publications, performing music, organizing minority students, promoting a presidential candidate--are scattered all over campus, mostly in basements with varying degrees of moldiness.

Meanwhile, a few wealthy students pay to hang out by day and imbibe by night in some of Harvard Square's finest real estate: the final clubs, among the last bastions of old Harvard's ugly side.

At old Harvard, students drew together in artificial cliques created by the clubs, the fraternities, and even the Houses--after all, the Masters once chose residents who would "fit in" after a series of teas and other versions of the final clubs' "punching." The cliques did nothing productive during their existence at Harvard, but everyone knew they could give a young man the breaks after graduation, since he could always expect help from his adoptive brothers. They rewarded the likeable but not necessarily the competent.

New Harvard is more mature. Today's students form associations based on mutual interests, not mutual friends. Even in a decade known for its student apathy, their projects last beyond the next day's hangover. Sex, religion, social class and ethnic origin may influence their membership, but rarely if ever do they cause anyone's exclusion.

Sure, the new type of clubs pad resumes and make "networking" easier in the dreaded Real World. But most of them exist because most students do possess altruism along with personal ambition. Public service groups involve about a quarter of Harvard's students, and the rest of the clubs give something to the rest of the college each year, whether it's a performance, an exhibition, a literary magazine or a greater understanding of one's fellow students.

Those are the groups in the basements. The groups in the big brick buildings detract from the Harvard community when they affect it at all. I'd like to see them switch places.

It's happened before. What is now Harvard's Hillel House was once the Iroquois Club, a "waiting club" that gave up and went to its reward--selling the building to an organization that involves more students in more meaningful activities.

Some 10 percent of Harvard males still feel the need to withdraw into expensive versions of the Little Rascals' clubhouse, where brass plaques replace the "No Gurlz Allowed" sign.

THE second half of the 20th century is closing in. It is much less respectable these days to join a gentlemen's club that bans women except when the members are lonely.

Rising property values are also making it tougher to own a final club in Harvard Square. Those big picturesque old piles are just as old and valuable as Harvard's--but Harvard's are tax-exempt, and the clubs must pay taxes at the high business rate.

This leaves them with a decline in dues-paying members and an increase in taxes every year. Rich alumni may step in to help financially, but they cannot make the clubs popular as well as wealthy. The final clubs are on their way out, and quickly may they crumble, because new Harvard's students need their office space.