Epps: Clubs Broke Promises

At least three of Harvard's nine all-male final clubs this weekend broke promises to Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III that they would hold alcohol-free "punch" admission processes.

The Owl Club, the Fly Club and the Porcellian Club all served alcohol this weekend to candidates for membership at off-campus locations.

In an interview yesterday, Epps characterized the clubs' activities as "a violation" of promises made to him last month by the inter-club council, a loosely-knit governing body for the nine final clubs. In July and September meetings with the council, Epps urged the clubs to act in accordance with alcohol regulations made by the College, the state and the federal government.

Epps said he thought the council's agreement to hold a "dry punch" included all punch events, not just those held in the clubhouses. He said he planned to call Douglas H. Sears '40, executive director of the inter-club council, to pursue the matter further.

Epps said the clubs' practice of serving alcohol at punch events in locations other than the clubs themselves "looks like a subterfuge."

"I think that they are playing with fire," Epps said.

Presidents of the Fly Club and the Owl Club did not return telephone calls made by The Crimson yesterday afternoon. A man who answered the phone at the Porcellian Club declined comment, and there was no answer at Sears' home.

According to one sophomore who went on the Owl Club's outing Saturday, only orange and cranberry juice were served at the club-house. But the sophomore, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that alcoholic beverages were later served at a "country home" outside Cambridge, and that he arrived back at Harvard and went to dinner in a house dining hall "totally trashed."

At the Fly Club's first punch event Saturday night at the Old Customs House in Boston, no attempt was made to card students, and extremely heavy drinking was the rule.

Erica L. Werner and Jonathan Samuels contributed to the reporting of this story.