Punches? What Punches?

Final club initiations, like falling leaves or Undergraduate Council election fliers, are one of the harbingers of winter at Harvard.

Initiations offer the closest thing to street theater on campus. One group of punches this year sported boxing gloves and imitated Rocky in front of Widener Library. Another club's initiates played an informal basketball game in front of the Science Center.

"I saw two guys acting out Romeo and Juliet on the steps of Widener, and I saw guys carrying cumbersome stuffed animals around," says Melissa A. Tanner '03.

Sometimes it is a theater of the absurd.

"I saw a bunch of naked people running up Mt. Auburn [Street] last week," says D. Andy Rice '01. "They became part of the landscape."

Initiation season is easily the most visible time of year for final clubs, institutions that College administrators have long condemned for violating anti-discrimination policies. Since they are not official student groups, the clubs are prohibited from collecting University funds, from postering on campus, from recruiting at the Activities Fair.

But public initiations of new members take place in front of the Science Center or in Harvard Yard, locations where administrators cannot help but notice their activities.

Even HUPD Chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley says he observed men wearing dresses while carrying snow shovels "long before the snowstorm."

But administrators and police rarely if ever take action against the clubs' initiations. College officials and Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) officers say that, regardless of their feelings about final clubs, it is difficult--and undesirable--to take steps against them.

"If I were to ban a brief, spontaneous gathering of final club members, then I might also ban any random, spontaneous gathering of students I see on campus," wrote David P. Illingworth '71, associate dean of the College, in an e-mail message. "Such regulatory behavior on my part would be ridiculous and outrageous."

Riley says that, practically speaking, police do not regulate students' behavior unless it creates a disturbance.

"People's dress isn't an issue for the police," Riley says.

Moreover, most initiations visible to the public eye are harmless, officials say.

"The stories I've heard this fall are not about hazing, rather about silly, sometimes annoying behavior," Illingworth says. "If I hear that a particular final club is making trouble or meeting on campus, I will call the Graduate Board president and complain. Obviously, however, I can't complain unless I know which club it is, and complaints I get are usually quite vague.

"While I find some of these behaviors silly, it would be difficult, not to say impossible, to enforce a ban on foolish or silly acts in public, unless they violate a rule in the handbook or the laws of the Commonwealth."

Even if Faculty members or students found the clubs' behavior disruptive or offensive in recent weeks, few chose to object. And with no complaints, police do not react.

Riley reported only one complaint from a student, on Dec. 7, about a final club representative impersonating a security guard checking for IDs at Johnston Gate. The complaint could not be verified. Riley says that had HUPD received additional complaints, police would have responded.

"We're not ignoring it," says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68. "I have not gotten a single e-mail, phone call or complaint this fall about the activities."

"We don't want to be policing these types of things," Lewis adds. "I'm not going to hire another five people to pounce on two or three clowns doing something stupid in front of the Science Center. So I guess we take a sort of laissez-faire approach to it."

For their part, final club leaders refuse to say much. The presidents of the Phoenix, the Spee and the Fox would not comment on their initiations.

C.J. Kelly '01, the president of the Owl, said that while other clubs' initiations are amusing, final clubs are about more than hijinks.

"Publicly, we chose not to present ourselves in that light," Kelly says. "We're heading in the direction of a more positive outreach group. We're awfully upset that final clubs have this nasty reputation on campus, and we hope for our members to be outstanding members of the community."

Most students say they are amused by the proceedings, and only a few feel put off by the events.

"I was trying to get to the Science Center, and they tried to block my entry," says Matthew C. Janicak '04 of the basketball-playing punches. "When I walked around them, they hit me in the back with a basketball."

But most say the initiations added an entertaining spark to their daily routine.

"You have to take these things with a grain of salt," says C. Chanley Howell '03. "It's just an outlet for fun. I don't think they should be taken all that seriously."

And one student notes that even those who are distracted by the initiations have far more to worry about. Each day, hawkers force pamphlets, brochures, buttons, advertisements and questionable foodstuffs into the hands of students just trying to grab a slice of pizza in the Greenhouse or wake up before an astrophysics lecture.

"They weren't selling anything or harassing people," says Sean M. O'Neill '02. "They were just wearing stupid clothes."