A.D. Club Closes Doors to Undergraduates Without Warning

The A.D. final club closed its doors to undergraduates this week, puzzling members who say they were not given any warning about the closure, nor told why it would take place.

Members said they had received an e-mail message Tuesday from the club's undergraduate officers informing them that, effectively immediately, their keys would no longer open the building's Plympton St. entrance.

Also that day, hand-written signs appeared on the front door and window, saying, "Club is closed for renovations."

But the A.D. underwent a full makeover last summer in preparation for the 100th anniversary of its building, and members said the building appeared to them to be in fine shape.

"I think they're just fixing something inside," member Justin P. Finnegan '02 said. "It's a surprise to me, but I haven't been in the loop."

But other members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the renovation excuse is merely a ruse to close the club to its undergraduate members until the end of the year.

"Last Saturday there were shenanigans going on at the club--some mud wrestling on the pong table," said a senior member.

According to three sources, club members had brought the table into the A.D.'s courtyard and mixed beer and dirt on its surface to stage personal wrestling contests.

"It was budget mud wrestling," he said. "It was mainly for females, although a few males were involved."

The sources said they speculated the handful of graduates at the club that night informed members of the graduate board the next Monday.

The next day, the signs appeared announcing the club's closure.

Graduate and undergraduate relations in the A.D. have been notoriously tenuous, especially since Jan. 20, 1999 when the club closed to non-members, setting off a series of guest policy changes in many of Harvard's eight all-male final clubs.

Last May, when the club closed to members for the first round of renovations, Club President Stephen Ranere '00 said some of its undergraduates had been unresponsive to the new policy and that the closure would prevent any further damage to the building.

"It lets us think about what we want to have the club for," Ranere said at the time. "They [the graduates] wanted to let us take a breath."

But when the club reopened for the 1999-2000 school year, the problems persisted.

The sources said yesterday the graduate board discovered that live bulls and sheep, traditional club symbols, were actually being used as part of the welcoming night dinner.

In light of this information, rumors began floating through the membership that the graduates were going to install video cameras to observe activity inside the club.

Members said they do not think the equipment was ever installed.

"It was just a rumor to get us scared off," one said.

But members continued to break the no guest policy, the sources said.

With only a few weeks left in the school year, members said they were doubtful the club would reopen before graduation.

Other members said that since January, the graduate board has been attempting to mimic the Porcellian club, the one final club that has never allowed women in its clubhouse.

The current members, who joined the club under the perception that they would be allowed to invite women and other guests into the building, have been resistant to this move, members said. Thus the relationship between the undergraduates and the graduate board has been very tense.

"They might be trying to flush out all of the current members," one said. "The senior class is the bad apples of the club."

Neither President Stephen W. Ranere '00 or Graduate Board President Patrick Grant Jr. '70 could be reached for comment last night.