Revamped Pudding Seeks Official Group Status

The Hasty Pudding Social Club has applied for recognition as an official Harvard student group, with plans to open the first round of its fall punch process to all undergraduates.

Student group status would allow the 206-year old social institution to continue to use the now College-owned 12 Holyoke St. Hasty Pudding building.

It is “highly likely” that the social club’s application will be approved by the Committee on College Life (CCL) later this month, said Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71.

Yet the focus of the social institution will not change, says Social Club President Andrea L. Olshan ’02.

To potential punches, Olshan says, “We ask you what activities you’re interested in, what distinguishes you and makes you a person I want to be in a party with or I want to have lunch with.”

The social club’s decision to apply for official student group status comes after more than a year of discussion with the University, which bought the Hasty Pudding building from the group’s graduate board, the Institute of 1770, in the spring of 2000. The Institute of 1770 is the umbrella oranization encompassing the Hasty Pudding Social Club, the Theatricals, the Krokodiloes and the Radcliffe Pitches.

With the building came a centuries-old tradition of exclusive luncheons and a feathered, sequined all-male Hasty Pudding Theatricals Cast.

“This is just one of these Harvard anomalies we’ve all inherited,” Illingworth says.

And as architectural plans for a Faculty of Arts and Sciences-funded renovation to the dilapidated building take shape under the direction of Boston-based firm Leers, Weinzapfel and Associates, College administrators and students are now forced to walk a tenuous line between the merits of tradition and the mandates of College policy.

The College does not recognize any group that discriminates on the basis of gender—a rule the Theatricals is able to circumvent by having women involved in non-performing aspects of their annual drag production.

And even though the social club will continue to subjectively select their members, the group will be able to use College space because the first step of the punch process will be open to all undergraduates.

“We’re trying to tread this ground between totally throwing out these traditions and just letting them do exactly what they’ve always done,” Illingworth says. “We need to adapt these old traditions into something that’s at least somewhat consistent with the rest of the College.”

A Secret Society

The renovations to the Pudding building, now slated to begin this spring (a full year later than originally planned), will convert the storied address into a state-of-the-art theater and space for student groups.

The social club, which was founded in 1795 as a 21-member secret society, faced a difficult decision last year—to remain independent from the College and lose access to the Pudding building or to become a student group in order to lobby for limited 12 Holyoke St. space.

After extensive consultation last spring with Illingworth, social club members resolved to open the first step of the fall punch process to all undergraduates, a move that Illingworth told the group would allow them access to the building.

The club is currently waiting for the official go-ahead from the CCL before postering the Yard to attract undergraduates.

“It’ll be a strange thing to do,” Olshan says. “Hopefully, we’ll get people that no one would have punched because we didn’t know about them.”

Prospective social club members will be selected after a series of cocktail parties and luncheons, Olshan says.

“But it’s not in-group, out-group,” Olshan explains. “There are all sorts of rumors that we punch from the facebook, or that we only punch people with Roman numerals after their names. That’s not what it’s about at all.”

Since the social club does not produce any publication or production, membership requirements are difficult to quantify, Olshan explains.

The club also plans to organize an annual charity event, Olshan says, citing a social club event two years ago that succeeded in raising $35,000 for pediatric AIDS.

“We do have this ability to raise money. If you’re interested in charities, that’s very appealing to us,” she says.

Olshan’s plan represents a compromise that Illingworth says he expects to pass muster at the upcoming CCL meeting.

“We’re trying to be very sensitive to the Pudding. With the climate right now on campus, people want to improve the social life, ” Illingworth says.

He compares the Pudding social club to the Signet, another college-approved, primarily social student group.

While the Signet owns its own building however, the social club will now jockey for space for their twice-weekly catered luncheons with any number of College clubs.

“The [social club] knows they’re not going to have exclusive use of the building any more,” Illingworth says.

Until construction begins this spring, however, Illingworth says safety concerns will keep 12 Holyoke St. closed to student groups other than its original inhabitants—the social club, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Harvard Krokodiloes and the Radcliffe Pitches.

Although the first floor Member’s Lounge will remain open, the Krokodiloe room upstairs and the expansive third floor space and terrace that previously housed the Upstairs at the Pudding restaurant are off-limits, Illingworth says.

“This is a building we need to treat safely,” Illingworth says.

Any parties the social club holds this year will have to conform to College party regulations—including a bartender and Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) presence.

The locks of the Pudding building have already been changed and Illingworth says he might hire a HUPD guard to regulate who is allowed to enter the 12 Holyoke St. entrance.

These changes, Olshan says, “[are] very sad, because it’s the end of something. The Pudding as it was is gone.”

But despite her regret, Olshan says the University seems to respect the importance of allowing the social instituion’s traditions, in some capacity, to continue.

“Listen, we’re a very old group and a lot of our alums are very active,” Olshan says. “To many people, Harvard is the Hasty Pudding. We’ve graduated five [U.S.] Presidents. We’re very much a part of Harvard and this country. It’s a tradition that will go on.”

An All-Male Cast

Finding a balance between tradition and College policy in a Harvard-owned building highlights some important questions about the all-male Theatricals cast and its annual drag burlesque extravanganza.

About the show and its explicit prohibition of female actors, Illingworth says, “It’s a strange situation—it’s not ideal.”

But despite the potential infraction that the Threaticals’ rule might have on an otherwise widely-enforced College policy about gender discrimination, Illingworth says it is important to recognize the value of tradition.

“We have all come into this at a certain point in its history,” he says.

In addition, Illingworth says he considers a drag show, even one that explicitly excludes female actors, to be its own art form that necessitates an exclusively male cast.

“Somehow, it just doesn’t seem as funny to have women dressed in men’s clothes,” he says.

Illingworth also cites an economic argument in explaining his rational for lettting the Theatricals use the College-owned space.

If the show or the composition of the cast were offensive, Illingworth says, people would stop attending the show.

‘People will vote with their feet,” Illingworth says. “I’ve told [the Theatricals] that if the tenor of the times changes and no one comes, you’ll have to change, or die.”

Michael S. Roiff ’01, former Theatricals vice president, says he agrees. The 40-night run in Cambridge and the annual, all-expenses-paid tour in Bermuda speak for themselves, he says.

“If there was no longer any desire to see the show, then maybe we would consider revamping it, or going about it a different way,” Roiff says.

Illingworth compares the Pudding to single-sex athletic teams or acapella groups.

But unlike these groups, which have female counterparts, there is no female equivalent to the Theatricals, where student actors are granteda generous budget for costumes, lighting and sets and the opportunity to train with professional choreographers.

But it’s not for a lack of trying.

Julia C. Reischel ’04 is one of the co-founders of the Athena Theater Company, a women’s theater group organized early this year. Unlike Pudding Theatricals, Reischel says, the Athena Theater Company does not explicitly bar men from the cast.

Reischel says she considers single-sex theater a valid art form. The problem is not with the Pudding, she says, but with the lack of a comparable opportunity for women.

“We think the Pudding is awesome. The tradition is important,” she says. “It would be so great to create something like that [for women].”

When asked whether she knows any women who have wanted to join the Theatricals as a member of the cast, Reischel laughs.

“They go to Bermuda. They have this amazing tour, they sell out, their costumes are amazingly elaborate. They have a choreographer. I’d love to be involved in a play like that,” Reischell says. “It would just be nice to have an equivalent.”

—Staff writer Daniela J. Lamas can be reached at lamas@fas.harvard.edu.