Pudding to Become Melting Pot?

The Hasty Pudding Cluba meritocracy? Threatened with the loss of their building, the Pudding needs to either become an official student group with clear criteria for admission or find another clubhouse.

Associate Dean David P. Illingworth 71 explains that the Pudding has simply never been through the process of becoming an official student group, because the Pudding was a club before such guidelines existed.

Illingworth has already met with representatives from the Pudding this year to discuss the issue. Perhaps unsurprisingly, potentially homeless members have been very cooperative and easy to work with, he said.

Illingworth explains that in the past, it has not been clear what traits the club was searching for in new members. They need to make the admissions criteria more open, he says. Of course, the criteria must be within the College Handbooks guidelines for student groups, which specifiy that a group cannot discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, sex, sexual orientation, or physical disability. The guidelines make no mention of discrimination on the basis of social class.

They need to be more open to a lot of different kinds of people, and I think they will be, Illingworth says.

Why the Pudding and not the final clubs? The final clubs are single-sex, a major barrier to Harvards politically correct guidelines. The Pudding has been co-ed for many years now, and has value at least in its continued presence as a piece of history. We would definitely like to keep them within the fold of college groups, Illingworth asserts.

The Pudding is still in the process of coming up with a final document on their proposed changes, which will be presented in October. Illingworth believes that they will then be accepted as an official student group. Pudding President Andrea L. Olshan 02 could not be reached for comment.

What does that mean for the character of the organization itself?

The changes are expected to go into effect immediately, so we will see it begin to reshape this fall, if all goes according to negotiations. Right now it appears that the Pudding has chosen longevity over tradition.