Word: porcellian
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Members of the Porcellian club, the oldest and most prestigious of Harvard's eight all-male final clubs, are notoriously hush-hush about affairs in their clubhouse at 1324 Mass...
...most famous tale of club lore: the Porcellian presents all members who have not yet achieved economic success by age 30 with an expensive birthday gift--$1 million...
Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, future president of the United States, described it years later as the greatest disappointment of his life. Someone--he never learned who--had black-balled him, vetoing his membership in the Porcellian Club, at the turn of the century the top rung in Harvard's rigid social ladder. Heartbroken, the young Franklin had to settle for the Fly Club and the Crimson presidency instead...
...that sense, things have gotten worse. Roosevelt didn't know who rejected him from the Porcellian, but he and everyone else knew why: that person, whoever he was, just didn't like Roosevelt. No one would have pretended there was any other reason...
...only exception to this transformation was the Porcellian club, founded in 1792 and the oldest of the organizations, which has never entertained non-members in its Mass Ave. building...