Word: porcellians
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...club-bound sophomores. Both the Spee and the Fly have reputations for being intellectual and favoring artists and other "achievers"; the A. D. tends to attract fastidiously-dressed New Yorkers; the Owl draws a lot of athletes; Delphic members are quite likely to enjoy heavy drinking and gambling; the Porcellian Club is "old Boston": its membership is so ingrown that all four officers of the club for next year are cousins...
Today, two hundred years later, now more delicately known as the Porcellian Club, the organization still survives. With quarters over J. August clothiers in the Square (and an endowment of something between three and four million dollars), the Porcellian reigns as the oldest and most prestigious social club at Harvard and quite possibly the entire country...
...addition to the Porcellian there are ten other social clubs at Harvard--known as "final clubs" because of their mutually exclusive membership regulations. Listed more or less in declining order of prestige, they are the A.D., Fly, Spee, Delphic. Owl, Phoenix-S.K., D.U., Fox, Iroquois...
...clubs except the Porcellian originally began as local chapters of national college fraternities, but have long since broken their ties with the national organizations. Recruiting a large percentage of their membership from graduates of New England prep schools and the social registers of Boston, Philadelphia and New York, the final clubs now resemble the men's clubs of London, Boston and New York more than they do typical college fraternity. The emphasis is on Wild Turkey and "quiet fun," not beer and girls. Instead of wearing loud sweatshirts covered with the fraternity letters, final club members wear ties with discreet...
...clubs enjoy pointing to their rosters of distinguished alumni. Theodore Roosevelt was a member of the Porcellian, Teddy and Jack Kennedy were members of the Spee, Bobby was a member of the Owl. Robert Benchley and former Harvard President James Bryant Conant joined the D. U. Franklin Roosevelt was turned down by the Porcellian--one biographer claims that this was one of the most devastating set-backs of his life--but made the Fly. Nearly 80 per cent of the present Harvard Corporation belonged to final clubs when undergraduates...