Word: porcellians
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There are now eleven final clubs: A.D., Bat, Delphic, D.U., Fly, Fox, Iroquois, Owl, Phoenix S.K., Porcellian, and Spee. With the exception of the Bat, each club has its own building and serves daily meals. The club sponsors a few parties and dances; it provides a library, club room, bar, and pool tables for its members. Beyond this, the final club does little. The contrast with the nation's fraternities is evident: the clubs have no athletic teams. They enter no candidate in local beauty contests. For the most part, they permit no women in the club houses. But most...
...attraction of the club when the system first began is easy to understand. The Porcellian club, legend has it, began when a man in Hollis Hall found a suckling pig in his room. He hid the animal in a window seat until evening and then invited a few friends in to roast the pig. The evening was so pleasant that they determined to meet alternate Friday evenings for fellowship and supper. They first called themselves "The Argonauts," but when roast pig turned up month after month on the menu, the group came to be known as the "Pig Club." From...
...Though Porcellian frankly admitted its lack of direction, other clubs springing up in this period often claimed loftier motives. The Hasty Pudding Club, formed in 1795, purported to "cherish the feelings of friendship and patriotism." To serve the latter purpose, the club celebrated Washington's birthday for many years with a program of orations, patriotic songs and speeches. Under the first constitution of the club, "two members, in alphabetical order, shall provide a pot of hasty-pudding for every meeting," and from this, the name...
...this period that the clubs began to change in character. The Pudding gave up much of its attempt at a scholarly tone and Porcellian members began to consider the background of its candidates as well as their wit or agreeable character. This was the beginning of a welter of Greek-letter fraternities. Phi Beta Kappa had been the first in 1776, but when other fraternities appeared they followed the lead of the established local clubs and emphasized the social over the intellectual...
...always said respectfully of each one of us. 'Oh, yes, he's a Harvard man," he concluded, and then announced that the Porcellian Club was throwing open its doors to the general public immediately after the ceremonies...