Word: socialized
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...undergraduates entering Harvard were ranked by the president according to their social standing: "to the Dignity and the Familie whereto the students severally belonged." Ranking determined room assignments, seating and serving order at dinner, chapel seating, class seating and even the marching order at college processions. This practice continued into the early 1800s, when it was terminated largely due to the outrage of families whose sons had been placed low on the list...
...this time, however, Harvard's final clubs had taken up the chore of keeping Harvard's--and often Boston's--social register. Originally organized as chapters of national college fraternities, final clubs were founded when they became wealthy enough to divorce themselves of fraternity obligations by chartering themselves as financially independent clubs. Through their 200 years, final clubs have represented prestige, wealth, and "place" in society. Even today, they exclude women. But just as the Harvard of 1749 has changed in social climate, so have the final clubs. The change has been of standards, not of concept, however...
Ours is still an age of status and symbolism. In today's America, we have lost many of the commonly unquestioned social values of the Puritan past. Surnames and father's occupation no longer define people as they once did; it is up to the individual to identify himself to the world. We now identify ourselves with words, clothes, and dinner conversations, cars--America's endless hierarchy of symbols...
Harvard's final clubs are still very much a part of Harvard's social symbols, but they are not life's "be-all and end-all" for most students here anymore. Most "clubbies" will very sincerely say something like, "Aw hell, it's not really elitism, I joined because it's just...
...Corner only to see three liquor-brave men wearing hospital-clean tuxedos and gnawing on cigars like billowing corporate smokestacks laughing fraternally and singing the Latin chorus of "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" out of key. The repulsion or infatuation he feels will somehow translate into his own social symbols...