Punch Season: The Pudding

It is punch season again. 

Punch season at Harvard is one of most exciting times of the year for the seven or so percent of students involved in that social pursuit. It is strange to think that the majority of students who are not involved in the final club scene do not even know that it is going on. 

I dredged up an email from last year, when the Hasty Pudding Club had an open punch event. An email had been sent out that allowed others to invite a friend to the punch event. Naturally, many people forwarded the email around and the house, where the first event took place, was quite crowded. 

Also in the email was a short pamphlet with a brief overview of the Pudding. Here is an excerpt:

Initially founded in 1770 by Nymphus Hatch and fully codified in 1795, the Hasty Pudding Club holds a unique and distinct place in the history of Harvard College as the oldest collegiate social club in America. Well over two centuries on and the Pudding continues its fine tradition of fostering friendships and camaraderie, a club rich with tradition and as diverse as the College. The Pudding offers a phenomenal social space for freshman through seniors on a campus without a student center. At our home on 2 Garden St. members enjoy some of the best food in the square at lunches and Friday night dinners – many parties are also not to be missed. Beyond all these benefits, the HPC offers freshmen a unique opportunity to form deep and lasting friendships with a diverse group of their classmates for a full four years and beyond.hose in the Pudding often becomes friends with each other outside of the club (as they should). 

The Pudding, along with many of the male and female finals clubs we have on campus, exemplify many of the preppy values noted in The Official Preppy Handbook. The Pudding is one example of a club that "prepare[s] Preppies for one of the great traditions of Prep life: clubmanship" (Birnbach 94). The characteristics mentioned in the Handbook can be applied to all of the final clubs, but I will focus on analyzing the Pudding in this post. 

Togetherness. Membership in a club forms strong ties.

There is a definite emphasis on togetherness in the blurb the Pudding sent out. The blurb emphasizes the Pudding's "fine tradition of fostering friendships and camaraderie" and the "unique opportunity" for freshman to "form deep and lasting friendships with a diverse group of their classmates for a full four years and beyond." The Pudding is also seen as a gateway into getting into male final clubs for freshmen boys. 

Exclusivity. All of these clubs have ways of limiting their membership.

These clubs may say that they restrict membership on a "democratic" (94) basis, but knowing someone in the club who will vouch for you is key. Of course, all the boys I knew who were actually punched--not forwarded the email by someone else--were members of the crew team, the "sport of the preps" (101). 

Endowment. Most of these clubs posses enviable (and enviably managed) securities portfolios, as well as investments in the real estate the clubhouse sits on, and the art and antiques that furnish it. Real estate is a signal of power for clubs at Harvard. The Lampoon, the Crimson, the Signet, the Advocate, etc. all have club houses that they operate out of. Having a clubhouse is a powerful signal of economic and symbolic capital. There is a lot of old money going into those endowments, and a lot of status that comes with being associated with those clubs.