Drunken Pudding

Last week, one George R. Clark of Cynwyd, Pa., Harvard sophomore, sat down on the steps of Harvard's new Fogg Museum, took off his shoes, proceeded to bathe his feet. Spying a Chinese student about to enter the museum, he arose and shouted, "I hate Chinese!" Then he tossed the frightened Oriental down the steps. At a group of Jewish undergraduates he likewise bellowed. They shied away, pretending not to notice Sophomore Clark. The reason for this paranoiac performance: Sophomore Clark was being initiated into Hasty Pudding Club, smart organization of trenchermen, toss-pots and thespians, which each year produces a musical comedy and each year, like almost every Harvard society, holds initiations in which absurdity, and failing that, bawdiness, is the criterion of success. The day after Sophomore Clark's Chinaman-mauling and Jew-baiting, the Harvard Crimson, undergraduate daily, editorialized: ". . . Public drunkenness which results in conduct objectionable to non-participants has grown to be looked upon in modern societies as a violation of taste and public decency. There is obviously heavy drinking in connection with the Pudding running and there is reason to believe that this public display of drinking and its unfortunate results are sanctioned and even encouraged by those managing the initiations. Women students* are regularly seen in the Yard [main campus] and in the class room buildings. It is an affront to them and a slur upon Harvard that they are forced to run a gauntlet of drunken glances, bawdy ballads and obscene recitations in order to attend their lectures. . . . A passerby on Quincy street was embarrassed by public aspersion on his virility. . . ." Until five years ago, when Hasty Pudding merged with the Institute of 1770 (eating club), Hasty Pudding conducted its rituals, like most other Harvard saturnalia, in private.

*Harvard is not coeducational, but Radcliffe College is hard by, has official access to most University buildings.