COLUMN: Clubhouse Rules

From Mark Tonsetic's "Java Daze," 'Fall '94 It was a fight to catch even a glimpse of the Macy's parade. Still, it was Thanksgiving in Manhattan, so things couldn't be that bad. Florida was too far and Alaska even farther, so a friend and I chose the next best destination: the Big Apple. It was a just-for-the-hell-of-it road trip, and by four in the afternoon our feet felt like they had actually traveled to hell and back. Penn Station remained fifteen blocks away when inspiration struck. The Penn Club was only half the distance, and would give us a chance to throw our feet up by the fire for a few holiday minutes. After all, we reasoned, twenty thousand dollars a year had probably helped pay for it somewhere. For the uninitiated, the Penn Club is a red-and-blue replica of the crimson-bedecked Harvard Club, a proud staunch bastion of aristocratic elitism in the midst of ... well, New York, to phrase it diplomatically. They're also across the street from each other. Suffice to say that we were both proud and intimidated by the edifice that rose before us on 44th Street. The exterior was clean, white, ornamented stone flanked by a red-coated doorman. The interior (at least the part that we could see) was mahogany, Old Master-vintage art, and suits conservative enough to put William F. Buckley to shame. My Alaskan friend drew a guarded breath. The Penn Club was obviously a world away from Penn. Yet we were seniors -- tired, bedraggled, and hungry -- and we knew it was home. We flashed our trusty PennCards to the doorman and were whisked inside. My Alaskan compadre was right: we were slightly out of place in jeans and flannel among the seventy-something alumni set, and would be none too inconspicuous if we lingered. That didn't mean we wouldn't have a look around before we left, though. We introduced ourselves to the man at the front desk as graduating seniors who merely sought to take a little impromptu tour before deciding whether to enroll as members next year. It was immediately apparent that he carried a higher price tag and sense of discretion than Allied Security. In what amounted to the friendliest reception we found in New York, he asked us to avoid the banquet and grill rooms but said we were free to have a look about our Club. We thanked him and headed straight for the Benjamin Franklin room, a cherry, oak, and mahogany concoction of a library with the requisite fireplace in the corner and bankers' lamps strewn about. Some overstuffed leather easy chairs caught our eye, and we inched towards them under the pretext of studying one of the aged prints lining the walls. We had made our way past the first two pen-and-ink drawings of campus buildings when we collided squarely with a fiftysomething scowl of an alumnus held together by a belt about to burst with turkey. From underneath a mass of jewelry and eyeshadow she shot out a sneering glance. We hadn't had time to open our mouths before the verdict was delivered: "You can't come in here. Not dressed like that. You can't come in here." With perfect interview smiles we explained that we were seniors merely having a look around to decide whether... "No!" She said, with an eye towards the front desk. We were temporarily stunned. No rips, nothing untucked, no sneakers -- we were poster-boys for The Gap. Classic American preppie. According to one columnist's conventional wisdom, la mode du jour of the average Penn female consists of a scrunchie and sweatpants. If we weren't getting in, fifty-one percent of the undergraduate student body wouldn't have made it past the door. "No!" The standard definition of a crisis moment in international relations is that it represents both an opportunity and a danger to the actors in the system. Considerable opportunity existed to make a scene for principle's sake, and the danger of getting forcibly evicted added a little thrill. One realizes at the same time that, despite principle, reality is often a matter of being comically or tragically out of place. My Alaskan friend had been right from the beginning. Clenching a few choice words under our breaths, we spun on our heels and left the Club. Suffice to say that we decided against joining the Penn Club after graduation. My friend has something else to say, but diplomacy often demands putting discretion before valor. Admittedly, we were underdressed, especially for a holiday. Yet we lacked any bit of information about the Club apart from an address found via Directory Assistance, and might have avoided the place all together had not trips to Manhattan been such rare things. Here we were, two weary seniors, each more than a thousand miles from home on Thanksgiving. At the most, we wanted a small tour and a few minutes in the Reading Room to rest and get warm. That might have been what we would have found at the ideal Penn Club. The building on 44th Street in midtown Manhattan has the name and even dangles the flag out in front, but it isn't Penn. It's a bourgeois, wish-I-were-Harvard fantasy that someone has tried to pass off to aging alumni as a representation of what Penn is. In catering to the wealthy and the tea-room set, it has snobbishly forgotten the proletari-Penn and the Smoke's set. As Ben Franklin might have said, it's just not practical. God (and Judith Rodin) forbid that the University should ever spend as much money on real estate for students in West Philly as it does for alumni in New York. A Club that turns away Penn students in jeans, sweaters, and Timberlands simply looking for a tour is ... well, not a club for Penn students. I've been there a total of fifteen minutes, but as any Marketing major will tell you, first impressions can be a bitch. Mark Tonsetic is a senior International Relations and Economics major from Winter Springs, Florida. Java Daze appeared alternate Wednesdays last semester.