Talk:Porcellian Club
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Is there a good reason for me not to make this a redirect to Final club? -- Thesquire (talk - contribs) 07:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)
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[edit] Amusing Quotation
"I remember a sophomore, a very nice Porcellian boy—they seemed to be the most fragile—whom Cloke saw across the room at the Casablanca and apparently liked. He got his attention just by focusing on him, and then he walked across the room very slowly, snapping his fingers, click, click, click, and finally he got right up to him, and the boy fainted! He was on the crew and a big jock "
from Edie: An American Biography, online at http://poetryfoundation.org/features/feature.onculture.html?id=177974
[edit] Clubhouse Photo
There is a picture of the Porcellian at http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/cba/m.html, listed under the heading 1320-1324 Massachusetts Avenue. The direct link is http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/cba/images/massachusetts1320_870905.jpg . -anon
[edit] Present Members
If one knew the current club membership, a matter of nontrivial public interest, how could one get it into the article without violating No original research and Citing sources policies? -anon 16:01, 7 November 2006
[edit] Source citations needed for members
A specific source citation is needed for each member. What's needed, per the verifiability policy, is a reference to a published source meeting WP:RS which says that the person involved was a member.
There are several reasons why simply linking to a Wikipedia article won't do. Basically what it boils down to is that the policy is that a Wikipedia article cannot be cited as a source for a fact in another Wikipedia article. For one thing, Wikipedia articles change. For another, as spot-checking shows, it is very often the case that the cited article may not even state, much less provide a reference for, the fact that is supposedly being supported. For example, the article on Paul Nitze does not mention Porcellian. (In fact, neither do the articles on Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Everett, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.... And of course it is not enough for the linked article to mention it. If it does provide a source citation for the person's being a Porcellian member, that citation should be copied into the Porcellian article.
Any persons for which there is no verifiable source citation, to a reliable published source, showing that they were Porcellian members, should eventually be removed from the article. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
As for Louis Agassiz Shaw II, it's a potentially verifiable fact (though I haven't looked up the poem myself, but I'll take the NYT's words for it) that Lowell wrote a poem containing the words "'Bobbie,' Porcellian '29, a replica of Louis XVI, without the wig --redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale, as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit and horses at chairs." I'm guessing that the identification of this person with Louis Agassiz Shaw II is made in Alex Beam's book, Gracefully Insane, which I haven't read. But it needs to be made clear that this is a case of "verifiability, not truth." Anyone who cared to write fiction satirizing a Boston Brahmin might well describe them as having been a member of Porcellian, as it happens to be the only final club most people outside Harvard have ever heard of. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:21, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
I made another Google Books search. "Porcellian" gets several hits in various books. Douglass Shand-Tucci, Harvard University, Princeton Architectural Press, 2001, contains sections on all the clubs at Harvard (the pages listed in the search result list with the comment "[Sorry, this page's content is restricted]" seem actually to be available). Theodore Roosevelt is mentioned as a member in several books, and the club is also mentioned in his own letters in Letters from Theodore Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles 1870 to 1918 (2005). Tupsharru 14:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Removing two unsourced entries
I'm removing these two names of notable members of Porcellian, because no sources have been cited. They can be reinserted by anyone who cares to find a verifiable source citation stating that they were members. The sources would of course have to meet the reliable sources guideline and be published sources, i.e. not insider information or internal Porcellian records. Given the prominence of Porcellian and the people involved, this shouldn't be terribly difficult. Dpbsmith (talk) 14:28, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
- Benjamin Curtis - Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, author of dissent to Dred Scott v. Sanford[citation needed]
- Paul Nitze - Presidential advisor, diplomat, foreign policy strategist, Secretary of the Navy, Deputy Secretary of Defense, and co-founder of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)[citation needed]
[edit] Unintententially funny quotation from that 1901 book...
Sheldon, Henry Davidson (1901). Student Life and Customs. D. Appleton., p. 171: "Small as the membership has been, the roll of graduates shows many of the most famous of the Sons of Harvard, including Wendell Phillips, Channing, [Joseph] Story, [Edward] Everett, Prescott, Adams, Palfrey, Charles Sumner, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and John Lothrop Motley." Online at Google Books
"At that time, a number of intimate friends were in the habit of meeting in each other rooms on alternate Fridays for social intercourse."
Well, it does read a little strangely to third-millennium ears, doesn't it? Dpbsmith (talk) 14:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
