Hasty Pudding Club

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name = Hasty Pudding Club building
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location = 2 Garden Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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added = January 9. 1978
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refnum = 78000442
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governing_body = The Hasty Pudding Club was founded by Nymphus Hatch, a junior at Harvard College, in 1790. The club is named for the traditional American dish that the founding members ate at their first meeting. The Hasty Pudding Club was originally established in "Concordia Discors" to bring together undergraduate men (it is now coed) in friendship, conversation, and enjoyment. Today it maintains few official ties to the school, and it is one of many groups that hold membership-based social activities at Harvard.

Membership in the Hasty Pudding Club (also referred to as "the Pudding") is "exclusive," in the sense that only persons accepted by current members may join and a person unacceptable to existing members is excluded. Membership gained through a series of lunches, cocktail parties, and other gatherings, which are referred to as the "punch process". Students must be invited to the initial punch process, commonly by current members but sometimes by club alumni, in order to seek membership in the club. In the past, membership in the Pudding was obligatory to joining waiting clubs and, eventually, final clubs. This tradition is no longer upheld.

The Pudding holds its social activities in a clubhouse adjacent to Harvard Square. These include weekly "Member's Nights", dinner and cocktail parties, as well as its elaborate theme parties, such as "Leather and Lace".

The club counts at least four U.S. Presidents (John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy) among its noteworthy members.

The Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the Radcliffe Pitches, and the Harvard Krokodiloes were founded at the Hasty Pudding Club. Though these groups sometimes share clubhouse space and have various social affiliations with the Pudding, their activities are focused on the performing arts, and they select members through open auditions.