"An all-male Harvard final club is facing criticism over a sexually suggestive party invitation..."

"... that university administrators say raises concerns about 'sexism and bigotry' at the institution," reports The Boston Globe:

Members of the Spee Club canceled a pajama-themed party Saturday at their house on Mount Auburn Street amid backlash over an e-mail and video depicting scantily clad women, according to The Harvard Crimson student newspaper.

The invitation encouraged partiers to “stay the night.”

Scantily clad, eh? Scantily clad is the first language issue ever discussed on this blog, here. I clicked through to The Harvard Crimson:

The drawing, titled “Playbear,” depicted a bear wearing a robe, pants, and hat, with its arm around a woman dressed in tights and a sleeveless top. The email linked to a video that included multiple clips of women wearing underwear and male and female models walking a runway, as well as a clip from the song “Stay the Night.” The video, which was previously public on YouTube, was made private and then removed Thursday evening, after it prompted criticism from students and other social club members.

Somebody emailed me that Boston Globe link. So that means this is the kind of thing I'm supposed to have an opinion about [OR: this was an old reader who remembers my fixation on "scantily clad"]. I'm not going to jump through that hoop. I'm not that kind of girl. I'm just going to tell you about the 3 things I googled as my mind circulated around the prospect of writing this blog post:

1. Final Club. Never heard of it. Doesn't seem to be about studying for finals. I see at Wikipedia that this is a special Harvard term. There are lots of social clubs at Harvard, dating back to a time in the mid-19th century when Harvard banned fraternities. Final Clubs were the "last social club a person could join before graduation.... Years ago Harvard College freshmen could join a freshman club, then a 'waiting club,' and finally a 'final club.'" Wikipedia lists 8 all-male clubs and 5 all-female clubs (including "Isis Club (2000 - no affiliation with the Islamic extremist rebel group of the same name)").  Here's an article from 2014 in The Atlantic: "Still White, Still Male: The Anachronism of Harvard's Final Clubs."

2. Playbear. Is this a character I'm supposed to be familiar with? I picture the Owsley acid bear often seen connection with The Grateful Dead, but Google seems to be pointing me to a variation on the Playboy rabbit logo. I feel simultaneously old and young, because back in the days when I went to college — not Harvard, but the University of Michigan — it was the era of the Grateful Dead and LSD. Playboy was a relic of the previous generation (notably, my father, who was a longtime subscriber and unabashed fan). To think that Playboy has currency among young people today, that is just — as we hippies used to say — so weird. But what I love most about my Google search on "playbear" is that among the first few hits was the play "The Bear" by Anton Chekhov. ("You're a boor! A coarse bear! A Bourbon! A monster!")

3. "Stay the Night." This is a song sung by an empowered-looking woman with lyrics that seem to be about the situation in which sex was already had and the question is whether there's going to be a more substantial relationship. That is, staying the night isn't like "Let's Spend the Night Together" — in which The Rolling Stones were inviting the woman to have sex. The singer, Hayley Williams, is asking "Are you gonna stay the night?/Doesn't mean we're bound for life." So, staying the night raises the prospect of being bound for life, that is, married. So it seems to be along the lines of the great old Prince song "Let's Pretend We're Married" ("Ooh, little darlin' if you're free for a couple of hours/If you ain't busy for the next 7 years... Ooh-we-sha-sha-coo-coo-yeah/All the hippies sing together....").