WASHINGTON (AP) – Ask J Pepper Frazier about Harvard’s exclusive all-male Owl Club and he’ll tell you about the pewter mugs – “quaffing cups” – engraved with owls and members’ names that line the club’s dining room.

“Like you see them drinking in Tom Jones,”‘ he says.

Or the flocks of stuffed owls, many missing feathers. Or maybe the pool room. Or the second-floor library where members stashed old term papers and school reports.

Frazier, an Owl member who graduated in 1967, cherishes his undergrad days at the club in Harvard Square.

“My best friends to this day were in the Owl Club,” said Frazier, who heads a real estate agency on tony Nantucket. “There was a lot more drinking, a lot of backgammon, a lot of fun.”

Members hosted dinners in the third-floor banquet hall. Some were black-tie affairs, said Frazier, a son of the late Boston newspaper columnist George Frazier.

“It’s shabby chic, shall we say,” said Frazier. “It’s a little frayed around the edges.”

Frazier recalled watching a lot of “Perry Mason” on TV with his mates. There were about 80 members and the vast majority were prep school grads, he said.

The secretive Owl Club, which frowns at allowing nonmembers inside, was yanked into the public spotlight recently on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, who had assailed Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito’s ties to a Princeton alumni group he accused of discriminating against women and minorities, severed his relations with the Owl Club. Republicans had branded Kennedy, D-Mass., a hypocrite for his connection to a club that excluded women.

Kennedy joined the Owl in 1954.

The Owl and other so-called “final clubs” have endured as symbols of an earlier era when the privileged sons of blue-blooded old-money families dominated Harvard social life.

Tradition dies hard at Harvard University, where all-male clubs have been venerated and vilified for generations.

Some say the secret social clubs are a snobbish remnant of Harvard’s closed-door past. Others contend they are a vital part of the school’s social scene.

“Isn’t it problematic that they discriminate against women and they perpetuate elitism?” said Matthew Glazer, a senior who is president of Harvard’s Undergraduate Council. “That’s a constant debate on campus.”

Despite such controversy, the clubs thrive.

“It’s because they’re exclusive, they’re mysterious and they succeed,” said Alexandra Robbins, author of “Secrets of the Tomb” about Yale’s elite “Skull and Bones” society. “Students see that this is the old boy network at its finest and it will give them an edge.”

Even today, aspiring members of Harvard’s final clubs need not apply.

“You have to get punched,”‘ said Glazer.

Each fall, invitations are slipped under the dormitory doors of the chosen few, usually sophomores. The clubs then court candidates with dinners and other social events.

Most clubs provide lunches and dinners for members. A full-time steward usually runs the house. Some clubs host lavish social events. Some clubs permit outsiders inside, others only let nonmembers in certain rooms. Sometimes weekend parties are members-only, sometimes not.

“These aren’t huge keggers open to all,” said Glazer, who opposes exclusionary clubs, but has some final club members as friends. “They’re more exclusive and you have to know someone to get in.”

Harvard’s oldest and most prestigious club is the Porcellian, founded in 1791. Former President Theodore Roosevelt belonged.

Another former president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was crushed after being rejected by the Porcellian. “It was forever galling to Roosevelt that he was blackballed from the Porcellian,” according to a Harvard Web site of college history and lore.

Former President John F. Kennedy and ex-Sen. Robert Kennedy are said to have belonged to the Spee. The clubs closely guard their secrecy.

There are eight all-male final clubs today at Harvard, according to school officials.

During the 1970s and 80s, the clubs drew criticism from women’s rights advocates, stirring campus wide debate. Two decades ago, amid controversy over the refusal of clubs to admit women, the school cut official ties to the clubs.

Frazier said his club took steps to diversify.

“The Owl started very early moving away from the whole so-called St. Grottlesex thing,” said Frazier, citing a slang term for New England’s elite boarding schools. A star member of Harvard’s football team in the mid-1960s helped the club attract more diverse members, he said.

Harvard’s clubs lack the mystique of Yale’s famed secret society, Skull and Bones, which boasts among its alumni some of the world’s most powerful men. Robbins noted that President Bush and about a dozen of top administration officials are “Bonesmen.” So is Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

But like Skull and Bones, Harvard final club membership is coveted by undergrads as a gold-plated ticket to social and business connections.

“That’s the basic here,” said Robbins.

—

On the Net:

Harvard University: http://www.harvard.edu/

Sen. Edward Kennedy’s office: http://kennedy.senate.gov/

AP-ES-01-21-06 1246EST