EVERYTHING CHANGED in the 1960s and ’70s. As national attitudes shifted in the face of the Vietnam War and the struggles for civil rights and gender equality, Harvard students and administrators took a long, hard look at the state of the Harvard undergraduate experience. Harvard’s social scene had long been dominated by the Pudding and by " final clubs " — a group of about a dozen private, all-male " black-tie fraternities " that owned buildings in and around Harvard Square. Under pressure from Harvard to admit women, the final clubs chose instead to sever their ties with the university; to this day they remain all-male and completely independent of Harvard.

The Pudding, however, decided in 1970 to open its membership to female students. It retained a tenuous affiliation with the university, and was officially recognized by the administration. The anti-discriminatory gesture significantly increased the club’s prospective member pool, and was certainly a step toward ameliorating the club’s exclusionary reputation on campus. But it didn’t address the troubled relationship between egalitarian students and campus entities they viewed as elitist, and the Hasty Pudding as a social club saw its status and membership decline.

At this time, the theatrical part of the Hasty Pudding ran into trouble too. A 1971 show called The Wrong Way In proved so disastrous that it bankrupted the club. Enterprising members managed to raise funds from their parents and save it, but the scare forced them to reorganize the club by dividing its social and theater aspects, a schism that would eventually result in two divergent entities with separate memberships that mingled only occasionally.

By the 1980s, as Reagan-era students lost interest in concepts like egalitarianism, the Hasty Pudding’s membership rolls and social reputation were on the way up again. But the club’s nobler philosophies had fallen by the wayside. The Pudding’s original ideal of itself as a place where men could come to revel in " encounters of forensic argument and wit and the exchanges of good fellowship " had long ago given way to an attitude characterized by former president Jessica Wu, who graduated in 2000, as " let’s get shitfaced. "

By the end of the 20th century, the Hasty Pudding social club was being used as nothing more than a place — albeit one with a vaunted history and an elaborate set of traditions — where students of a certain means (and often lacking a valid ID) could get drunk with their friends. The club had expanded to 250 members, and each semester members " punched " the friends, or offspring of their parents’ friends, whom they wanted to admit. Prospective members attended a cocktail party where they jockeyed furiously for a few minutes of face time with three of the club’s seven officers, pitching themselves as members while the officer signed the card that they carried for the purpose.

On initiation night, students from freshmen to seniors, dressed in black tie, made their way to the building at 12 Holyoke and, in a flood of champagne and shots, were made wetly aware of their new standing before sitting down to a four-course meal.

Membership did indeed have its privileges: black-tie dinners, private and invitation-only parties, a special night at the shows. But the main draw was the Members’ Nights, by far the best bargain in town. For $125 in dues each semester, students gained access to a fully stocked, top-shelf bar, open from 10 p.m. to midnight every Thursday and Sunday. It was not unusual for some members to drink their dues on opening night.

Some members joined and then found themselves turned off: " I joined when [the club’s] glory had clearly faded, and yet I found it extremely pretentious, " says one member from the class of 1989.

But others enjoyed the privileges, and found that the club offered something other than free booze: " It was an amazing club where a diverse group of people came together, " says Alexandra Walter, club president in 1996. " It was also one of the few places for women to come to on equal footing as members. "

In fact, over the past few years the club did attempt to move away from its party image. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, former club presidents Jessica Wu and William Decherd, and current president Andrea Olshan, overhauled the " punch " process, doing away with the cards in favor of a series of lunches and other more intimate events. They also turned its attention to charity work, joining a trend sweeping fraternities on campuses across America. In 2001, the club raised more than $35,000 for pediatric AIDS and continues to be closely associated with the cause.

But as the Leather and Lace party suggests, the Pudding didn’t exactly turn into the Junior League. And the administration was watching. Says one graduate, " The university took a dim view of the binge drinking at the club’s two cocktail parties a week. "

THAT HARVARD had long lusted after the clubhouse’s prime real estate and commercial theater space is no secret. But how, in October 2000, the Institute of 1770 finally found itself forced to sell the building to Harvard is a point of much contention. Trying to get a straight answer from a Harvard spokesman is like talking to a Soviet news agency at the height of the Cold War. Pudding alumni members have been left in the dark as well, and in the wake of lawsuit settlements, the graduate board and the restaurant have signed nondisclosure agreements that prohibit them from discussing the issue.

What is certain is that the Hasty Pudding never fully recovered from its close brush with bankruptcy in 1971, though it bounced back briefly. By 1981, the New York Times was citing an unpaid $33,000 in back taxes, and an $18,000 rent debt to the university. This time, the officers knew there was no easy way out.

The club’s first major decision was to cede operational control of the upstairs dining room. In 1982, the club’s board made an arrangement with chef Deborah Hughes and her business partner Mary-Catherine Diebel, who would run a top-floor restaurant that was open to the public, while catering the Hasty Pudding Club’s meals and functions. The restaurant, named Up Stairs at the Pudding, would pay rent on the space to the club, and presumably put the club in the black.

Over the next years, the restaurant, a gorgeous tableau of reds and greens decorated with vintage posters from Hasty Pudding Theatricals shows and accented with twinkling lights and pink table linens, became one of the country’s top dining spots. With Diebel running the front of the house and Hughes in the kitchen, it won national acclaim, appearing frequently as a " Top Table " in Gourmet magazine and playing host to university dignitaries and national celebrities. Thanks to its success, the club began a slow climb back to financial solvency.

But something went wrong along the way. Board members and the Harvard administration remain mute on the matter. Several generations of alumni tell different tales of woe, ranging from the failure of the restaurant to pay all the expected rent to fiscal mismanagement and/or downright malfeasance on the part of the club’s own officers.

However the club’s endowment disappeared, by 1986 the Institute of 1770 had to turn to Harvard Property and Real Estate (HPRE) for debt relief. The organization arranged to sell the land of 12 Holyoke Street — just the land, but not the building — to HPRE in a financial bailout.

The arrangement allowed the Institute of 1770, and the Hasty Pudding Club, to remain intact, but now as a tenant of the university. For its part, Harvard was thrilled to get its hands on the land. Former dean of students Archie C. Epps III told the Crimson, " The primary reason [for the purchase] was to land-bank a valuable piece of property that sat near the college that we did not wish to go to anyone else. "

With Harvard cracking down on campus underage drinking in general, members of the Hasty Pudding Club were now gathering on Harvard-owned land, and new, stricter drinking rules could be enforced there. The club began requiring drink tickets, which were given only to members over the age of 21 (sometimes). Bouncers and professional bartenders became standard.

This dealt a heavy blow to a club whose raison d’être had historically been drinking. Still, the Pudding plodded along, pumping up membership and patching together money to pay its bills from the restaurant’s rent (when it could), ticket sales, dues payments, twice-yearly phone-a-thons, and the sale of T-shirts and boxer shorts.

For nearly a decade, the Hasty Pudding Club and the university maintained a fragile but steady compromise, with the Institute of 1770 paying rent to Harvard, and occasionally agreeing to regulations to appease Harvard’s concerns. The rent Harvard charged was a staggering $16,000 a month — closer to rent typically expected from a commercial organization than a student group. But the club managed until the late 1990s, when, again under mysterious circumstances, the club’s endowment was drained, and it suddenly found itself unable to pay its landlord.

What’s more, the building itself was falling into disrepair. Its exterior had not been worked on in 10 years, although the mother of student Kimberly Kravis (daughter of financier Henry Kravis) had extensively redecorated the interior as a gift to the club in 1995. But the price tag on exterior work finally broke the Pudding’s back. Pudding officials estimated a maximum of $4 million in necessary renovations; Harvard’s estimate was closer to $10 million.

Though the Hasty Pudding Club’s current and graduate members were certainly aware of the club’s dire financial straits, they were nonetheless stunned by the announcement in October 2000. After 18 months of top-secret negotiations between the university and the graduate board, Harvard acquired ownership of the building as well as the land at 12 Holyoke Street.