What would you do if one day you were walking along Harvard Yard and suddenly came upon THE MEMBER’S MANUAL OF THE OWL CLUB FOR MEN??!! (For those of you who don’t know, the Owl Club is one of eight final clubs at Harvard, boasting exclusive all-male membership, vast alumni connections, and a constant bevy of barely-dressed freshman waiting outside its doors on Saturday night.)

Well, if you were Garrett Dash Nelson, Harvard ‘09, you’d publish this gem on your blog “Legion,” a blog fully equipped with snarky commentary and refreshingly witty insight about everything from politics to Harvard life. Like so:

The opening page to the manual is an appropriately button-up affair, but perhaps a bit too austere. For example, this owl is hocking potato chips and having a fucking awesome time doing it. This owl is peacing out with Abe Lincoln (!) and is also “wise to the monumental mischief of the Terror Twins.” By contrast, the Owl Club’s owl appears to have been “backed up” back up there for well over a century, standing on its anthropomorphic legs and stuffing its wings up its butt. And thus we have stumbled on our first ethnographic discovery: Owl men never poop.

Nelson and his fellow bloggers Jon-Mark Overvold and Maryellen McGowan take the most amusing selections from the Manual and proceed to tear it apart, all in good humor. In response to one rule listed in the Manual, “Alcohol and tobacco are the only drugs allowed on the premises. If any other drug is brought onto the premises, all members involved will be expelled and their names purged from the records,” Legion writes:

That’s right PURGED FROM THE RECORDS. And what’s worse is, if you then break the mirror you were snorting coke off of before you were PURGED FROM THE RECORDS your collars (all of them) will refuse to pop for a period of seven years. Shackled to permanently flaccid neck accoutrements, exiled members then have little chance of spawning.

Highlights from the Manual analyzed and dissected by Nelson, Overvold, and McGowan along with comments about the article given exclusively to Ivygate by Nelson himself, after the Juuuump!

The Owl writes,

The Club owns a humidor at Leavitt and Pearce on Massachusetts Avenue. Access to the humidor is controlled by the Undergraduate President. Keys may be assigned by the Undergraduate President.

Legion writes,

We’ve got the key to the humidor too. Thatz right. We’r in ur humidor. Smokin ur cigarz!!! We can haz ur snuff too?

I officially love these guys.

Owl,

If a member observes a member or a guest who appears intoxicated or to be drinking irresponsibly, he shall intervene to his utmost to curtail such activity.

Legion,

Every time a freshman girl is denied a rum and coke in the billiard room, an owl gets its wings. Contemporary reports show that one’s “utmost” now consists of a shoulder-shrug, grunt, an offering of a bottle opener, followed by an eerie, persistent hovering.

And now, for IvyGate’s interview with Mr. Nelson!

IG: So tell me a little about this blog post.

GDN: Well we found it and I just thought it should be out to be available to anybody.

IG: How did you find this? Should I even ask – who gave it to you?

GDN: We’ve had it since February of last year. We literally found it on campus at the end of last year. It fell into our hands. We didn’t search it out.

IG: Where on campus?

GDN: Oh I don’t think I’ll say. Somebody just left it behind.

IG: Are you in any final clubs?

GDN: I’m not in any final clubs. I really haven’t been to final clubs in my four years. So I only have stereotypes and gross oversimplifications to play with.

IG: Right. And you obviously aren’t being very malicious about it. You mentioned that you found names. Were they names of current members?

GDN: There were two pages of names of members through to 2008, but we decided not to post it out of politeness.

IG: What do you study and what do you want to do after graduation?

GDN: I study social studies and Visual and Environmental Studies [In non-Harvard speak this means "art"]. Right now I’m just focusing on my thesis and trying to get that done.