THE LATEST HARVARD symbol of choice is a black hat that reads "FCS." Ask someone wearing one, they'll tell you it stands for Final Clubs Suck.

Ask them why, and they'll tell you: The clubs were racist and anti-Semitic as long as they could be. They have been sexist from day one. And they are violent.

Naturally, you won't see final club members wearing FCS hats, and it's not just because they disagree--because you won't see them wearing hats that say, "Gosh, Final Clubs are Great!" either.

They try to keep a low profile about their membership. Clubs are a private thing, they say. They don't want publicity, they insist.

But that's a crock. They want their kind of publicity. They want people to come to their parties. But only the right people.

Final clubs really only function on the line between private and public. If final clubs were completely private, no one would know about them. There would be no complaints about unfair advantages, systematic discrimination and criminal behavior.

And if they were completely public, they could be held accountable for their conduct.

The suit Lisa J. Schkolnick '88 brought against the Fly Club was an effort to prove that, legally, final clubs are public. But the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination ruled the club had a valid legal claim to "private" membership. It was not public enough to be forced to open its membership to women.

So, unless someone blows them up, we're stuck with the clubs for a while yet. That sucks.

Their members may value their privacy, but they hold relatively public parties. Everybody knows about them. Many nonmembers--including faculty members and administrators--frequent them. And, often as not, something bad happens at them.

Everyone has a story or two or 10 they can tell about this. The guy who always has a little too much to drink and wants to pick a fight. The two guys who fought over the same woman. The one guy who went to the part of the club he was not supposed to and got thrown down the stairs and forcibly removed from the premises. (All of these have actually happened.)

The black eyes you see at Sunday brunch are the public evidence of the "private" violence associated with final club culture, and that's bad enough. But the attitude that winks at "inside" violence encourages more public and more dangerous manifestations.

That's pretty much the story of the last decade. People can no longer say and do horrible things in public, so they've flocked to private societies where they won't take flak for it. And courts have been increasingly wary about opening closed ranks, whether they're the ranks of the Fly or an exclusive country club.

The final clubs, near as we can tell, want to make sure they have a place to go where women (usually called "feminists," and usually "carping" at them) can't, unless they are there at the clubs' behest (in which case they are called "a bevy of slobbering bovines fresh for the slaughter," as a Pi Eta newsletter once put it).

They also want to have a place to do their bonding, which amounts to violent behavior that is acceptable to some as long as it stays behind closed doors.