Kowal likens the club atmosphere to that of Revenge of the Nerds.

“We were all outcasts,” he says.

In almost every way other than gender, he says, such as race, ethnicity or social class, the club was diverse.

For the fall punch of 1978, Shofner and Kowal assembled eight of their friends from Lowell House—“all young, attractive females,” Shofner notes—and proceeded to wangle them invitations to the punch dinner by entering them under male aliases in the club book. Mary Anne Kocur, for example, went as Martin, Janice Pelletier as James. Some of the other women were identified by initials so as not to arouse suspicion. Invitations in hand, the women waited at the door.

“The buffet is all out, and the beer is all out, and hors d’oeuvres are ready to be passed out,” Kowal says of the scene when the women arrived.

The club steward, Louis Lacroix, who Shofner describes as “a 65-year-old retired military man,” was so angry about the female intrusion that he ran upstairs and locked himself in a room with all the food. A graduate of the club had to talk him into coming out, remembers Shofner.

“There was a group of D.U. people that couldn’t give a shit,” Kowal says. “But another group was asking,” he says taking on a mock English accent, “‘What is this?’”

John A. “Kras” Krasznekewicz ’79, the club’s president, came down the stairs, Kowal recalls, “really pissed off.”

“I thought you were my friend,” Kowal remembers him saying to Shofner. “How could you betray me like this?”

But Krasznekewicz told The Crimson in 1978 that he was only upset because the club members defied punch rules. He said if punched properly—and with the approval of club members—women could join the D.U. Club.

But Shofner told The Crimson that while two women were punched two years prior to his prank, they were refused membership when several influential alumni withdrew their financial support because of the incident.

Krasznekewicz did not return phone calls made by The Crimson last week.

Kelly, one of the women who participated in that year’s punch, remembers thinking, “It was just a spoof on them to show how silly it was...I was pretty astounded [at the reaction].”

Shofner says he then ordered pizza from Obie’s for the remaining revelers, while Kowal continued to take pictures of the night.

“The next morning, we’re on the front page of the Boston Globe,” Shofner recalls, adding that his friends in California heard the story on the radio, and that his father in Tennessee was even contacted by reporters. He attributes the national interest in the prank to surprise that a supposedly liberal university “still had its conservative niche.”