Others involved downplay the publicity the event received. Kelly claims that Shofner went down to the Globe’s offices himself. “He wanted to drum up publicity,” she says. The whole thing was, she claims, “more of a publicity stunt for Stewart to get attention”.

According to Kowal, “There was an article in the Boston Globe, and Stewart was excited about that, and then nothing really ever happened.”

“Maybe it was a little bit radical. But it was pretty benign. It’s not like we took over the administration building,” Kowal adds.

THE LAST DOMINO

Shofner, now a laser eye surgeon in Nashville, Tenn., says he occasionally stops by The Fly for drinks around reunion time. For the most part, however, he says he is “too busy making people see” to reflect much on the incident, laughing, “I guess I can’t get ’em to see the way I want ’em to.”

Kelly says she considers the incident as “something to tell my children.”

“I thought it would probably wake them up,” reflects Kelly, who is now a secondary school teacher in Massachusetts, later adding “but it didn’t seem to have much of an effect.”

Kowal says he had thought that by now, the all-male final clubs of his time would have female members.

“I would have thought what I was after, what Stewart was after back then, would have happened now.”

In his mind, he says they were just “knocking down another domino that should have been knocked down a long time ago. The bizarre thing is, there it is still.”

—Yailett Fernandez contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Véronique E. Hyland can be reached at hyland@fas.harvard.edu.