Partly Cloudy, 64°
A throng of argyle-clad Brown Croquet Club members descended on the Main Green with mallets, croquet balls, and ample pompousness last Thursday. In so doing, they displaced scantily clad sunbathers, confused tour groups, and ignited a firestorm of controversy.
"I was just enjoying the rays when I saw this little ball rolling towards me," said a shirtless Tom Tracy '11, who was forced to gather his belongings and flee the premises to avoid being caught in the crossfire of a particularly heated croquet match.
The unprecedented appearance of a club-and, for that matter, sport-few knew existed has been met with student responses ranging from ambivalence to outright ire.
Samantha "Queen of the Green" Tannen '10, who presides from her seat on the Faunce Steps, considers herself the chief enforcer of campus green protocol.
"The Main Green is a sacred space reserved for Frisbee, drunken revelry, and chilling out," Tannen declared menacingly between puffs of her Parliament Light cigarette. "There will be consequences."
The Croquet Club's Main Green appearance has not just attracted the attention of territorial hipsters. Inklings of a secret club, rumored to revolve around an obscure lawn sport, have circulated ever since croquet paraphernalia was found in Alumni Hall in the aftermath of last year's SexPowerGod party, a discovery that stupefied party attendees and maintenance staff alike.
Soon afterward, reports materialized of weekend trips to Newport, High Tea at the Ratty, and an enforced dress code of sweater vests, knickerbockers, and fedoras modeled, one club member said, on "the wardrobe Will Smith donned in his finest film, 'The Legend of Bagger Vance.'"
Samuel P. Worthington III '12, the Brown Croquet Club's president, is believed to have authored the club's founding charter. Worthington, a transfer student from Princeton, said he sought to harness the New Jersey university's ethos of country-club-style exclusivity "to transform the cultural landscape of the University into an elite metaphorical lawn-space," presumably one more akin to the topiary gardens and breath-taking seaside views of his family's Nantucket compound.
Worthington scoffed at the idea of competing with already-extant secret societies on campus, particularly the enigmatic Pacifica House.
"Girls at my junior high school had lunch tables that were more exclusive," Worthington sneered.
Worthington's efforts, however, have rankled some prospective club members. Cindy Stanton '13 said the Brown Croquet Club's application requires potential members to prove their descent from either Queen Elizabeth II or an A-list Hollywood celebrity, preferably through a family tree.
"Charlize Theron really is my fourth cousin!" exclaimed Stanton, who cited her founding of a croquet league at her eighth grade summer camp as a testament to her dedication to the sport. Her ancestry unverifiable, Stanton was declined membership.
One member asserts that detractors who view the club as elitist fail to understand the spirit of camaraderie and mutual understanding that exists among its members.
"Not a lot of people know that we have nicknames for each other based on the characters from 'The Great Gatsby,'" the source alleged. "We even reserved the title of 'Nick Caraway' for that really boring guy no one cares about."
