Harvard University will impose new rules to discourage students from joining unrecognized single-gender Final Clubs, its president announced Friday.
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Students who enter all-male or all-female final clubs are typically also those who aspire to political careers or other powerful positions after graduation, and Harvard’s new rule essentially tells incoming freshmen they have a choice between joining these groups and advancing their broader ambitions.
The new guidelines will not apply to current students, but the rule will be implemented starting with the new freshman class in 2017 (the graduating class of 2021.) The guidelines are meant to push single-sex social groups toward gender integration. In an interview with The Harvard Crimson Wednesday, Faust condemned the clubs for promoting an environment of “exclusion and discrimination” not only on the basis of gender, but also through their arbitrary admissions criteria, echoing arguments from students that the clubs also discriminate against students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
In her letter accepting Khurana’s recommendations, President Faust hinted at pressure from Black Lives Matter activists: “In recent months, we have been forcefully reminded that diversity is not equivalent to inclusion and belonging, and we have rededicated ourselves to achieving a campus where all members fully belong and thrive”.
Faust denounced the clubs for entrenching “privilege and exclusion” at Harvard, which she said went against the school’s “core values” although it has an acceptance rate of less than 10 percent and costs more than ,000 a year to attend.
Though it’s not an outright ban on single-gender organizations, it might as well be.
“Procedures for implementing these new policies will be developed by an advisory group comprised of faculty, students, and administrators at the College”, Khurana wrote. The report draws on an earlier University sexual-assault climate survey conducted last spring, which found that 47 percent of senior women participating in final-club activities reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact since entering the College, compared to 31 percent of senior women overall. Storey resigned from his Porcellian Club position after a swift backlash from students and other alumni.
The movement to dismantle final clubs reaches back at least a few decades. In 2004, a group calling itself Students Against Super Sexist Institutions-We Oppose Oppressive Final Clubs organized a campaign to disband the clubs, but was largely ignored by the administration, which said there was nothing it could do about the privately controlled clubs. The strictures apply to both women-only and men-only clubs, and neatly encourages both to go co-ed, since the most ambitious students will no longer apply for clubs that would hamper their campus ambitions.
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In the op-ed, published Thursday in the Harvard student newspaper, The Crimson, Huh along with two other female leaders said that the attention given to make all-male finals clubs co-ed has overlooked the significance of the women’s organizations. The change in tactics may divide current student members and alumni members-as apparently happened at the Fox this year-and create a face-saving way to change the College’s culture down the road.
