"Students who join Harvard’s male-only social clubs won’t be able to serve as sports captains or leaders of other campus groups starting in fall 2017.
The new policy, announced Friday by Harvard’s first female president, also applies to other unofficial single-gender groups on campus, including fraternities and sororities. Top officials at the university have been pushing those groups to stop excluding students based on gender even though they aren’t officially recognized by the school." …
I’m interested to see what the effects will be. I’m glad it’s not my job to decide how to fix this problem (and I do think it’s a problem). I applaud Faust and company for taking action and trying this experiment. We will see how it goes.
@Hanna#2: Not sure what you think the “problem” is; the university has not managed to articulate one. In any case, the effects… will be an immediate, and likely very sharp, decline in alumni contributions. I’m stopping mine effective now.
Single gender organizations that are recognized by Harvard, such as the South Asian Men’s Collective and the Association of Black Harvard Women are not included in these new policies.So what exactly is being addressed, because single gender membership is not the focus apparently.
This new action is probably partly to preserve federal funding, but will certainly affect alumni/ae donations, particularly from men who were part of the finals clubs when they were an important part of Harvard life.
^^ I read it and I still don’t understand why the final clubs are to blame. Boston and Cambridge are major urban centers and there are plenty of options of how one can spend their Saturday night. This whole thing reads to me as students who are not used to being excluded ( they got into Harvard after all) are now excluded from certain clubs and activities and their ego cannot take it. Also looks like militant feminists and SJWs trying to take down the “white patriarchy” or whatever…
If so many people do not like the clubs why don’t hey form their own associations and spend their social lives the way they want to and let the people in the clubs and those who like this sort of scene live their lives the way they want to?
I think Harvard is making a big mistake ruining history and traditions of such a glorious institution to appease feminists and SJWs…
Thank you for posting the article @gibby. I don’t think it’s hard to understand but I’ll pull the two paragraphs that seemed especially relevant.
“At Harvard, freshmen don’t have much freedom to do much partying at all in their own rooms,” he said. “For a lot of freshman girls, the final clubs are kind of a big scene.”
and
"On Friday nights at Harvard, Lewandowski said, final clubs are easily identifiable by the male members smoking cigarettes on their stoops and the “dressed-up” girls lining up to get in. She said she worries about the freshmen and other girls who see final clubs as their main social outlet.
“If you’re a freshman girl, these older guys you don’t know are controlling your access to alcohol, and they’re controlling your access to the space very literally,” she said."
The college is trying to deal with the very real problem of sexual assault on its campus. The sexual assault statistics that have been widely shared are alarming. Freshman girls have been identified as the most vulnerable population at the school and the final clubs are seen as a key problem. Whether this was too big a step to take at once or the right one at the right time, I think it was a courageous one and I applaud the administration.
It seems to me like Harvard has the responsibility to provide other outlets for social life to their students like allowing spaces for parties and organizing events in order to provide students with alternatives. Also students must take responsibility for themselves and stop going to these clubs if indeed they are so toxic and abhorrent and find something else to do in that wonderful city they are lucky to live in. However policing how students choose to associate is not an appropriate response. I don’t think restricting and regulating the way some students choose to spend their social life is the way to go.
Also actually the overwhelming majority of sexual assault cases do not happen in the premises of the final club houses or by final club members. This is not about sexual assault, it is about Harvard trying to combat “elitism” and “exclusivity”. How ironic…
I agree. Mother Harvard has ignored the social life of its students for years, but is now attempting to provide more spaces for student parties by building a student center, which I believe will be completed in 2018.
Harvard juniors and seniors, who are of legal drinking age, can and do go elsewhere. However, underage freshman and sophomore women go to final club parties because it’s one of the few places in Boston and Cambridge that underage students can obtain alcohol without getting carded. As the article mentioned, Harvard men (freshman, sophomores, juniors and seniors) who are not final club members cannot gain entry.
I agree and maybe one solution is for the Cambridge Police Department to do their job and raid the final club parties more often, shutting down final clubs that serve alcohol to minors and putting final club officers in jail for the offense – just as they do with the owners of Boston bars that serve alcohol to minors,
I believe they have gone to far. They blanketed Fraternities and Sororities in the mix to have it appear that they were not singling out Final Clubs. Is there a concern about sexual assault in Sororities? To deny kids leadership positions because they are in a Sorority or a Fraternity is ridiculous! They have gone to far and I hope it back fires on them terribly. I am a huge fan of Dean Khurana, he is so approachable and so involved in student life at Harvard. This decision/action is very disappointing to me.
In my opinion it most negatively impacts Woman’s organizations whose mission in many/most cases is to advance Women’s rights and advancement in society. This is a significant blow to them.
What about Hasty Pudding? I am aware that it accepts male as well as female students, but from an elitism point of view if Harvard had that particular concern they would be going after them.
There will be an uproar and backlash, this will be a controversy for quite some time.
Going after the low hanging fruit of Greek organizations in the well-intentioned effort to address sexual assault is far too simplistic for Harvard. What about single-sex athletic teams and the alcohol-fueled parties they throw not unlike their Greek brethren? and in doing so, sororities get painted with the same (Crimson) brush.
Young woman is an Olympic caliber skater and maintains a 3.9 GPA while assisting with research into the neurobiology of Alzheimers. Now Harvard won’t let her be President of the Science Advisory Board or endorse her as a Rhodes scholar because she is also a member of the Sabliere Society, an all female social group.
It seems there will be some collateral damage in the war the administration has declared against Final Clubs.
@3girls3cats If Harvard is attempting to deal with what you refer to as a very real problem of sexual assault, why are they allowing some single sex clubs to be excluded from the new rule? As another poster noted, the South Asian Mens Collective is not included in the new policy. Is it Harvard’s position that South Asian Men would not sexually assault someone? IMO, this new rule is to intended to take down white men.
To the poster repeating the claim that the sexual assaults don’t take place in the final Clubs–well no, they are almost non-residential and do not have empty bedrooms-- however–the alcohol which feeds the assaults back in dorm rooms/houses certainly does often come from Final Clubs. It’s difficult to buy alcohol for the underaged, but simple to get for free at the clubs.
These sanctions are the first step in either banning the clubs totally, or forcing them to go coed. Princeton did it and their eating clubs are surviving, thriving.
The poster who uses the term “femi-naziis” certainly illustrates the misogynist attitudes the final club alumni carry. Sad that some men are so terribly threatened by the inclusion of smart, successful young women in their sons’ social circles.
The Dean does focus on the essence of the problem–the clubs support the old-boy network which affects employment and internship recruiting opportunities. Parents of boys not accepted into the clubs should be just as concerned as parents of girls. Junior and Senior year when the consulting firms and banks are interviewing Harvard students over at the Charles Hotel–well, the many Final Club alumni who are doing the recruiting clearly gravitate and give preference to current Final Club candidates.
Those new-hires get a huge leg-up in their careers. Of course, some do not last more than a one or two year contract since they did not have the talent, but their resumes (and futures) are strengthened despite lack of qualification.