Sure. Colleges and universities have done that in the past. As far as I’m concerned, doing away with fraternities and sororities would have been preferable to creating a class of second-class citizen of students who have done nothing wrong. It would have been preferable to have followed Princeton’s lead in forbidding freshmen from attending parties at final clubs or frats.
It is probably easier to ban fraternities in isolated, rural settings. Not so easy in a city. Are you going to set up an office to police students’ housing choices? Will you accuse young men (or women) sharing a house of immoral gender exclusion?
@Hanna, I’m not sure “social engineering” is the word to use. Certainly this will drive away students who are interested in controlling their social life. I would say that any student who is uneasy at administrators biased against large portions of the student body should look elsewhere.
There’s also a larger dialogue about what one should learn in college–why do you go? In Beer and Circus, I believe, Murray Sperber theorizes that there are different culture groups in colleges: academic, collegiate, vocational, and rebel.
This proposal strikes me as the academic subculture (professors) trying to root out the collegiate subculture. I find that to be tilting at windmills. Quite a few students gain more from the social connections they make with fellow students than from the academic material presented in the large lectures. If an administration wants to do away with the collegiate subculture, they must create something to take its place. Tea with Dean Wormer is not going to cut it.
People who want to network may decide to network somewhere else. I feel over time the university would suffer from losing the alumni who never enrolled.
Here’s a question: what’s your subculture?
Academic
Collegiate
Vocational (working through college, degree as “an entrance fee into the middle class”)
Rebel “The goal of rebel students in all eras has been self-development, finding their own way through the maze of higher education and into the complexity of adult society.”
You’re right, they don’t have to, but let’s look at the context of the conversation I was responding to (emphasis mine) and you’ll see the rest of your post is beside my point.
Harvard is currently not taking any stance against the racial divide of these groups. As I said, if these groups become 50/50 male/female but remain 100% rich and white, the currently proposed sanctions against the members would be lifted. If the groups become completely racially/SES representative of Harvard while maintaing a single sex nature, the sanctions would remain. Sure, they might make new sanctions requiring the groups to have a certain SES or race distribution after the gender issue is addressed, but that’s not what they are currently saying or doing and so it is ironic to talk about the racial divide in a conversation about a policy that makes absolutely no mention of anything other than gender.
Again, to talk about how “clueless” someone is to use a photo of white girls and not recognize the racial disparity of that group when discussing the opposition to a policy where membership in a multicultural all female group comprised of both the rich and the poor will have serious negative impact on you, but membership in an all white, rich coed group will be perfectly acceptable by Harvard’s new standards is ironic.
Another ironic thing to say since the fraternity chapters were not spared in this.
I just thought that if the decision to punish males based on sex, for instance, (i.e. no males who are in frats can be ____) that they would be prohibited from doing that regardless of whether it is a private school. Very interesting though.
Is there anybody claiming that these organizations have rules excluding non-white students? That makes a difference. If there was a finals club that was explicitly all-white, this action might have been taken sooner.
I never thought I’d ever feel sorry for Harvard, but I think I’m starting to. Poor Harvard. There is nothing they can do to make people happy. When final clubs do or say something dumb or offensive people clamor for the the school to “do something” about those terrible final clubs. Well, since the final clubs are off-campus private clubs with no affiliation with the school, Harvard is limited in what it can do. So when it does what it can to reduce the attractiveness of final clubs to Harvard students, that results in yet another clamor: Political Correctness! Unfair,! Lawsuit!. .
No matter what Harvard does, on any matter under the sun, there is always a vocal faction somewhere that will hate them for it.
@Scipio Isn’t that the ugly truth/irony of Political Correctness – no matter which way you go, no matter what you do, the wind is always blowing and you can never be politically correct enough?
I think schools in general, not just Harvard, brought this on themselves, by not setting realistic standards of debate and discourse that promoted discordant intellectual exchange and by simultaneously taking every complaint, as if it were the end of the world.
This is similar to students who are endlessly offended it seems, for virtually anything. There is a point where if everyone is offended all the time by something, then nothing becomes possible to discuss or do, as someone in the vicinity will be offended and exchange must cease. It is ridiculous really. One cannot be offend-proof enough.
So what happened here is in an effort to appease some group, all male club dissenters, Harvard manages to offend another group of students. Colleges have set up a scenario where any decision is a mine field.
And companies are starting to screen for this activity and behavior too. Our interviews now watch real carefully if prospective hires can handle awkward situations or statements without losing their composure, train of thought or a drop in service. If people get offended by what others say and do all the time and act out, like college students do, then productivity suffers greatly. Have to weed those folks out before they get in.
We have one president who starts meetings by saying,“If anyone here is offended that no one in this room thinks you are the smartest person in the company, then I suggest you find another job; bad ideas will be criticized and discarded no matter how you feel about it.” And yes, had a few people who could not handle that bluntness.
Let me get this straight - Some Harvard women are saying that they can discriminate by gender and not admit men, but men cannot discriminate by gender and not admit women. And this is what is they call equality. Yes, no doubt about it anymore, even the supposed smartest students are now stupid.
“Quite a few students gain more from the social connections they make with fellow students than from the academic material presented in the large lectures.”
I heartily agree, and so do the proponents of the new policy. But they don’t want those social connections defined in ways that are developing on campus now. I went to a Harvard where there was no question about whether you needed to audition for, and pay for, some kind of selective social club to have a robust social life. If the membership is creeping around 30%, that changes the dynamic for everyone. There are literally about 1000 good schools you can go to if you want a Greek-based social life. I liked that Harvard was different.
“Another ironic thing to say since the fraternity chapters were not spared in this.”
There is no way to write a policy that would target final clubs and not fraternities. These are just the realities.
Sure, but it has to have at least have some logical basis to be taken seriously to have any chance of being seen as legitimate. It is the “safe” part literally cracks me up about the protesters’ position.
They state that women’s clubs/groups keep women safe. OK, let’s accept that. Therefore, the corollary must be that all male finals clubs/groups are unsafe or less safe for women. There is no other juxtaposition to take from that statement. It follows, if they truly believe that all male groups are less safe or flat-out unsafe for women, then these women should be in support of all male finals clubs/groups, thereby protecting women from being exposed to unsafe all male environments.
However, illogically, they agree with taking away the finals clubs all male status. But wait, if the all male status is eliminated, the difference would presumably be expected to be made up by females. But given their position, the safer place for females is all female groups, which keep women safer.
Ergo, these Harvard females seem not to care that given their beliefs of what is safe for women that eliminating the all male status exposes more females to the unsafe spaces. Yet, if safe women is their goal, shouldn’t they want to stop women from joining clubs where men make the club unsafe? Philosophy is not their strong suit.
One way to to make fraternities and sororities different from finals clubs would be for the school to recognize them as other colleges have done. Bring them on campus, make the legit, work with them. And take some CONTROL over them. Most colleges have some control over the Greek system and can set rules. When is Rush, who can participate, how many events can the house host, what are the gpa requirements? If a house is discriminating, work to fix that. At the University of colorado, the sororities are all off campus but Panhel is a recognized school group and the houses follow rules set by the school as to when rush is held, what campus programs the sororities can be in, etc. The fraternities are not recognized, cannot hold meetings on campus, cannot distribute material during orientation. Of course they are an open secret, just like the finals clubs, and just like the finals clubs, the school has no control and yes, it is a mess sometimes.
It doesn’t seem to bother Yale’s federal funding to have recognized Greeks, or MIT or Tufts. Dartmouth seems to have worked it out ( and i think Dartmouth did experiment with co-ed fraternities in the 70’s and it didnt work out because the natonal organizations didnt support it so all the house were just independent and all control was lost). If the students want these organizations and can live with the school regulating them, why is Harvard not listening to its students? They want clubs, they arent illegal, why can’t they form and join them?
Harvard could set the rules for groups to be recognized even if they are singled sexed. Maybe some of the finals clubs could meet these standards of community service, alum supervision of housing and bank accounts, alcohol (sororities have none at official events), selection of members, but many would not so would disappear. The new edict could remain that non-recognized clubs are banned, but just recognize the clubs that are willing to follow the rules. The reasonable, legal rules.
“the houses follow rules set by the school as to when rush is held, what campus programs the sororities can be in, etc.”
Overwhelmingly, these rules aren’t set by the school. They’re set by the members of the Panhellenic Council.
"Harvard could set the rules for groups to be recognized even if they are singled sexed. Maybe some of the finals clubs could meet these standards of community service, alum supervision of housing and bank accounts, alcohol (sororities have none at official events), selection of members, "
The final clubs would not agree to any of that. They have no reason to. They don’t get any benefit from being recognized. They don’t need to advertise or use campus spaces. They are already heavily supervised by their alumni, but the alumni approve of the clubs being drinking clubs and hookup spaces, so that won’t cause any change. (NO QUESTION, the undergrads do not have unfettered control of the clubs’ bank accounts or buildings.)
That’s fine, those clubs that do not agree to the rules set by the university will not be recognized and will not get to hold leadership position for student government or teams. Those clubs that do wish to be recognized (and the sororities DO prefer to be official student organizations) can meet the requirements and abide by the rules. If Harvard wants to set the Rush terms, dates, conditions, and the Greeks want to be recognized, the Greeks would have to follow the university set rules. A lot of schools do set quite a few more rules than others. My daughter both go to schools where the universities own the Greek housing and set a lot of the rules, one school more than the other.
At CU, the fraternities are unwilling to meet the rules set by the university so are unrecognized. The sororities agreed to meet the rules (no alcohol, houseparent required even though the houses are privately owned are two of the rules the girls willingly follow and the boys will not agree to), so are recognized. Does Harvard not have single sex dorms? We know they do have single sex athletic teams. There is no legal reason the school can’t recognize single sex clubs that meet the rules.
I don’t think it’s a matter of legality. I think they feel these organizations undermine the inclusive social organization they provide with their residential college system. “After their first year at Harvard, students are placed into one of the 12 houses on campus and continue to live there for the remainder of their residential life at Harvard. Over ninety-seven percent of Harvard undergrads choose to live on campus for all four years, creating a strong campus community and undergraduate experience. Each house has a resident master and a staff of tutors, and includes a dining hall, common areas, and recreational and cultural spaces that help give them each a distinct character. Many even field their own intramural sports teams or theater ensembles. The houses themselves also have unique histories and traditions that bring the students together and help to foster the close and long-lasting ties amongst the residents of each house.”