However, my first instinct is to be wary that the viewpoint expressed by the survey. I say this because I see that a task force/special panel is what devised the solution.
I also think it is very likely that the survey response is skewed in a major way. Many of the 49% of men responding that the clubs are negative could be the very males that the clubs rejected as members. Sour grapes?? This would explain why the females were less prone to be negative because they did not have the same number or breath of finals clubs to join and were less likely to be rejected because they never tried to join.
And that is the problem with such surveys - it all depends who decides to answer. Plus, surveys like these are rarely scientifically controlled to weed out such biases.
Also missing in the article is also the fact that 51% of the men were fine with the clubs, so the majority actually are OK with the clubs. But if the survey responders where skewed toward males who were rejected, then that 49% of responders is really a much smaller percentage of males and represent no way near almost half. There are several other weaknesses as well.
I put it in this in some context. I bet the majority of the same students surveyed would say that underage drinking negatively affects campus life by being a major contributing factor in sexual assault on females. Yet, I also bet none of the same would support a ban on underage drinking on campus, or better said, punishing students for underage drinking that is already against the behavior code.
Therefore, I still am of the opinion that this is to get rid of males finals clubs (and took down the females clubs as collateral damage), and the survey used as if it is proof that students wanted the single sex clubs actually disbanded, when I doubt this is the solution that the majority of students would have implemented themselves.
Given the male and female students’ reaction, I do believe the school lost this going and coming and misread the survey response as a call for banning single sex clubs - no, single sex clubs is what the task voce wanted and who knows the biases of the people on that special panel? Too many unknowns to take the survey as proof of what the students actually wanted and the resulting student uproar kind of proves that in itself.
Simple: there is a big difference between being a member, on one’s own home turf, and being a guest.
I must say that as a graduate of a women’s college I am somewhat amused by all of these young women suddenly discovering the value of “women’s spaces” and a female power structure. B-)
I transferred to Harvard after two years at a women’s college, so I wasn’t looking for more of the same. Unlike some of my peers, I didn’t place a whole lot of value on single-sex spaces. Where I really bonded with other women was at Harvard Law, and we did that through open-membership organizations.
I never really thought about “women’s spaces,” more or less taking them for granted in the course of my undergraduate education. When I went to the U of C for grad school, I was genuinely stunned by the extreme sexism of the English Department at that time. (Only ONE female professor, IIRC. In an English department, not particle physics or whatever. And that was only for starters.) It was not a conclusion I came to lightly, since the implications were so negative and so far-reaching.
I didn’t go to a women’s college looking for women’s spaces. I went because only a few of the elites were only just beginning to be coed, and for a person with great test scores and erratic grades they were by far the best admissions bargain. There were undoubtedly plenty of other places I could have gotten in to, but I was raised in a very Ivy/Seven Sisters-centric milieu. I could have gone to a much less rigorous school (the average grade given at W at that time was a C) with easier access to guys. But it never occurred to me.
Could it be that “values” are not universal? Perish the thought. Why, it would be as if virtue were open to definition. And we all know reasonable people always agree on everything. (/sarcasm)
At least up to this point, and unlike religious colleges such as BYU, Harvard has not demanded a loyalty oath to the One Right Way to Think and Live. If and when it does, it will draw a different student body. I agree with Dean Lewis, students of a nonconformist bent who do their research will be much less likely to apply to Harvard with these policies in effect. I think that would be a loss for Harvard.
A very false comparative. I am one who backs BYU and the enforcement of its values. However, you are comparing two different premises.
Harvard is not enforcing known and agreed to values on its student body that it there now - it is changing willy nilly its values mid-stream and forcing students to comply. Not even remotely comparable to BYU in essence and substance.
With respect to substance, one is religious-based and the other is secular-based. Again, not remotely comparable.
Surely, you understand the difference between forcing new (and diametrically opposed to the old) values on someone, and someone taking a vow to follow certain consistent values, as a condition of acceptance. As far as I know, no Harvard student agreed to any these new found values prior to sending in their deposit.
You are merely projecting your thoughts about what you hope would exist, as opposed to what actually does happen. Please note that nothing about what you think/hope, home turf vs guest, changes people. And, I know directly from experience.
I went to an undergrad school where the fraternities were co-ed. Hence, there were no sororities. And as far as male and female behavior in the houses, the guys who were on the “hunt” for unknowing females, were still on the hunt for such females. And the females who did not know better still became members and still did not know better. The involved partied were the same as before, just now in a co-ed house.
Guess what happened? The exact same issues. However, it actually made it tougher on the females to report because now they would be going against their own members (brothers and sisters) and would make the house look bad if it got out. The result - same drunken sex and sexual assault behavior that a female, unless she wanted to be shunned by her frat (club) for causing trouble, just learned to keep her mouth shut. (Actually, the crazy guys often liked this scenario because the females had female friends who they would invite over - took the trouble off of guys to have to invite new females to the house.)
In terms of the environment, it could be said it was somewhat worse for these in-house females, as compared to a female who just came for a party, because there was always beer and alcohol in the house. Thus, the women were now drinking, almost daily, like the guys and were routinely as intoxicated. And worse, the females lived there and really could not just leave if they wanted to without causing a raucous within the house.
Therefore, based on my experience, I am not sure how you think such an environment with more intoxicated males and females living or meeting at a club together would lower sexual assault and drunken sex. I suspect it stays the same or goes up a notch up, but now stays as in-house (in-club) knowledge.
In my experience, men and women who live in the same place don’t behave that way.
And I expect women who are members of a coed organization to speak up just as powerfully as any man, especially when it comes to something like sexual assault. Not to cower because the boys might not like them.
I guess we’ve hung around very different types of people.
Nice, succinct explanation. Thanks. I understand your position well.
However, one thought to consider - not all women are like you, and thus would like the opportunity to thrive and to have another experience outside of co-ed within single-sex clubs. I still do not understand why there could not be a choice on campus.
It just seems to be trying for a one-size-fits-all approach, which really seems to run directly counter to Harvard’s claim of wanting more inclusion and diversity. I guess this claim does not encompass inclusion of females who may want single sex clubs.; therefore, the requirement of less diverse types of females on campus.
Harvard has this right, of course, just seems counter to its overall philosophical claims.
You are still projecting. It is a good, hopeful projection, but you think only certain women join coed clubs. No, all types of women do.
This blanket statement that you “expect women who are members of a coed organization to speak up just as powerfully as any man, especially when it comes to something like sexual assault” is but only one viewpoint that a woman could take. And the women who do get taken advantage of all join clubs as well. I do not understand why you think joining a club changes one’s personality and character - women join a club as who they are, not who you hope they would be.
And it is not an issue of hanging around people. I was one of the few males in my school not to join a fraternity, so all I did was went to the parties mainly and midnight taps during the week. However, the school was small enough that what ever happened on campus was pretty well-known by everyone. No need to hang around anyone in particular to eventually know what is going on everywhere with everyone - just like with a small town.
My unsophisticated and oversimplified impression: Harvard really wanted to target only all-male organizations (especially with membership drawn from “privileged” backgrounds), because it would demonstrate to anyone whose opinions they valued that they were leading the charge in “doing something” about campus rape as per the current conventional wisdom that all-male organizations are obviously the primary cause of it. Plus there’s the added bonus of hopefully blackening the names of such members when they later seek high positions in government or business as such information would get mysteriously leaked to the public at inauspicious times.
In order to protect itself from charges of discrimination, however, the administration had to cast a wide net and included all same-sex organizations but with a trap door that they can grant indulgences to those same-sex groups they feel worthy of continued existence (and possibly read: “politically correct”).
And I might say to @twoinanddone whom I agree with, that although Harvard may pat itself on the back for its self-congratulatory virtue-signalling, I predict this will drive some targets underground, especially final clubs with the financial means to do so. UVA, as I’d mentioned elsewhere, harbors several secret societies whose membership is soooo secret that supposedly even the wives are kept in the dark until the big reveal at the funeral, decades later. Of course, finals could also admit a few token women to adhere to the letter of the decree. The concept is not unheard of, even within the hallowed halls of Harvard.
But the sororities will not go underground, will not admit men, token or otherwise. I don’t think the finals clubs this is focused on will change one way other the other. They’ll be there, some may join as members and give up the right to be captains or leaders, and other may just not join officially. I figure the clubs will come up with a work-around for those who want it all and let them associate for parties and other social events, but not officially be on the rolls so the student can answer ‘no’ when asked if they are members of unrecognized groups. The sorority members will be SOL; join and you’ll give up possible leadership roles and maybe even very valuable fellowships and scholarships, don’t join and give up your personal choice to join a group you wish to.
Harvard is no longer the small group of boys who have a group of friends from the houses. It is now a fairly big school of over 7000, with girls and everything! It doesn’t surprise me that the students want something different than those boys from 200 years ago wanted. ND also changed and now admits women, but still doesn’t have frats and sororities. What is it offering students who want a social outlet? How are the students forming social bonds with others with the same interests? Maybe Harvard should look at how other schools have managed without having to have edicts about leadership roles and fellowships.
At both Harvard and Yale, the concept for many years has been that the center of social interaction would be the house (or residential college). For a long time this was true at both schools, with minimal Greek presence–and finals clubs or secret societies for a subset of seniors. This continued to be true after both schools went coed. In my opinion, the event that changed everything was the institution of the lowered drinking age. Suddenly, alcohol couldn’t be served at house (or residential college) events. The result was the growth of off-campus Greek organizations that could get away with serving alcohol to minors. In other words, the social structure wasn’t broken at those schools, until a change in the drinking age broke it.
In my opinion, the single-sex finals clubs are a separate issue–and as noted above, it was an issue that was solved at Yale. At Yale, I’m not aware of anybody saying that Greek organizations should be penalized because they are single-sex.