Harvard to Bar Members of Single-Gender Clubs From Leadership in Official Groups

The Wall Street Journal ^ | May 6, 2016 | Melissa Korn

[KingofZion]

Beginning with the freshman class that enters in fall 2017, Harvard University students will no longer be allowed to hold leadership positions in campus groups while also maintaining membership in the exclusive, single-gender final clubs that dominate the school’s social scene.

The new rule, announced Friday morning by President Drew Gilpin Faust and Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana, comes as the school grapples with how to stem sexual assaults and foster an inclusive environment, all while acknowledging the limits of its control over groups that it doesn’t fund or govern directly.

The policy barring students from holding leadership positions in official groups while being members of what the school calls “unrecognized, single-gender social organizations,” also extends to the younger fraternities and sororities. Students will also not receive the dean’s endorsements for elite scholarships and fellowships if they’re found to be members of the groups The final clubs—so-called because they were historically the last of the social clubs a student would join as undergraduates—are a cross between Yale University’s secret societies, Princeton University’s eating clubs and fraternities and sororities.

Today, there are six all-male clubs, five younger all-female clubs, and two that used to be restricted to men but opened their doors to women last fall.

“Campus culture has not changed as rapidly as student demography,” Ms. Faust said in an email to the college community Friday announcing her acceptance of Mr. Khurana’s recommendations.

She said that barring students from participation in the groups because of their gender “encourages a form of self-segregation that undermines the promise offered by Harvard’s diverse student body” and doesn’t prepare students for life after graduation, where gender-based discrimination “is understood as unwise, unenlightened, and untenable.”

[lee martell]

You don’t put the roosters with the hens without thinking it through.