The
Crimson
reported a confusing development this week in the battle over “Unrecognized
Single Gender Social Organizations” at Harvard.
Traditionally all-female final
clubs and sororities will be allowed to retain their “gender focus” for the
next few years—and potentially beyond that period—while complying with the
College’s policy penalizing single-gender social groups, according to Associate
Dean of Student Life David R. Friedrich.
This fulfills the Implementation Committee’s recommendation
that it “supports the idea of continuing to allow the female final clubs and
sororities to operate with gender focused missions, with the understanding that
the positive contributions of those organizations to the campus community would
be assessed in three to five years.” There is a catch, however.
Friedrich clarified, however, that
any groups’ gender-focused mission should exist simultaneously with
“substantive advancement toward full inclusion,” including gender inclusivity.
This development brings two thoughts to mind.
First, when I referred in my
original
remarks before the Faculty to an
Index
of Prohibited Organizations, I was half
joking. I
didn’t think anyone would actually have to keep a list, because everybody knew
which organizations were covered: The men’s and women’s Final Clubs, and the
fraternities and sororities that were restricted to Harvard students. Targeting
that constellation of clubs may not make a lot of ethical sense (seems odd that
Lambda Upsilon stays off it by having
MIT and Wellesley members), but at least it’s pretty well defined.
But now a published list really will have to exist. Someone in
University Hall will have to make judgments about which groups have a “gender
focus” and which are just women’s groups. Which groups are making “substantive
advancement” and which groups’ advancement is less substantive. Which groups
are making “positive” contributions and which groups’ contributions are neutral
or negative. The keeper of the
Index
will move groups onto and off the list in accordance with periodic
audits—another
new concept introduced recently, which seems to mesh with the Implementation
Committee’s recommendation that student groups submit their “demographic breakdown”
to University Hall.
In the absence of a published Index, a student affirming her compliance with the USGSO policy could
not know whether the organization of which she was a member was prohibited or
not.
(At this point I was going to write a sentence or two
explaining what was wrong with having a dean keeping the
Index and deciding which organizations to move onto it on the basis
that they are
utterly
without redeeming social value. I couldn’t make myself do it. If you don’t
see anything wrong with this, probably nothing I could say would
convince you.)
That was one thought. The other was surprise that the
University would adopt an implementation plan that so plainly discriminated
against men’s organizations. We have only the Implementation Committee report and
the Crimson interview to go on, but it seems that what is described as a “gender
focus” loophole is in fact strictly for women’s groups, and no men’s group can
escape the Index on the basis that it
makes positive contributions to the experience of its members.
Whatever the asymmetry between the experience of men and
women at Harvard, I am surprised that the University would so starkly state that all men’s organizations are worthless and intolerable but women’s organizations can
be useful and will be tolerated, having in its recent pronouncements focused exclusively
on nondiscrimination as the rationale for the policy. It’s a very odd idea—gender
discrimination in furtherance of gender nondiscrimination.
“I hope that, and trust that,
during the process things that might concern me would be communicated during
the process,” Faust said. “Ultimately, I want to be able to ensure that this
policy is not going to get us sued instantly, is legal, is something that the
governing boards feel is acceptable to implement.”
