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29 September 2017
In its Final Report,
the Committee on Unrecognized Single-Gender Social Organizations (USGSOs) has modified
its preliminary recommendation of June 2017, which would bar undergraduates
from joining Final clubs, fraternities, sororities, or similar off-campus
single-gender organizations (such as the Hasty Pudding). In lieu of a single policy, the Final Report
considers a variety of strategies for addressing the USGSOs, which range from
the sanction policy of May 2016 to calls for engagement with students to more
aggressive police enforcement of underage drinking and noise statutes. The choice to adopt such a “multiple
recommendation” approach reflects the continuing deep divisions within our
community about how best to address the USGSOs.
In discussions with many colleagues and students—and over many hours of
debate within the Committee itself—it has become obvious that these issues do
not admit to any straightforward solution, and that colleagues who start from
the same goal of making Harvard the best place it can be may nevertheless
arrive at very different end points. The
purpose of this note is to offer an analysis of the main sources of these
differences. As such, it is not intended
as a dissent per se, but as a formal
attempt to clarify some of the principles and conceptual distinctions that seem
to matter most to my colleagues and students.
As I see it, when
members of our community disagree about how to address the all-male Final clubs
and other USGSOs, we may be disagreeing about either of two distinct
questions. The first of these asks,
“What problem are we trying to solve?”; the second, “What is the best way to
solve it?” The Committee’s Final Report
makes clear that a range of answers exists to the latter—thus, its “multiple
recommendations” strategy. But,
likewise, different members of our community provide very different answers to
the question of what problem we are, in the first place, trying to solve. These differences have been reflected in the seemingly
different ways that the problem of Final clubs has been framed for the Faculty over
time and in different documents—many colleagues feel that the rationale for
sanctioning USGSO membership has morphed from an initial focus on sexual
assault, to later concerns about gender-based discrimination, and most
recently, to issues of inclusion, belonging, and privilege. Indeed, the Committee spent a good deal of
time discussing not only these problems, but also additional ones, such as the
distorting effects of Final clubs on student social life and the health and
safety concerns they pose for our students.
Some of my colleagues
have decided that these shifts in rationale reflect some form of political
expediency (“let’s keep making different arguments until the Faculty buy one of
them”). But we may do better to conclude
instead that the problem of the all-male Final clubs is—as psychoanalysts and philosophers
of science would say—overdetermined. That
is, we should not disavow the all-male Final clubs because they increase the
incidence of sexual assault or
because they discriminate against women or
because they advance the prerogatives of a few individuals at the expense of
many others or because the undermine
student life or because they
encourage unsafe drinking. We should
repudiate them because they do all of these things. Perhaps any one such aspect of the clubs
would be sufficient to make the case against them; together they lead, as the
Final Report notes, to our community’s shared sense that we cannot afford to do
nothing about them.
Note that I have
restricted the point above to all-male Final clubs, and this is with intent. Many of us believe firmly that despite its
shifting rationales, the College is “really” trying to address problems specific
to the all-male Final clubs. After all,
these are the only groups that own property adjacent to campus and that host the
parties outside of which female undergraduates queue in the hopes of being
admitted. These are the groups that
perpetuate privilege most perniciously.
And these are the groups that our colleagues have uniquely identified as
important loci of sexual assault.
Indeed, it is hard not to perceive a direct line connecting the Final Report in March 2016 of President Faust’s
Task Force on the Prevention of Sexual Assault to the announcement two months
later of the first sanctions policy. That
Task Force repeatedly makes the case that it is the all-male Final clubs that pose
serious concerns with regard to sexual assault, and that this is mainly
possible because they control the space in which many undergraduates socialize
(unlike other USGSOs).
My sense is that our
current divide has emerged, in part, because of a continual choice to first
select one or another of the specific problems caused by the all-male Final
clubs and to then develop policies designed to address that problem broadly
throughout undergraduate life. This
impulse is understandable—we are, after all, a community that values first
articulating our principles and then developing policies that serve them. When our goal is to achieve a particular
outcome (say, the end to all-male Final clubs) we naturally want to start by
defining the principles at stake, such as an opposition to gender-based
discrimination, and then allow our policies to flow from that principle. But thus far, this approach has created
something of a dragnet, which threatens to sweep in student groups that many of
us feel are not much of a problem (or, at least, not nearly as much of a
problem as the all-male Final clubs); fraternal organizations without houses in
which to host parties and womens’ Final clubs, not to mention the Hasty
Pudding, do not really seem to be at the root of campus ills. It is my own belief personally—and I think
the sentiment of many faculty colleagues—that we would have done better to
clearly identify what we are trying to achieve, which is an end to the noxious,
distorting, and often abhorrent influence of the all-male Final clubs on undergraduate
life. This is surely the point on which
the greatest number of us agree; if for no other reason, it would serve well as
the starting point for discussions about what policies best achieve our goal.
Which brings us squarely
to the second major source of disagreement within our community: regardless of
how one answers the question of what goal we ought to be aiming for, there
remains an open—and very contentious—question of how best to go about achieving
it.
To date, much of the
debate around this issue has been cast a clash between competing values. On the one hand, our community is committed
to inclusion, we fight against discrimination in all its pernicious forms, and
we have rightly begun to identify and dismantle the many structures that
prevent members of our community from feeling that they belong at Harvard (and
that it belongs to them). On the other
hand, we recognize that this set of values is one among many that progressive,
well-intentioned individuals espouse.
Another set of such values includes notions of free expression, of
individual autonomy, and of the right to free association. One frame on the current faculty debate concerns
how to adjudicate between these values when they conflict with one
another. The choice of some students to
socialize off-campus with only certain people acts as a barrier to inclusion
and belonging for other students; to whom do our responsibilities lie? Each of us recognizes that rights (even those
enumerated in the law) are not absolute but must be balanced against our
responsibilities to one another—thus, the restrictions on free expression that enjoin
us from shouting “fire!” in a crowded faculty meeting or the like. One way of thinking about our current state
of division is as a disagreement about whether the hazards posed by the
all-male Final clubs and other USGSOs warrants a similar abrogation of (some
of) our students’ rights (such as to free and lawful assembly). [I am, of course, glossing over many nuanced
aspects of this point of view, but only because I wish to make the observation
below.]
This way of framing
the debate tends to bottom out in the question of whether we should intervene against the all-male Final clubs and
other USGSOs. But another way we might
have this discussion is by instead asking the question of how we ought to intervene. What I mean is this: For much of the past 16
months, we have been led to think in binary terms—either we take the
extraordinary step of patrolling the off-campus social lives of students, or we
wave a white flag of surrender to the status
quo and acquiesce as the Final clubs continue to exert an adverse effect on
our community. What is missing from this
duality is any substantive discussion of how we might effect meaningful change
on the Final clubs through more ordinary
means. The policies of sanctioning USGSO
membership surely comprise extraordinary
measures: they make extraordinary and unprecedented claims on the private,
off-campus lives of our students; implementing them will require a radical
reimagining (for many of us) of the relationship between the faculty and its
students’ private lives; and they seem (to many of us) to contravene other
values that ought to characterize a liberal institution committed to free
inquiry and personal transformation. One
index of just how extraordinary these policies seem is the amount of time spent
by the USGSO Committee on the question of whether the various sanctions
policies are even legal. Such policies will take us into uncharted
places.
Is there nothing
short of such extraordinary measures that can bring change to our campus? The USGSO Committee’s Final Report tells us
the answer to this question is no, that we have tried in vain for years to rein
in the Final clubs through normal channels.
But a look at what is described suggests that the College’s ordinary
attempts have been limited to various forms of “moral suasion,” mainly comprising
various meetings between administrators and club leaders and alumni boards. If the College’s efforts have indeed consisted
mostly of an occasional stern talking-to, then we have little reason for
surprise at their failure. Social
scientists—economists, sociologists, those in psychology departments and
business schools—have learned a great deal about how to change people’s
behavior, and we know that “moral suasion” is probably the least effective ways
of going about it. This is why when public
health officials aim to decrease cigarette smoking, they do not simply tell
people, “Cigarette smoking is bad, you shouldn’t do it.” Instead, they have waged a sustained campaign
to inform consumers of the dangers of smoking; they make it harder for young
people to obtain cigarettes; they have worked relentlessly to transform
cigarette smoking from something with social cachet into something that borders
on shameful and “uncool”; and so on. No,
this has not proven straightforward, and yes, it has taken time and real
effort. But walk around Harvard Square
on a Saturday night, and you will struggle to find an (American) student
smoking a cigarette, an absence that would have leapt out for its strangeness
not all that long ago.
So we might then ask
ourselves: Can we use these kinds of techniques to change student behavior
regarding the all-male Final clubs and other USGSOs? Are there no such ordinary means by which to
drain these clubs of their vitality (or to “shrivel” them, as a colleague has colorfully
put it)? Again, we have been led to
believe not. But many of us are
skeptical of this claim. Thus, my sense
that when we look past the legislative motions and parliamentary maneuvers, the
blog posts and leaks to The Crimson, a good deal of opposition to the sanction
policies flows from a desire to try—seriously for the first time—to rein in the
Final clubs through a full suite of methods that we ordinarily use to change
social behavior.[1] That is, we have not had—but should be
having—a full-throated conversation about whether we can reach our shared goals
in ways that do not require us to compromise other core institutional
values. I am not convinced we can, but
many of us believe it is worth first trying.
However, any serious
attempt to use such “ordinary” measures to undermine the Final clubs’ influence
on campus needs to start from an analysis of why exactly they play such an
outsized role in campus social life in the first place, and thus what the
College must do to drain their vitality.
During the USGSO Committee discussions, we heard, in every meeting, that
the Final clubs dominate undergraduate social life precisely because few good
on-campus alternatives exist. A similar
point was made manifest in the Implementation Committee’s report: that if the
College wants to rob the Final clubs of their appeal, it must start by creating
attractive alternative social spaces for undergraduates. Many of our students want a place to “have
fun”—which we would do well to acknowledge means drinking alcohol, acting in
mildly transgressive ways, and being out from under the watchful eye of tutors
and resident deans. Wonderful as they
are, the Houses do not—and perhaps cannot ever—fully serve that desire. And although I resist the notion that Harvard
College is somehow obliged to administer its students an appropriate dosage of
fun (surely, something somewhere in the Boston area caters to the needs of college
students?), we should acknowledge that the (real or) perceived lack of
alternative spaces for “letting loose” remains a powerful draw of the Final
clubs for our students. Thus, draining
energy away from the Final clubs will require that we direct it elsewhere.
Finally, it is
impossible not to comment on the current campus morass without also noting the
deep and abiding concerns of the Faculty regarding its role in informing College
policy. The implementation of either
sanctions policy will permanently reshape the relationship between the faculty
and our students (perhaps for the better, perhaps not). At the same time, however, the specific way
in which these policies have been advanced threatens at theh same time to alter
the relationship between the Faculty and its Administration. Many of us—including many of us who would
otherwise not be opposed to taking extraordinary measures against the USGSOs—are
deeply disturbed by what we view as unprecedented administrative overreach, including
the widespread perception that our Administration is committed to avoiding a
faculty vote on the proposed policies. From
my conversations with many colleagues, it is hard to overstate how divisive and
demoralizing this posture towards the Faculty has been, not least because it
could have been avoided in the first place.
In many ways, it is this aspect of our current situation that troubles
me most.
One final note, this
one of appreciation for my fellow committee members—students, staff, and
faculty alike—for their unfailing civility, eloquence, and clarity of thought
throughout our discussions; you have been a continual reminder of the things
that make Harvard great. Suzannah Clark
deserves special recognition for her thoughtful leadership of the Committee,
and for her truly herculean efforts on our behalf.
Jason Mitchell
Professor of Psychology
[1] As a side note, I object to the
Final Report’s characterization that opponents of the sanctions policy “argue
that suasion is always better than sanctions” (p. 14). That statement does not reflect my
understanding of the discussion within the Committee, nor do I know any
colleagues who traffic in such absolutes.
A more accurate statement might be to suggest that some opponents of the
sanction policies are arguing that suasion (or other ordinary measures) are in this instance a better course of
action right now than the sanction
policies as formulated.
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