Guest post by 23 undergraduate women

Do Not Punish Harvard Women for Men’s Behavior: Vote Yes to the Lewis Motion

It is astonishingly paternalistic for Harvard to threaten the support groups of hundreds of women in the name of ridding the university of elite men’s clubs. This should spark outrage among faculty, administrators, and students, but instead has, among many, merely sparked a “what a shame” reaction. “What a shame” that the sororities and women’s groups doing good on our campus, empowering women, providing desperately needed support for women, leading charitable fundraisers, and contributing so significantly to women’s mental health “have to go.” The premise has been that women must not be allowed to join groups without men – for their own good – because it is the only way to “get at” men’s final clubs. An underlying justification has been that women must be protected from making bad social decisions such as waiting in line to get into men’s final club parties. Banning women’s off- campus groups is not and has never been about opening women’s support or friendship groups to men, in order to end some supposed form of discrimination against men. The consistent refrain of “it’s a shame” that Harvard must eliminate women’s groups through sanctions or to otherwise deal with the behaviors of men is outrageous and unconscionable. Make no mistake – this is sexism – as it has existed in the past but now in more insidious form, as it is now clothed in anti-discrimination verbiage and purported rationale. This point has been previously made, but women’s protests, begging for Harvard to hear them, marching in unity, have been met with the response that women groups are unfortunate collateral damage for a more noble cause – this cause of protecting them. This is egregious. How can it be tolerated?

Incorrect assumptions and biases exist regarding sororities. I had some of those same assumptions before I came to Harvard. They were wrong. The truth is that Harvard sorority women are diverse, intelligent, and serious-minded, from different socioeconomic groups, with different religious beliefs, political views, sexual orientations, personalities, and experiences, coexisting in friendship, kindness, and unity and providing safety for women. No parties or alcohol are allowed in the sororities’ spaces. Sororities are inherently and intentionally values-based organizations. New member education includes training on standards of behavior expected by the sorority nationally, strict policies regarding alcohol and drugs, education about sexual assault, healthy relationships, bystander intervention, and more. Sorority members have credited the support they have received from these off- campus groups with helping them overcome depression, suicidal feelings, eating disorders, and other mental health issues in ways that on-campus groups have not. Dismantling off-campus social groups in which one-third of women on campus have found significant support and improved mental health outcomes is both illogical and harmful. When the rationale for doing so is based on a perceived necessity to curb men’s behavior, it becomes indefensible.

Philanthropic commitment and community service are significant sorority values and emphases. Alpha Phi’s motto is “Union Hand in Hand,” and its philanthropic focus is Women’s Heart Health. Delta Gamma’s motto is “Do Good,” and its philanthropy is Service for Sight, serving the blind and visually impaired and funding sight conservation research. Kappa Alpha Theta’s motto is “Leading Women,” and its philanthropy is Court Appointed Special Advocates, serving and advocating for children in the foster care system. Kappa Kappa Gamma’s motto is “Aspire to Be,” and its philanthropy is Reading is Fundamental, working to promote children’s literacy. Sororities promote friendship, leadership, kindness, character, and service intentionally - declaring that those qualities are as important as, if not more important than, being accomplished. Sisterhood is the goal, not a side effect.

The most vocal and impassioned opposition to the sanctions has come from women, not the men’s final clubs, because the final clubs can evade the sanctions and function much as they always have. I obviously do not purport to speak for all women, including all sorority women, but I am one of hundreds of current Harvard women and thousands of alumnae who have found strength and support in off-campus sisterhood. More women than men are adversely impacted by the penalties of the Khurana sanctions. Are we not at a time in our country and history where we recognize the urgent need for women to have the freedom to unite in friendship and sisterhood, to embrace the values they deem important, and to speak out against injustice? We must demand an answer to the question – why is it acceptable for sororities to be swept up in the anti-men’s final clubs frenzy? Why not, as our peer schools Yale, Princeton, and Stanford have done, work on the issues deemed problematic, rather than banning off-campus women’s groups (as well as other off-campus groups) with threats of penalization? Why are hundreds of Harvard women’s voices being silenced?

The sanctions and penalties are overbroad, unjust, and have a disproportionate adverse effect on women. Unconscionably, sororities are completely left out of the discussion on the effects or reason for penalties. No acknowledgement is made that going coed is not possible per the national rules and charters of sororities, and therefore sororities would simply have to be closed, while men’s final clubs - the primary target of the sanctions – would be able to make meaningless adjustments to come into technical “compliance.” (For example, some of the men’s club proposals include their members not becoming “real members” until after graduation, allowing the finals clubs to exist as alumni clubs, which would not be impacted by penalties or sanctions.)

The question of the sanctions is not a question of whether or not any off-campus social organizations need reform, but whether or not University sanctions will accomplish any intended goals. All proposed plans thus far would force sororities to shut down, while men's final clubs - the intended targets of the sanctions - will be virtually unaffected. Clubs will either go underground, perhaps like underground fraternities at Amherst or like secret societies at Yale, or, as more recently discussed, will become alumni clubs, of which students will not "officially" be members until they graduate, taking the clubs even further out of the administration's purview and making them even more untouchable for reform than they currently are. If the administration's goal is truly reform, rather than simply meaningless action on paper, the only way to achieve that is to work with clubs, rather than further alienate or threaten them. In response to current sanctions, overwhelmingly, behind closed doors, most men's clubs have lawyered up and dug in their heels, knowing they can get around anything thrown at them by the administration, with little to no functional change, in a way that organizations without comparable resources or with national bylaws cannot.

The idea that national sorority groups are in some way pernicious or nefarious is based on false and discriminatory stereotypes. These national organizations provide invaluable leadership training, are grounded in shared values, and focus on critical issues affecting women. Last month’s issue of one of the national sorority magazines, for example, featured the organization’s specific efforts to address violence against women, including leading the conversation on consent and providing resources and opportunity to confront sexual violence. I would ask those who assume they understand what these groups offer in terms of mental health and other support whether they have actually tried to learn about what sororities do. Has UHS or the administration ever even studied the positive impact of sororities on Harvard women’s mental health or the adverse impact of losing such groups that more than one-third of Harvard women have chosen to join?

If Harvard students want to be members of organizations that have national networks and governing bodies, on their own time, with their own money, without use of Harvard’s name, and not in Harvard’s spaces, they should be allowed to do so. They certainly should not be penalized for being part of groups dedicated to their well-being even though Harvard does not vet or monitor such groups. Harvard women are capable of making their own decisions about what groups empower them.

I hope for the emotional well-being of one-third of the women on campus, that the administration and faculty reconsider the notion that the “health and well-being of our student body” necessitates telling young women that joining together for strength and mutual support, in organizations explicitly protected by Title IX, is an offense so severe as to be deserving of suspension, termination, or severe penalty.

I urge the faculty and administrators not to adopt punishments that would penalize women from exercising their freedom to join in sisterhood for support, unity, friendship, empowerment, and philanthropy. Such actions are not progress, nor do they promote justice.

Instead, I urge passage of the Lewis motion, which protects women’s rights and wellbeing. Passage of the Lewis motion allows women’s groups to continue to exist and also provides the administration the opportunity to address desired final club reforms, as our peer schools Yale, Princeton, and Stanford have done, without driving male final clubs underground.

Margaret Wilson, Harvard College Class of 2019
Jordan Virtue, Harvard College Class of 2020
Hayley Edgerley, Harvard College Class of 2019
Cora Neudeck, Harvard College Class of 2019
Samantha Perri, Harvard College Class of 2020
Kathleen Barrow, Harvard College Class of 2019
Sophia Zheng, Harvard College Class of 2020
Kristine Falck, Harvard College Class of 2020
Kaitlyn Rabinovitz, Harvard College Class of 2020
Delaney Tevis, Harvard College Class of 2019
Emily Luu, Harvard College Class of 2019
Rebecca Ramos, Harvard College Class of 2017

Sophie Lipson, Harvard College Class of 2017

Caroline Gentile, Harvard College Class of 2017

Emma Wheeler, Harvard College Class of 2017

Bella Gomez, Harvard College Class of 2017

Rachel Milam, Harvard College Class of 2017

Hailey Reneau, Harvard College Class of 2017

Tina Murphy, Harvard College Class of 2017

Savanna Arral, Harvard College Class of 2016

Laura Gullett, Harvard College Class of 2016

Sarah Scalia, Harvard College Class of 2015, HBS 2019
Julia Kee, Harvard College Class of 2016

Alumni reaction to the social club policy

A fascinating set of alumni letters appears in the current Harvard Magazine. The picture that emerges is a good deal more nuanced than the broad-brush stereotyping of social clubs in the Clark-Khurana report and associated administrative writings. Joan Hutchins '61, past president of the Board of Overseers and one of Harvard's most dedicated alumnae, describes herself as "appalled" by the policy and calls on the faculty to reject it. Heather Furnas, a distinguished plastic surgeon whose daughter graduated from Harvard this past spring, ties the importance of women's clubs to women's professional development, and dryly notes that her daughter joined a women's club only after being rejected by both Crimson Key and the Advocate. Like others, Furnas notes the lack of either logic or factual basis in the sanctions policy, but she goes a step further by announcing that she is going to stop donating to Harvard.

I cannot think of another time when alumni and parents so strongly spoke out in support of faculty opposition to an administrative action. There is no nostalgia in these voices; they are speaking up on principle and on the basis of their lived experiences. It takes courage to do so; apostasy serves no one's self interest. I am saddened by the fractures this is causing in the Harvard family. But these women are repelled by what Harvard is doing, and I am grateful to them for saying so.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day

Forbes has a nice story in its online edition about what can happen to you as a Harvard professor if you just teach your classes and pay a little bit of attention to the students Admissions keeps putting in front of you.
 The Harvard Professor Who Taught Gates and Zuckerberg 
Same-day bonus link, about another of my wonderful students!
Students Promote Computer Science Professor for Harvard Presidency

Professor Allen's Puzzling Motion, Part 2

When I introduced my motion, I referred to Professor Allen’s motion as “astonishingly sweeping.” Yet I did not appreciate how sweeping it was until a student asked me a question. Before I report her question, let’s back up and parse the motion as best we can.

Opinion is divided among my colleagues about the significance of the Allen motion. Some think it is tautologous, therefore meaningless, and therefore harmless. Others see it as threatening and disingenuous. Given the confusion, after more than a year of debate and with an impending vote, it is safer to respond to the motion’s intentions and to assume that the text is just badly drafted—in spite of being a third draft.

And in spite of having been supported by a 17-0 vote of the Faculty Council. That vote suggests that the Council may have thought the motion uncontroversial. But that only adds to the puzzle, since Dean Smith, who chairs the Council but is not a voting member of it, seems uncertain what its impact would be:

“Personally I don’t see all the clear next steps,” Smith said of Allen’s motion. “I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not even going to try to play one here.”

What sort of group dynamics resulted in a 17-0 vote by a faculty committee whose chair won’t opine on the motion’s meaning?

Adding to the irony of an ambiguous motion being voted up 17-0 by the Faculty Council is that the same body (with the same chair and significantly overlapping membership) refused to take a vote on the motion I filed last year, “citing uncertainty about whether a vote for the motion would impact the policy,” as the Crimson paraphrased the body’s reasoning.

In any case, let’s assume that the intention is, as Professor Allen explained in supporting materials, to require all student organizations to which Harvard students belong to adhere to the nondiscrimination and other rules Harvard requires of recognized student organizations. A student belonging to a noncompliant organization would have three choices: force the organization to change, resign from it, or be “suspended or expelled.” (Professor Allen uses the term “expel,” so I too am using it and its cognates. Again, it is unclear whether what she says is what she really means—in Harvard parlance, to “expel” is more severe than to dismiss, which is more severe than requirement to withdraw. In modern times very few students have been expelled or dismissed. Expulsion is the equivalent of capital punishment--permanent separation with no possibility of return.)

The motion uses the Massachusetts anti-hazing statute to define “student organization.” That criminal statute applies to

every student group, student team or student organization which is part of such institution or is recognized by the institution or permitted by the institution to use its name or facilities or is known by the institution to exist as an unaffiliated student group, student team or student organization.

That broad definition is of course meant to hold colleges’ feet to the fire. I am not a lawyer either, but it’s plainly an anti-hazing statute, not a nondiscrimination statute. It says that colleges have to communicate with off-campus fraternities and the like. In fact, communication is all the statute actually requires colleges to do: to inform the organizations of their responsibilities under the law, to inform all students of the statute, and to attest to the Commonwealth that it has done so.

Professor Allen’s motion puts this category to an entirely different use: to force Harvard’s nondiscrimination rules on them. That is why the Allen motion is such an astounding assertion of power over private associations, far beyond anything Dean Khurana or the Clark-Khurana committee proposed. As I observed in my previous blog post, it would cover ROTC. Indeed, ROTC is exactly the sort of organization the state might want warned about hazing. The statutory definition would also cover the interuniversity fraternities and sororities, including the ones to which many African-American and Hispanic students belong. Again, it makes perfect sense that the anti-hazing statute would apply to them—if we accept the intent of that statute as legitimate, then such organizations and the student bodies from which they draw their members shouldn’t miss out on those warnings just because the students aren’t exclusively drawn from one school.

Like it or not, the definition of “student organization” in the anti-hazing statute makes sense for an anti-hazing statute. But that definition has no rational applicability to the membership policies of organizations Harvard students join. By what legal or ethical reasoning can that definition be used to threaten their student members with expulsion if the clubs they join aren’t co-educational?

And so to the student’s question. I was asked about the impact of the Allen motion on the Harvard Knights of Columbus and the Harvard Daughters of Isabella. Until I got the question, I had no idea these organizations even existed. They aren’t recognized student organizations, and indeed they run afoul of several of the requirements for recognition. They are single-sex organizations. They are under outside control. They may even impose a religious test on their members. They use the Harvard name, probably without permission. In compliance terms, they are worse than final clubs.

Will the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, by passing the Allen motion, assert its authority to force the Knights of Columbus and the Daughters of Isabella to go co-ed, and to expel their members if they do not?

Doubtless there are other student organizations which will unexpectedly fall under Harvard’s authority if the Allen motion passes. Harvard students are both diverse and creative. They are constantly forming new groups, recognized and unrecognized, in response to common interests and commitments.

If the text of Professor Allen’s motion is not further revised as such absurdities become apparent, those supporting the motion may point to the vague language about writing rules that will balance freedoms and rights. But that would simply authorize the administration to use its best judgment to decide whether to sanction individual clubs and organizations, without any unambiguous direction from the faculty about the meaning of its standards of nondiscrimination. The way out of this snarl is not to get into it, which is the idea behind my motion.

In retrospect, the Verba report now seems such a masterpiece. It took Harvard’s nondiscrimination rules seriously, and concluded they applied even to ROTC. Some of us gasped at that, but its logic was inescapable. But the report also recognized the illogic and illiberality of punishing student members for what Harvard might regard as an organization’s shortcomings. It combined moral clarity with humility. Not so the Allen motion, which lacks both.

(Corrected 10/14 as to the use of expulsion in response to a comment.)

Remarks of Professor James Engell at the October 3 FAS meeting

[These remarks were delivered from handwritten notes, not a full script. Furthermore, the Parliamentarian, literally one minute prior to the meeting being called to order, urged great brevity on the speaker personally, so some of the notes were condensed and several paragraphs crossed out, which then required ex tempore transitions. This is the best reconstruction of what was said.]
It’s good we are discussing this vexed topic today. The Clark-Khurana Committee would not exist were it not for Prof. Lewis’s motion made last December [2016], when I spoke of the statutory power of discipline resting with the Faculty.
The Clark-Khurana Committee presents a narrative both explicit and implied. Explicitly, there exist problems with some of these organizations and some new action is required. Yes. There is also an underlying narrative. It goes something like this. “Most, or many”—the Report cannot make up its mind on that score and it names no names—of these organizations are not only exclusionary in the sense of not admitting every student who wishes to join, they are places where misogyny, racism, and class prejudice are fostered and practiced. From the Report: “While the larger issue of selective membership on campus is worth further discussion, our committee’s charge was to address those groups whose members and leadership are committed to practicing discrimination against their fellow students on such bases as gender, race, and class.” Acts demeaning to women have occurred at at least a few of these clubs. The kind of racial slur mentioned in the Report is abhorrent. Some of these clubs have dues not purely nominal.
However, the Report estimates that up to one-quarter of undergraduates belong to these organizations, and more women than men. Given that first-year students don’t often belong, that pushes up the fraction to closer to one-third of students in sophomore through senior years. The Report implies that these students are undermining the educational mission of the College.
Are one-third of our students in sophomore through senior year going to private spaces to practice misogyny, racism, and class prejudice? Is that why these organizations exist and attract many students? These are the students we accept and teach and whom we graduate. The College does not require students to live in the Houses, but more than 98% of them, including more than 98% of those who join these organizations, live in the Houses and participate fully in House life. The nature of some of these organizations is evolving and for some of them quite quickly. It would be unfortunate to take a sudden and absolute action regarding these organizations.
I would ask colleagues to consider what the Report implies about these organizations, and to consider that the story of the students in these organizations is more complex and often far more benign than what the Report does imply.
James Engell, Gurney Professor of English and Professor of Comparative Literature