All Clubs at Harvard Have to Be Gender Neutral—Except Women’s Clubs
When classes reconvene at Harvard this fall, the all-female Seneca Organization, which promotes female empowerment among Harvard’s students, will officially go “gender neutral,” in accordance with new Harvard policy guidelines. But it won’t actually have to admit any men.http://heatst.com/culture-wars/all-clubs-at-harvard-have-to-be-gender-neutral-except-womens-clubs/
Although male-only “final clubs” gear up for war with the administration, which has told them their members won’t be considered for scholarships or leadership positions if they remain male-only, Harvard’s Dean of Student Affairs reportedlyassured the Seneca group that it could “could continue to operate as it always has.” All it has to do is make semantic changes to its bylaws.
“Like Women in Business or Latinas Unidas, although men may apply, our membership can be made up wholly of women without incurring the sanctions of the administration’s new policy,” the group’s leader told Seneca’s members in an email.
The administration insists that Seneca can violate the new rules because it has 501(c)(3) non-profit status, and isn’t “purely social.” But Harvard’s policy seems to carry no such official exceptions; the only quality that invokes the rule’s drastic punishment is that the club is gender-specific.
An attorney who is consulting with one of Harvard’s single-gender final clubs about the policy called the Seneca exception “a very convenient carve-out.”
The new elastic interpretation also seems to coincide with outcry from Harvard’s all-female groups, who want the gender-inclusive policy enforced, just not against them. A group called the Crimson Women’s Coalition has demonstrated against the policy several times, claiming that women’s-only groups are “safe spaces” for female students, and that welcoming men opens those organizations to the possibility of sexual assault.
“By removing… spaces for women, Harvard is making our campus less safe for women,” one student protester told a crowd of demonstrators in May, just after the gender-inclusive policy had passed.
It seems, now, Harvard is actually figuring out how best to accommodate campus feminists.
For their part, Seneca club leaders claim they’re abiding by the rules. “As I see it, we are completely complying with the administration’s demands by going gender neutral and anticipating to consider every applicant of any gender the same way they would consider an applicant who’s female identified,” Seneca’s president told the Harvard Crimson. The convenient caveat, of course, is that they won’t actuallyadmit men (or, rather, “male-identified” applicants).
Harvard says it is still working on policy implementation and won’t have rules ready until the fall of 2017.
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