Harvard Club Expels Female Members, Goes All-Male Again

Club members to suffer consequences from school for abandoning gender equity.

July 5, 2017 10:51 am
Harvard University's main campus (Darren McCollester/Newsmakers)
Harvard University's main campus (Darren McCollester/Newsmakers)

One Harvard University club is returning to its roots—its all-male, 19th-centurty roots. The university’s famed Fox Club, founded in 1898 and whose membership has included everyone from T.S. Eliot to Bill Gates, has chosen to revoke the provisional status of its nine female members, making the club all-male again, according to the Harvard Crimson.

The historically all-male final club began dabbling in gender equity in October 2015. Women were included in the club, but only on a provisional basis.

Repeated attempts to change the club’s bylaws to permanently allow female members have failed, however. Once last year and again as recently as May 2017.

As the club’s former graduate board president Douglas W. Sears, who served on the board when women joined the club, told the Crimson: “Some folks certainly know how to get on the wrong side of history voluntarily.”

The decision isn’t without consequence, at least from the perspective of the club itself. Harvard’s administration last year made membership to unrecognized, single-gender clubs a black mark. Members of the Fox Club will now be barred from becoming team captains on university sports teams, leaders of recognized student groups, and gaining collegiate endorsement for Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.

 

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