Alumni leaders of the Fox Club, an elite social club at Harvard University, have recently decided to expel nine female members who were temporarily admitted as “provisional members,” according to The Boston Globe.
Both professors and students have debated whether or not female students should be allowed to participate in the club, which was exclusively male from 1898 until October 2015.
For the past two years, the Harvard community has been debating how much the school can control student-driven clubs. The Fox Club has just missed the beginning of a new penalty to be enforced for the Class of 2021 stating every club should be gender neutral, The Harvard Crimson reports. If students join single-gender clubs, they’ll be ineligible for some opportunities, like leadership positions on sports teams and recommendations for scholarships.
According to the Crimson, Daniel T. Skarzynski, former undergraduate president of the Fox Club, previously wrote to club graduate board president Hugh M. Nesbit about re-applying for membership. Nesbit responded saying provisional members—both male and female—were not allowed to re-submit an application.
“For the concerned parties, [Nesbit] also said that if you’d like to be re-considered for membership, you should send an email to that effect…and that the grad board will vote individually,” Skarzynski wrote. “However, he said this invite for reapplication does not apply to female members until such a time as the club votes successfully to add women to its membership.”
Since Harvard has been pressuring many student organizations and elite clubs to adopt gender-neutral policies, the Fox’s decision to revoke membership to females is controversial—and, if you ask me, pretty ridiculous.