The Iron Maiden fan club, the local Dungeons & Dragons Meetup, and the annual nunchucks tournament remain all-male by chance. Harvard University’s Fox Club once again becomes all-male by choice.
The decision to go all he-man-woman-haters-club in the heart of American liberalism comes less than two years after the group offered provisional memberships to females. The Harvard Crimson reports that the recent decision rebels against new rules that punish members of single-sex clubs. The undergraduate paper notes, “That policy, announced in May 2016, will bar members of single-gender social organizations from holding leadership positions in recognized student groups and from receiving College endorsement for several prestigious fellowships like the Rhodes and the Marshall.”
Douglas W. Sears, a class of 1969 member of the club, observed to the Crimson, “Some folks certainly know how to get on the wrong side of history voluntarily.” Other folks get on the right side involuntarily, which Harvard’s punitive policy seeks to do with the Fox Club.
But history, which remains as of this date in the past, seems very much on the side of the Fox Club. Harvard, which approaches its 400th birthday, became co-ed 40 years ago. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences tenured its first woman 70 years ago. Even today, the campus boasts several all-female organizations.
T.S. Eliot, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Steve Ballmer, and the last king of Nepal to leave office through natural causes all belonged to the Fox Club. Other controversial Fox Clubs in Bath, Pennsylvania, and Missoula, Montana, similarly label themselves “gentlemen’s” establishments. But those Fox Clubs allegedly cater to a different clientele than the poets, senators, and tech magnates attracted to this Fox Club.
Many Cantabrigians remain confused over the Fox Club’s recalcitrance to get with the times—and the place. Why won’t the Foxes socialize with the foxes?
Why? XY. That’s why.
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