The Porcellian Club, one of Harvard’s six remaining all-male final clubs, has recently found itself at the center of the nationwide debate over space and sexual assault. Last Tuesday, the club’s Graduate Board President Charles Storey severely criticized the college’s reinvigorated efforts to make final clubs co-ed. “Given our policies, we are mystified as to why the current administration feels that forcing our club to accept female members would reduce the incidence of sexual assault on campus,” Storey wrote. “Forcing single gender organizations to accept members of the opposite sex could potentially increase, not decrease the potential for sexual misconduct.”
Storey’s faulty logic has already received well-deserved flak; he has even resigned from his post as president after issuing two apologies. And those apologies were more than necessary. In addition to Storey implying his club may admit rapists, he suggests another very dangerous idea: that men and women can’t be in the same space and behave with equal respect to one another — either because men can’t control themselves or because women are temptresses. The problem is not that more women will lead to a greater frequency in sexual assault but that the environments of final clubs — and fraternities for that matter — are spaces where women are not viewed as being on equal footing as men.
Of the 11 final clubs at Harvard, more than half do not admit women. For the clubs that have started an “all gender” policy, many women remain as “provisional members.” As a result of these policies, when men and women interact in the context of the clubs, they do so primarily in a sexualized setting — as college parties tend to be. What results is a shortage of non-sexualized social spaces in which men and women interact, a reality which perpetuates the gender imbalances already inherent in collegiate social settings. Were women admitted into final clubs, and were they able to achieve leadership in those clubs, this dynamic might be eliminated. But evidently, male members are unwilling to cede any of the power and exclusivity associated with these clubs.
Violence against women is almost always an expression of unequal power relations. As long as women are viewed as second-rate members — or not members at all — final clubs will remain environments in which a laissez-faire approach to sexual assault is the only policy.
While we recognize the blame for sexual assault falls not on the setting but on the perpetrator, the environment certainly still plays a significant role. Many at Harvard believe the clubs cultivate a "toxic campus social environment" and that the elimination of gender barriers would be a positive step in creating a more open atmosphere. In policymaking, it is important to start with institutions that hold power; at the collegiate level, these are social institutions like final clubs. Eliminating sexual assault cannot only come from an institutional change, but such a change could foster a cultural one — and universities across America, ours included, need this.
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