For more than 150 years, the “final clubs” at Harvard University have sat atop a rigid social hierarchy, the original all-male clubs at the country’s oldest college. Now, they are in a spat with school administrators, who want to address sexual assault on campus by forcing the clubs to welcome women members.
Undergraduate leaders of the clubs, whose members have included Roosevelts and Kennedys, were told at a meeting with Harvard College Dean Rakesh Khurana late last month that they had until April 15 to decide whether to go coed, or face unknown consequences, according to multiple students who attended the meeting. The request included the newer all-female clubs as well, they said.
Undergraduate and alumni representatives from all-male and all-female clubs met with Mr. Khurana again for nearly three hours Wednesday night, pressing him for details of potential sanctions against members of groups that don’t go coed, according to two attendees. One of those attendees said his responses were “noncommittal”; the other called them “nonspecific.”