Fly May Consider Admitting Women

At least one of Harvard's nine exclusive all-male final clubs has begun to consider admitting women, members say.

Members of the Fly Club raised the issue of admitting women at a general meeting last Wednesday, undergraduates in the club said yesterday. They then referred the matter to informal discussion or to formal discussion at a later meeting, according to varying accounts.

The consideration of admitting women to the Fly Club comes in the wake of a recent decision by Yale's Skull and Bones society to "tap" women for entry into that club for the first time ever.

The University cut all official ties with the final clubs in 1984 because of their policies refusing membership to women.

The Fly Club was the subject of a complaint by Lisa J. Schkolnick '88 to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. In two rulings last year, the commission found that it lacked jurisdiction to force the club to admit women.

Both Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 and Gov. William F. Weld '66 were members of the Fly Club while at Harvard.

The members of the club said they were unsure what club opinion would be if the issue of admitting women were to come to a vote. Some said that the majority of members would be against the change, while others pointed to a strong core of members who want to give privileges to women.

All-male campus clubs have faced mounting criticism in recent years. The last of Princeton's eating clubs has moved to admit women, and with the Skull and Bones's decision, only one all-male club, Wolf's Head, remains at Yale. Still, at Harvard, despite repeated calls for change by campus women's groups, the clubs remain much as they were decades ago, at least in terms of gender diversity.

"If it were anybody, I think it would be the Fly first," said one member discussing prospects for admitting women.

Schkolnick was somewhat skeptical of the news that the Fly could admit women. "There have been rumors like this for years. I'll believe it when I see it," she said.

But Schkolnick said she would be delighted if the Fly Club does decide to admit women. "It should have happened years ago," she said, adding that Harvard has been behind Yale and Princeton.

Even if undergraduate males in the Fly Club vote to admit women, they may have to face opposition from the graduate board of the club, observers say.

Alumni of the Skull and Bones have locked the undergraduate members out of the club's headquarters. And pressure from graduates reportedly prompted undergraduates in Harvard's Phoenix Club to vote against admitting women two years ago.

But even those undergraduates who favor some sort of membership for women may differ over the terms. Some suggested full membership, while others touted a new club only for women based in the Fly Club headquarters in front of Lowell House