A.D. Club Rules Out Merger with Female Clubs

During a summer in which several single-gender social groups have adopted a wait-and-see approach in response to imminent University sanctions, the all-male A.D. Club has ruled out merging with a female club should it adopt gender neutral policies.

The decision, one of four approved recommendations from the “Task Force on the Future of the A.D. Club,” was announced to club members and graduate leaders of Harvard’s other final clubs via an email from graduate board president Kenneth G. Bartels ’73 last month.

The A.D. formed the task force in September 2015 in response to what the club characterized as a “determined, multi-faceted campaign” by administrators to compel single-gender clubs to widen their membership policies, according to a copy of Bartels’s June email obtained by The Crimson.

Also among the task force’s most recent recommendations was a broad commitment against making immediate and “precipitous decisions.”

“Other developments that surely will unfold over the intermediate term,” the task force wrote, “will impact materially the A.D.’s own decisions.”

The A.D. Club By Bora Fezga

Although the A.D.’s task force recommended that the club continue debating membership policies through next academic year, the group explicitly ruled out the option of accepting a gender-neutral cohort of undergraduates as provisional members. Earlier this year, the formerly all-male Fox Club elected several female undergraduates as provisional members, meaning their full membership status is contingent on a vote of club graduates this summer.

“The A.D. Club will not consider ‘provisional members’ or other schemes solely designed to comply with the letter of the University’s policies. Such schemes are dishonest and inconsistent with the A.D.’s values,” the email reads.

But future changes are still uncertain for the A.D.

“How the University refines and administers its policies, the experience of other final clubs that have elected women or that take steps to do so, and a variety of other developments that surely will unfold over the intermediate term will impact materially the A.D.’s own decisions,” Bartels and members of the task force wrote.

Indeed, it is unclear how the administration’s historic policy will play out, even though the sanctions themselves are quite explicit: Starting with the Class of 2021, members of unrecognized, single-gender social organizations will be ineligible for team captaincies, leadership positions in recognized student activities, varsity captaincies, or College-endorsed fellowships, such as the Rhodes scholarship.

In announcing the sanctions, Dean of the College Rakesh Khurana and University President Drew G. Faust cited concerns of gender inequality and a University-wide task force that indicates Harvard women involved in single-gender social organizations experienced higher rates of sexual assault and harassment. These claims, especially certain statistics from the task force report, have been vigorously disputed by representatives of single-gender groups and some outside commentators.

Still, substantial details surrounding the policy’s implementation and enforcement, which will be hammered out by a committee whose membership has not yet been announced, have not been made. And, if a faculty motion against the sanctions is successful in the fall, administrators could face an uphill battle in rolling them out.

While one club, the all-female Sablière Society, has indicated an intention to go gender neutral, no traditionally single-gender club besides the Spee, which elected women last the fall, is fully gender neutral yet.

The A.D.’s decision to rule out a merger could have wider effects on the club ecosystem. In an op-ed this spring, leaders of the Sablière wrote that male clubs accepting women created “a distinct possibility female clubs will die out.”

Members and leadership of female clubs have expressed concern that the deeper pocket books and grander accommodations of the traditionally all-male clubs could make it difficult for the female clubs to compete in a fully gender-neutral punch.

In their op-ed, Sab leaders questioned whether an all-male undergraduate membership, with its accompanying all-male alumni base, could successfully “develop a truly gender-inclusive culture” in the event they chose to follow the example of the Spee.

“We have concerns about whether such conditions will be safe and beneficial for women,” the op-ed read.

Sablière graduate president Ariel Stoddard ’10, one of the authors of the op-ed, wrote in an email that the Sab’s leadership “respect[s] the AD’s decision and the internal processes they are going through to determine the future of their club.”

Bartels’s email also offers a small glimpse into the club’s governance and customs. The club’s by-laws dictate that while graduate members define the rules around the selection of new members, undergraduate members alone have the authority to elect new members, meaning that both graduates and undergraduates would have to agree to elect female members.

“The A.D. Club is governed by both its Undergraduate and Graduate Members, and as a direct consequence it is well-governed. This shared governance—one of the many linkages between Undergraduate and Graduate Members—has been and will continue to be an essential element of the A.D.’s success,” the Task Force wrote.

The Task Force also mentioned what seems to be an A.D. aphorism: “May you live for a thousand years” which, according to the email, “epitomizes [the club’s] ambition.”

In addition, the email gave reason to believe that the sanctions, once enacted, could have a sizeable impact on club members. While the A.D. last celebrated a member winning a Rhodes in 1974, the email emphasized that 47 members of the A.D. have served as varsity captains since 2002, “an average of three to four varsity team captains among our Undergraduate Membership every year.”

The June recommendations are not the only policies the A.D. club’s task force has helped craft. In late March, Bartels sent an email to club members announcing that the A.D. would host an “open Punching process” the following year and mandate “sexual assault prevention training program” for its undergraduate members. Undergraduate members of the A.D., meanwhile, expressed “strong” disapproval to significant changes in club membership policies last November.

Ending his June email, Bartels, who declined to comment for this story, dissolved the task force.

A.D. undergraduate leader Philip Zielonka ’17 and task force member J. Walker Kirby ’16 respectively declined and did not respond to request for comment on this story.

—Staff writer C. Ramsey Fahs can be reached at ramsey.fahs@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @ramseyfahs.