Searching for the Punch Line

One night in early October 1978, eight Harvard women adorned in suit jackets and ties marched up the steps of the Delta Upsilon (D.U.) final club and crashed the punching party inside. Two club members, Stewart Shofner ’79 and Stephen A. Kowal ’79 had gathered a handful of their female friends and punched them for membership in the club under male pseudonyms. Although most of the members happily welcomed the women, the mood was not universal. The club steward, upon noticing the entrance of the women, proceeded to lock himself—and the food for the party—into an upstairs room in protest.

Besides this one objection, the punching event went over rather smoothly. Unfortunately, the D.U.’s policy proved more difficult to crash. The club president explained at the time that alumni ties would prohibit such a drastic change in tradition. Two women had been punched into the club during the early 1970s but were refused membership when several influential alumni withdrew their financial support as a result of the incident.

Although the D.U. final club is no longer a part of the Harvard social scene, the controversy surrounding the exclusion of females from final clubs has ostensibly become as much a traditional part of undergraduate life at Harvard as the clubs themselves.

In 1987, Lisa J. Schkolnick ’88 took matters into her own hands by filing a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination charging the all-male Fly Club with gender discrimination. In the wake of Schkolnick’s complaint, students postered the campus, rallied outside club parties and called on the Undergraduate Council to denounce final-club sexism.

Stop Withholding Access Today was formed in the late 1980s and became one of the most vocal activist organizations on campus. The group also added its name to the list of complainants in the case of Schkolnick v. The Fly Club.

During Junior Parents Weekend in 1997, the Radcliffe Women’s Action Coalition, a task force of the Radcliffe Union of Students, launched a postering campaign against the final clubs. “Support Your Local Bastion of Classist Patriarchal Elitism—Go to a Final Club Party” read one apt sign.

Despite decades of protests, many students have dismissed the co-ed solution and suggested that women on campus should start their own organizations rather than attempt to break down barriers in existing ones. And many female students have recently begun to do so. In an ideal world, these female clubs would mirror the male final clubs in comfort and privilege. But with Cambridge real estate nearly impossible to come by, and new organizations lacking the hefty endowments enjoyed by the long-standing male establishments, it remains a sad reality that Harvard’s female organizations will never even come close to providing an experience similar to that of their male counterparts.

So while efforts to offer social opportunities to female students are certainly a start, unless the existing clubs change their “no girls allowed” policy, Harvard will forever maintain its perverted social structure in which female students who choose to socialize in final clubs are restricted to a perpetual guest status. They are dependent upon the male members for admittance to the clubs, and once inside, the social dynamic is utterly insulting. The female guests are there at the behest of their male classmates, and they are strictly confined to the rooms that members deem them fit to enter.

The clubs have maintained that they are private institutions and have the right to preserve their all-male tradition. Of course they are absolutely right; it is certainly their prerogative. Nonetheless, the experiences of more progressive groups at Princeton and Yale demonstrate that co-ed social integration is certainly possible—and to many students who’ve experienced the switch, actually preferable. If Harvard did follow suit, the result would certainly be similar.

But the real obstacle lies in taking that first step. The transitional awkwardness would no doubt last several years, denying the current club members a traditional club experience. It’s true: admitting females into the clubs would invariably change the atmosphere of the old, sacred bastions of male camaraderie. Problematic issues would arise: How would they choose which females to punch? Should they pick their friend or the hottest girl they know? From the perspective of a current member, integration might be a nice idea in theory—but not if it means sacrificing his own club experience!

It’s scary to think that it was over a quarter of a century ago that the D.U. had its infamous bout with the ladies in drag. When asked by The Crimson why he punched his female friends under male pseudonyms, D.U. member Shoftner explained, “I believe final clubs have been personally insulting women for the last hundred years. Hopefully people two years from now will take my actions further and admit women to the club.” Fellow D.U. member Stephen Kowal added, “I think women will be admitted soon, and when they are, it will be an excellent thing.”

Year after year and protest after protest have been belabored by an apparent contradiction—many female students curse their own exclusion while simultaneously frequenting the club parties nonetheless. But Fair Harvard maintains a much more fundamental contradiction. Despite boasting a reputation for nurturing the future leaders of the world, and despite decades of controversy and frustration, this great University has done nothing but perpetuate an embarrassingly discriminatory social atmosphere. So we find ourselves where we are today, where even those enlightened club members who realize that change might be warranted are too busy enjoying their three years of fun to be bothered.

Lia C. Larson ’05, a Crimson editor, is an economics concentrator in Adams House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.