Harvard Fires Back in Legal Battle Over Single-Sex Greek Clubs
Harvard Fires Back in Legal Battle Over Single-Sex Greek Clubs
(Bloomberg) -- Harvard has brought its legal firepower to bear against fraternities, sororities and other single-sex clubs suing to hang on to their role as havens of social life at the school.
The college’s new policy on single-sex social clubs -- endorsed by former president Drew Faust, the first woman to lead the school -- doesn’t ban them. But the rules, which cover the incoming Class of 2021, do provide a powerful disincentive to joining the off-campus organizations, barring members from leading sports teams and receiving the school’s endorsement for coveted prizes such as the Rhodes and Marshall scholarships.
On Friday, the school asked state and federal judges in Massachusetts to dismiss a pair of lawsuits, filed in federal and state courts in Massachusetts in December, that claim the policy discriminates against the clubs on the basis of sex and violates students’ freedom of association.
Harvard says the rules are “lawful and wholly sex-neutral” and that outside groups like the Greek clubs have no right to impose their culture on the school. It argues the claims of gender discrimination are “false” and have no statutory or legal foundation, and that the plaintiffs can’t show any student was harmed.
“Harvard controls its own resources and endorsements, and students preserve the right to join organizations of their own choosing,” the school said in a motion to dismiss filed in federal court late Friday. “This court should reject plaintiffs’ invitation to expand the laws to create a new kind of lawsuit that Congress did not create and no court has countenanced.”
Harvard has cited as inspiration for its policy such colleges as Amherst, Williams, Middlebury and Bowdoin, which have all banned Greek life.
The plaintiffs -- including fraternities Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Sigma Chi, sororities Kappa Alpha Theta and Kappa Kappa Gamma, and three unidentified students who belong to exclusive all-male “final clubs” -- claim Harvard’s sanctions are “punishing” the school’s Greek organizations. They allege the college has “engaged in an aggressive campaign of intimidation, threats and coercion against all students who join single-sex organizations and advocate for their continued existence.”
The sororities say the policy especially harms women’s groups, arguing that by banning single-sex organizations on campus, Harvard has “succeeded perversely” in eliminating nearly every women’s social organization previously available to female students at the school.
The lawsuits demonstrate the challenge facing colleges that take on the powerful Greek clubs, which have long fought in court to preserve their privileged positions. Congress, which has many members who belonged to Greek organizations, specifically exempted the groups from Title IX, the federal law that prohibits gender discrimination at educational institutions.
Meanwhile, Harvard is defending itself at trial against a separate federal lawsuit claiming it discriminates against Asian-American applicants, a case that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
The policy on single-sex clubs “does not discriminate against any undergraduate student” but rather “allows students to make a fully informed choice,” Rachael Dane, a Harvard spokeswoman, said. “It also dedicates resources to students whose decisions reflect the college’s aspirations for inclusivity, helping them to open their organizations to the extraordinary diversity of Harvard College’s student body.”
Harvard forged the policy in response to a 2016 report that addressed sexual assault and gender on campus. A university task force concluded the all-male clubs had “deeply misogynistic attitudes” and recommended they go coed.
The school on Friday argued there was no evidence any student had been threatened, coerced or intimidated by the policy, arguing it doesn’t prohibit students from joining the unrecognized single-sex organizations and that those who do join remain in good standing. The school noted that the students the policy covers began matriculating in the fall of 2017 and were therefore on notice about it when they decided to attend Harvard.
That defense is evasive, the plaintiffs say.
“Harvard is avoiding grappling with the substantive facts and saying they have the right to do what they want to do. Our position is that Harvard students don’t give up their constitutional rights by matriculating at the college,” said Emma Quinn-Judge, a lawyer for the plaintiffs in the state case, which alleges violations of the state’s constitution and Civil Rights Act.
She added that it’s “striking that Harvard wants to treat as ‘incidental’ what has happened to the women’s groups at the school, which have almost entirely ceased to exist. There are numerous all-male groups but only one remaining all-female social group. That is a result of this policy.”
R. Stanton Jones, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the federal case, didn’t return voice or email messages seeking comment.
Harvard said Friday the sororities have no standing to bring a suit as they have no student members on campus and can’t show anyone was injured by the policy.
“Harvard should not have to change its commitment to nondiscrimination and educational philosophy for outside organizations that are not aligned with our longstanding mission,” Dane said.
The sororities are improbably casting themselves as feminist havens, said Juliet Williams, a professor of gender studies at the University of California at Los Angeles and a Harvard alum.
“This is a really galling reapportionment of the mission of Title IX,” Williams said. “We now have members of these very elite final clubs and other groups who say they are the ‘victims’ of discrimination.”
She said sororities “need to be held accountable for their direct implication in sustaining the kinds of behaviors that are manifest in the fraternity culture. To treat them like they’re this feminist counterweight is really disingenuous.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey, Virginia Van Natta
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