An elite all-boys club at Harvard University broke its 225-year public silence to argue that the inclusion of females in the Porcellian Club (PC) “could potentially increase” sexual assaults.
The university’s oldest “final club” broke its silence Tuesday, following the release of a campus-wide report published by university newspaper The Harvard Crimson last month that states that almost 50 per cent of female undergrads reported having experienced “non-consensual sexual contact” while “participating in the Final Clubs” events.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time an officer of the PC has granted an on the record statement to a newspaper since our founding in 1791,” Charles M. Storey, Class of 1982, told The Harvard Crimson. “This reflects both the PC’s abiding interest in privacy and the importance of the situation.”
Storey told the newspaper he feels the club “is being used as a scapegoat for the sexual assault problem at Harvard despite its policies to help avoid the potential for sexual assault.”
“Given our policies, we are mystified as to why the current administration feels that forcing our club to accept female members would reduce the incidence of sexual assault on campus,” Storey wrote to the newspaper. “Forcing single gender organizations to accept members of the opposite sex could potentially increase, not decrease the potential for sexual misconduct.”
Last month, the University’s Task Force on Sexual Assault Prevention released the report criticizing all-male FCs for “deeply misogynistic attitudes,” The Harvard Crimson reported.
According to the newspaper, the task force recommended the school “either don’t allow simultaneous membership in Final Clubs and College enrollment; or allow Clubs to transition to all-gender inclusion with equal gender membership and leadership.”
Storey told the newspaper the club hasn’t ruled out allowing female members but “as a club that is completely independent of Harvard, which accepts no funding from Harvard, which owns its own property, and believes fervently in the right to self-determination, that decision is ours, not Harvard’s, to make.”
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