New Lawsuit Raises Old Question: Is It Time for Single-Sex Clubs to Go?

Vibes is BU’s only all-female hip-hop team. Photo courtesy of Vibes

If inclusiveness is prized on college campuses, does it signal the demise of single-sex clubs at higher ed institutions? Should sororities and fraternities remain? What about all-female hip-hop troupes or men-only a cappella groups? Should they be given the stark choice to go coed or be banished?

These may not be new questions, but they are back in the news. A crackdown on single sex clubs at Harvard University and the ensuing lawsuit filed by fraternities and sororities have once again raised the issue of whether single-sex clubs, and Greek life in particular, are a valuable social outlet or an anachronism that promotes exclusion at a time when inclusion is a major focus for colleges and universities.

Samantha Harpool (CAS’20), a Panhellenic Council representative for the BU chapter of Delta Gamma, she has no doubts about the benefits of sorority life. Delta Gamma offers far more than a built-in social life, she says: the sisterhood provides academic support, career networking opportunities, and a sense of community.

“Sororities, in my opinion at least, are safe spaces for women,” she says.

Harvard officials took the strong step two years ago of banning students belonging to single-sex clubs from holding campus leadership positions, playing sports, or qualifying for scholarships.

Students protested the change, which ignited what a Vanity Fair magazine article calls a “Civil War” to end Harvard’s fraternities. Last week, four sororities, two fraternities, and three students filed state and federal lawsuits claiming the policy was discriminatory and seeking to block it.

“More women belong to single-sex social organizations,” the lawsuit says. “More women than men lost access to places they once called their own.”

The battle has been fierce. The sororities who filed the lawsuit say in addition to sororities being forced to go coed or close, other groups, like the 120-year-old all-female Radcliffe Choral Society and the 160-year-old all-male Harvard Glee Club, the oldest college chorus in America, were pushed to go coed as well or lose University recognition.

It’s a case that raises questions well beyond Harvard’s doorstep, says Bryan S. Adams, BU Student Activities senior associate director.

BU is home to 10 sororities, 5 fraternities, and 6 multicultural fraternities or sororities, Adams says, as well as a bevy of clubs and associations that cater to one gender. The groups run the gamut, from the Society of Women Engineers to Vibes, BU’s only all-female hip-hop team, to the men’s a cappella group Dear Abbeys.

Adams, who is also the president of the Eastern Division of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, says clubs at BU can operate as long as they do so within University guidelines. But he’ll be watching the decision closely.

“In a lot of ways, it sets the stage for the next 10 to 20 years of Greek life,” he says.

Harvard didn’t come by the new policy lightly. It instituted the change after a university-wide task force found that its final clubs (so-called because they were the last social club one could join before graduation)—notorious all-male bastions of secrecy and privilege—were disproportionately associated with sexual assaults on campus and were “deeply misogynistic.”

Carrie Preston, former director of BU’s Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program and a member of the University’s 2016 Diversity & Inclusion Task Force, says it’s a problem in dire need of increased attention on college campuses and in society at large, as the #MeToo movement has shown.

Preston, who is Kilachand Honors College director and a College of Arts & Sciences English professor, says she supports keeping single-sex gatherings and communities on college campuses, but that more needs to be done to effectively handle clubs and organizations that actively foster sexual misconduct and an entrenched anti-women sentiment.

“This is not going to happen by not allowing them [students in single-sex clubs] to have leadership roles in the community,” she says. “That is taking a diversion from the real issue at hand.”

A policy like the one at Harvard could also impact a club like Vibes, BU’s only all-female hip-hop team. Team vice president and creative director Amy Rivera (COM’19) says the team has a suggestive, feminine street style, with dancers occasionally performing in heels, that has drawn a diverse membership of women from different racial backgrounds.

But it remains for women only.

“It’s become our brand,” Rivera says, noting that men can join all-male and coed hip-hop teams on campus. “A girls team is empowering, especially now with #MeToo.”

Calls for the elimination of fraternities and sororities have come up at BU as well, such as after the 2013 death of Anthony Barksdale II, a College of Engineering freshman and a member of the BU chapter of Sigma Alpha Mu, who died after becoming intoxicated at a fraternity pledge party in Allston. A BU Today story on the suspension of the fraternity led to scores of comments from students, parents, and others.

“They should just ban every sorority & frat,” one anonymous student posted. “All BU gets from these social frats/sororities is more and more bad press.”

“It bothers me that everyone is focusing on the fraternities and blaming the fraternity,” another wrote. “This could happen to anyone. It’s a heartbreaking loss, and a terrible accident, but the focus should not be on banning Greek life, because it would not help anything.”

A similar debate occurred in 2012 after BU administrators suspended the Sigma Delta Tau sorority following an alcohol-fueled hazing that left two students hospitalized.

Alpha Epsilon Pi member Jack Sila (CAS’20) says he thinks ways to combat some fraternities’ sexual misconduct and other bad behavior are needed, but that doesn’t mean fraternities or sororities should all be condemned.

He calls the friendships he’s formed in his fraternity vital to his success at BU, saying the brotherhood eased the anxiety he felt as a freshman living on his own for the first time.

Knowing that not everyone can join increases the bond of community and fraternity, he says, but it’s discrimination only if women aren’t allowed to build the same sorts of clubs for themselves.

“When people find out I’m in a fraternity, they think a little bit less of me, that I’ve participated in hazings and in an environment that perpetuates sexual assault,” Sila says. “But it’s not a problem in my personal chapter and if it was, I would leave.”

Lina Lin (ENG’19), president of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), says she’s not against Greek life on campus “as long as they have a good cause and an actual goal.”

She was annoyed by Harvard’s new policy, she says, calling the potential harm to women’s groups shortsighted.

Women engineers are known to face more discrimination than their male counterparts, particularly when it comes to job retention. Founded seven years ago, SWE helps would-be women engineers navigate classes and career options, while reinforcing to them that they are not alone.

“You may be the only girl for every 10 guys” in a classroom, Lin says. “What we want to do is remind them that what they’re doing is awesome.”

Megan Woolhouse can be reached at megwj@bu.edu.