Tradition Prevails at Harvard’s Final Clubs. Is That a Good Thing?

If you’ve been following the news out of various Ivy League universities lately, you’ve probably read about multiple university heads resigning and controversies surrounding the handling of on-campus protests. Those aren’t the only notable things happening at these institutions of higher learning, however — and in some cases, what’s notable is less what is happening than what isn’t happening.

In his latest dispatch from an Ivy League school, Air Mail’s William D. Cohan explored the current state of Harvard University’s final clubs. (Cohan previously delved into the current state of Yale’s Skull and Bones.) Cohan chronicled the ways that these clubs — institutions within the institution, essentially — have relatively maintained the status quo rather than evolving to the extent that the rest of the university has.

Cohan observed that final clubs’ criteria for admitting new members are “[n]ot far from the standards of yesteryear — considerations like where you prepped and summered.” While some clubs have become more diverse, legacy admissions to final clubs remain common. When it comes to new members admitted to the Porcellian Club (whose alumni include Theodore Roosevelt and the Winklevoss twins), Cohan wrote that “allegedly, around half are legacies.”

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That isn’t to say that there aren’t controversies around these establishments. In 2016, Town & Country published an essay by Nathaniel Brooks Horwitz explaining his decision not to join the Porcellian Club over its all-male status — and praising Harvard for taking steps to discourage single-sex clubs. “It is the College’s right and responsibility to encourage its students not to participate in outdated institutions that directly contradict the school’s mission,” Horwitz wrote.

Still, Cohan’s article helps explain why some of the more archaic-seeming elements of the clubs have persisted: the professional and social benefits that membership in them confers. Still, it’s not hard to imagine a broader confrontation brewing, even if it might arrive in slow motion.

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