Not Victims: Another Case Against the Clubs

I want to comment on Sam’s final club post from the other day, which I find compelling but nevertheless insufficient. Let me try to explain why.
Sam gives us the standard-line “progressive critique” of the clubs. His is an argument that’s been made many times before — by the likes of April Yee here, Sabrina Lee here, and most recently by Daniel Herz-Roiphe, a club member, here – and baseically says the following: final clubs are bad because they perpetuate racism, elitism, and sexism by glorifying masculinity, traditionalism, and heteronormative groupthink. Sabrina Lee writes, in her definitive expression of the progressive critique, that, “Final clubs, as inherently exclusive institutions, foster a homosocial environment that creates a whole host of social problems, including intensified notions of male superiority, heightened sexual aggression, heteronormativity, and the inability to ethically evaluate one’s own actions.”
To me, this goes too far. And then again, it doesn’t seem to go far enough.
First, I suspect that the argument on its merits is weaker than some believe. All evidence points to the fact that the clubs are more racially and economically integrated than ever before. They might not be “diverse” in a substantive sense (I’ll get to that in a second) but it’s true that the progressive critique is getting progressively weaker. I haven’t done any fieldwork, but I do have final club friends. The final clubbers that I know are not elitist, or racist, or homophobic. Not even close.
Do final clubs propagate certain race and class norms? Yes. And that’s important. But it is, at the same time, hardly damning. Final clubs can do what they want (within the bounds of the law). And institutionally, they’re perfectly right in selecting for and preserving their own self-image – for which institutions, after all, do not? The Crimson? The Hasty Pudding Theatricals? The Advocate? The IOP? Any sociology of the Harvard extracurricular scene would reveal that there is a multiplicity of sub-cultures here, each a hierarchy predicated on subtle judgment, explicit exclusion, implicit control, etc. Do final clubs restrict women? Yes. But so do frats.
My point isn’t that final club culture is good — far from it, in fact. My point, instead, is that the progressive critique goes about arguing for the right things in the wrong way. By postulating the existence of final club “victims” — of people on the receiving ends of final clubs’ deprivation – the progressive critique makes the case against the clubs essentially litigious. One wishes to shout: Harvard students aren’t victims! Don’t pretend that they are. To say that final clubs are a crime is to take a very low view of your peers — of the final club males, who aren’t criminals, of the folks that show up to the parties (who really do go voluntarily…and look so pretty and have such a nice time) and of the vast majority of people that don’t care one way or another. As a court case, the progressive critique is a laughing stock.
Thus my critique of the critique: it’s too easy to dismiss; it overplays its hand; it’s impossibly adversarial. No one is going to admit that they’re a sexist pig or a racist pig or a pig pig. And most Harvard students have no reason to. If that’s our only argument, then we’re always going to be shouting from the outside of their old, clubby doors.
Second, more importantly: My problem with the progressive critique is that it lets the final clubs off the hook. I know this from experience. When my final club friends hear the argument that the clubs are racist/elitist/sexist, they invariably tune out. They agree on substance that being a chauvinist pig is bad, but they look at their own record (non-white, not rich, loving long-term partner, liberal, whatever) and they assume they’re in the clear. But they’re not. Supporting final clubs is still wrong, and we need a vocabulary to express that, even to the hard cases (especially to the hard cases, for they — not the rapists proper — are the ones we might hope to convince).
I begin then with the premise that while racism/elitism/sexism are necessary standards for anyone to be held against, they’re not themselves sufficient standards. “Not raping girls,” in short, is not the sine qua non of your responsibilities to this community; being a Harvard student means so much more. My case is that final clubs are bad because they don’t do good – because they exist in this community and yet never give back to it; because they have resources and yet work only for themselves; because they don’t try to make this school (or this world) a better place.
In other words, final clubs don’t break the rules of our community; they violate its spirit. To quote from the student handbook: “By accepting membership in the University, an individual joins a community ideally characterized by free expression, free inquiry, intellectual honesty, respect for the dignity of others, and openness to constructive change.” Final clubs disgrace the premise of Harvard community. They reject our togetherness: their resources are spent helping themselves or aggressively excluding others. And they reject some of our most basic shared values as an educational institution – values like openness, merit, diversity and public-spiritedness.
It’s not the students who are backwards, it’s the institutions. They exist like old, malignant growths lodged between a University that’s democratizing and a world that’s more meritocratic and diverse than ever before. So I speak not as an activist but as a consultant. I’d say to the clubs, if given the chance: in the 20^th century, power might have come from exclusion and traditionalism pastiche and etiquette. But the world is changing. You need another strategy. In today’s world, power comes from inclusion, from networks, from creativity and heterodoxy and awesomeness. So long as the clubs reject these principles, they represent retarding forces on the progress of our moral and intellectual sensibilities as a community. They slow us down.
My case against final clubs, then, is not that they’re bad because they hurt some of us. They’re bad because they’re not good. In situating themselves in opposition to our community they hurt themselves and, in that way, they hurt all of us.
Photo Credit: Flickr stream of eileansiar