Word: joining
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Harvard students will make an important decision. It will not concern classes, sports, housing, or college-sanctioned extracurriculars, yet it will profoundly affect the Harvard community. Today, after the traditional Yale game weekend close of the so-called "punching season", these young men will decide whether or not to join one of Harvard's exclusive, all-male final clubs. Although many may view the decision in practical and amoral terms, connoting little significance for their community, it is in fact a moral choice with far-reaching effects...
Often students join finals clubs under the pretense and false hope that they will be able to "reform from within." But how can a club that survives on conspicuous consumption, sexism and elitism be reformed? Even admitting women (an unlikely prospect at best) wouldn't improve the moral base of a system founded on privilege. To truly reform the clubs one would have to eliminate the displays of wealth and symbols of superiority which constitute the clubs' main appeal...
Practices aside, the issue is not whether individuals have the right to join exclusive organizations. It is simply a question of whether students are willing to stand behind the principles that Harvard is founded upon. By joining a final club, a student is taking a giant step backward, a step into a past where women were treated as inferiors and elites possessed special privileges...
...many of us have remained silent for so long. Why haven't President Bok and the college deans issued statements condemning the aristocratic, anti-egalitarian and anti-community values of the clubs? Why don't students express more disbelief and repugnance when their peers announce intentions to join a club? Why do some women apparently allow themselves to be brought in through back stairways or to be served chicken dinners while the men are served steak? Finally, why do club members who joined with visions of reform still belong after being unable to effect even minor changes...
...defeat of what he calls "structural apathy." As long as the leadership, structure and challenge to students is strong, he says he believes public service will continue to grow. "I think the idea is to provide challenge and more challenge. HAND was designed to challenge students every day to join by going to the heart of student life, which is the dorm...