I eagerly await Harvard's plan to force male students in STEM fields to pair up with female students. As part of such a scheme, every research project and corporate placement would be reviewed to ensure participants are gender-diverse, and female students are omnipresent. Applications for research support will not pass muster unless half the team members are women. Exceptional performance by a man will be scrutinized if there was no woman standing beside him to be lauded for the same work. Male students will feel like they're dragging a sandbag along behind them, but in the Age Of Obama, well, WGAF.

"Faust framed the decision as a necessary step to combat "forms of privilege and exclusion at odds with our deepest values.""

Gee - isn't attending Harvard an example of "privilege and exclusion"?

Perhaps they could simply absorb all those students Mizzou lost. ....wait...

I'm looking for Mulder and Scully to appear, searching for that Smoking Man determined to undermine American schools to defeat those capitalists. They're relying on individual acheivement, you see, and we can't allow that.

Free speech and free association are such 18th century values.

Please, this is an enlightened era. You will be made to care. It's the New Soviet Man, right before your eyes. Xe will lead us into the glorious future.

Maybe they could have those privaleged wear a badge so everyone knows who the bad ones are who can't be leaders, oh maybe a nice star they have to wear.

Fascinating. I graduated 10 years ago. I was a non-traditional student, so the sorority scene was not really a practical idea - nor one that I would have thought about without financial support even if I were younger.

I was surprised that our professors encouraged such organizations. We were told that membership encourages study and provides a needed support system so students who participate are more likely to graduate.

I would suppose the same students have more time and money too, which increases the odds for success. Our professors insisted that you didn't have to be wealthy to participate.

My how things have changed.

Where I graduated from you didn't have to be wealthy to participate in a frat or sorority. There were quite the variety including religious ones. I knew people who were part of protestant and mormon frats/sororities (I don't think there was a Catholic one). But yes, some groups were rich kids and their bootlickers.

Some people really aren't ready to live on their own when they go to college. Frat/sororities provide structure to those people lives (for good and for ill). If you could graduate without one then I doubt they would have provided you with any benefit.

What an arbitrary and vindictive policy. Are they going to investigate students who have only same-sex roommates as well?

And of course this came recommended by the anti-sex squad.

The one good thing about this period is that the Progressives are no longer pretending to be Liberals. They are speaking and acting candidly. Everyone gets to see what the Progressive utopia will really be like.

No privacy, no civil rights or due process, no freedom of speech or association. Everyone brought to heel to serve the whims of a puritanical elite in their perpetual campaign to purge humanity of our sins.

Yes, Harvard is a private institution - but, don't they some how or other take public money? Just asking . . .

If they are going to "investigate" students who join such private clubs they had better start with their own clubs - such as the Black Students Union, the Latino Student Alliance, etc., etc. etc., For those clubs truly do discriminate as they are about promoting their specific ethnicity over others.

I don't mind so much their way of thinking; they are free to be as stupid as they want. It is the hypocrisy that is so galling; in that some groups are protected while others are shit. Just try to start a working class white kids club and see what happens!

And speaking of Harvard, we have too damn many Harvard grads on the Supreme court - need to weed that group out a bit. Get some folks from another part of the country instead of the Northeast. Maybe a "wise" white boy who grew up milking cows at 4:00 AM before school could add a lot to their elitism way of thinking to overturn some of their dumbass judgments - like making working folks who lost their jobs AND their employer-sponsored health insurance, and now have no income pay an extra "tax" known as the Obamacare penalty.

If they can't twist the school into knots using Title IX they shouldn't be going to Harvard.

"Who does Title IX apply to?

Title IX applies to all educational institutions, both public and private, that receive federal funds. Almost all private colleges and universities must abide by Title IX regulations because they receive federal funding through federal financial aid programs used by their students."

"Does Title IX apply only to athletics?

... the law applies to every single aspect of education, including course offerings, counseling and counseling materials, financial assistance, student health and insurance benefits and/or other services, housing, marital and parental status of students, physical education and athletics, education programs and activities, and employment."

Coming to you soon from the Harvard Un-American Activities Committee.

"Are you now, or have you ever been a member of..."

Harvard has wanted for forever to force the final clubs to accept women. The sexual assault thing is more or less an excuse. At some point in the past, the College decided that single-sex social organizations (but not music or sports organizations) were Awful and Should Not Be Recognized By Mother Hahvahd. That's when the final clubs lost their official recognition. Since the clubs largely have their own buildings, endowments and the like, what really happened was that the school lost all control over the organizations. They've been trying to get it back without having to back down.

I was never cool enough to be invited to final club parties when I was in school (though I knew a few members and once got to visit a clubhouse during a very quiet period). They weren't my scene...but I still find this latest diktat to be appalling. I'll point out that Stanford manages to operate a world-recognized university while accommodating frats and sororities.

Heh, I did my EdM at Harvard's school of Education. Harvard has this weird complex because it is pretty much the epitome of privilege and exclusion, and it feels guilty about it.

I remember that I was one of the few students who thought gifted education was important, and that exceptionally bright kids needed more challenging environments with their peers. Everyone else was against it. Even though they were living it.

This is the reason people don't admit they went to Harvard. They went to school "near Boston". I have just broken a major social taboo with this post.

You're not the first on the blog to confess, oh-so-transgresively, your matriculation in Ivy.

We can hope you're the last.