The alumni council of one of Harvard's elite all-male "final clubs" recently delayed a vote to allow admission to women after the measure had been unanimously approved by the society's undergraduate members.
The council announced earlier this month that it will wait until a poll of the alumni members of the undergraduate student organization is finished by the end of the year.
Last month undergraduate members unanimously approved the measure, which would make the Fly Club coeducational after more than 150 years.
Approval from the alumni members would make the Fly Club the first of Harvard's nine all-male final club to admit women.
The votes by the graduate and undergraduate members coincided with a boycott by a newly-created student group, Women Appealing for Change, which hopes to pressure the clubs into admitting women. The decision to delay the admission of women also came a day before the club's rush, or "punch" process.
"We're obviously disappointed about the outcome of all this," the group's co-organizer, Megan Colligan, told The Harvard Crimson. "We commend the Fly members for their efforts, and we certainly hope that the graduates will comply with the members' wishes."
Graduate members told the Crimson they would be surprised if the club did not eventually admit women. They said they would finish contacting the 1,100 club graduates by the end of the year.
According to University officials, the administration would consider recognizing the Fly Club if it admitted women. Recognition was withdrawn from the final clubs more than a decade ago because of the clubs' discrimination on the basis of sex.
"Sex discrimination is not acceptable and finally Fly Club members have realized this," Radcliffe Union of Students Co-President Maura Swann told The Crimson after the club's 28-0 vote to admit women.
Club President Scott Logan told the paper he had hoped the club would be allowed to admit women this year, but those hopes were dashed by the graduates' decision.
"We want to [go co-ed] for the right reasons, because it would make the club a better place and because it is the morally and philosophically right thing to do," Logan told The Crimson.
In 1989, the club rejected a proposal to admit women and in 1990 a female student filed a gender discrimination complaint with the state of Massachusetts.
According to The Crimson, Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who graduated from Harvard and was a member of the Fly Club, wrote the club in 1987 urging it to admit women.
