Fox Club


The Fox Club is a private all-male final club founded in 1898. It is located on John F. Kennedy Street in Harvard Square. The Fox Club is not affiliated with Harvard University.

History

The Fox Club was founded in 1898 by a group of six undergraduate students. Originally known as the Digamma Club, the name Fox and the Club’s symbol, a fox carrying the letter "F", grew from the similarity between the letter "F" and the archaic Greek character for "Digamma", which primarily signifies the number 6. The clubhouse has three floors that serve both the undergraduate and alumni membership, as well as an underground level where club members may invite guests. The clubhouse was built in 1906 and designed by Guy Lowell, a prominent American architect who also designed the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the New York State Supreme Court Building. The building is located on 44 John F. Kennedy Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a city historic landmark or otherwise protected property.

All-male status

Harvard upholds sanctions against members of single-gender final clubs, preventing those people from holding student group leadership positions, serving as varsity athletic team captains, and from having fellowships endorsed by the college.
In 2015, the Fox Club was one of the first of Harvard's final clubs to admit women, but only on a provisional basis by the club's undergraduate board. In an August 2015 vote by the club's undergraduate members, nine women were given provisional membership. This vote was reportedly taken without input from the club's graduate members. After the women were admitted, a rift developed between undergraduate members and alum members, leading the graduate board to lock undergraduates out of the club's house through the second half of the fall semester. The nine women's provisional member status expired upon their graduation in June 2017. By July 2017 the club had reverted to an all-male membership.
On September 7th, 2018, the club was included in a public list of Harvard social organizations that had pledged to become gender-inclusive and thereby had been recognized by the College, exempting them from Harvard's sanctions. Two weeks later, however, the club was removed from Harvard's online list of recognized social organizations as Harvard was unable to provide consistent guidelines for remaining a recognized social organization. At this time, the club would again be subject to the College's sanctions policy.
In May 2019, The Harvard Crimson reported that a vote of all Fox Club graduate members had failed to reach the two-thirds affirmative majority necessary to change membership policies and allow women to join. This decision came in spite of two successive undergraduate votes which strongly favored admitting members regardless of gender. To date, the club remains all-male and is no longer subject to sanctions after Harvard rescinded its policy acknowledging that it violated federal law.

Notable members