A coalition of campus women’s groups will draft a petition next month asking top University officials affiliated with the exclusive Augusta National Golf Club to reaffirm their commitment to diversity.

Two members of the Harvard Corporation—treasurer D. Ronald Daniel and Senior Fellow James R. Houghton ’58—as well as former Senior Fellow Robert G. Stone Jr. ’45, belong to the club, which has come under fire in the last year for refusing to admit women.

The petition, led by the Association of Black Harvard Women (ABHW), is a response to efforts by the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) to gain support at Harvard for its campaign to diversify Augusta. NCWO sent two letters in November to Daniel, Houghton and Stone, asking them to explain how membership in Augusta can be reconciled with the University’s nondiscrimination policy.

The Washington-based group also sent copies of the letters to President Lawrence H. Summers, who heads the seven-member Corporation—Harvard’s highest governing body.

Though Stone retired from the Corporation in June, NCWO Chair Martha Burk said the group was unaware of that fact when it sent the letters.

While NCWO argues that Harvard should require Houghton and Daniel to either resign from Augusta or from the Corporation, ABHW board member Kimberly H. Levy ’03 said she and fellow students in ABHW felt the move unnecessary.

“I wasn’t prepared, and neither was the Association, to demand resignation solely on suspicion of future discrimination,” said Levy, a former ABHW president who met with NCWO leaders last weekend to discuss the petition.

“There’s no concrete evidence [Daniel and Houghton] have done anything here on campus to question their commitment to diversity,” she added.Instead, the student groups will ask Daniel and Houghton to issue a statement supporting diversity and affirming that their Augusta membership would not affect their position on gender equity at Harvard.

Daniel could not be reached for comment, but Houghton said in an interview Monday that he would not respond to the NCWO letter and declined comment about diversity at Augusta National.

“This is an issue we’re trying to work through with members on the club,” he said. “It really is a private matter.”

But Burk said the “idea of a private membership is a little bit of a red herring.”

Augusta members, she added, are “the CEOs, they are opinion leaders, they are people who have an obligation to the public interested and that is certainly the case at Harvard.”

Rebeccah G. Watson ’04, vice president of the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS), said she agreed that membership in the club is not completely private.

“It’s just so obvious that the members of these groups gain so much from their private connections, that a private connection becomes a public issue, because they’re all so powerfully involved in Harvard and other corporations,” she said.

But Alan J. Stone, Harvard’s vice president for government, community and public affairs, called the club memberships “personal matters for the individuals involved” and said that “Harvard has no institutional role with respect to Augusta.” He declined further comment.