Bucher also cited final clubs’ library resources and professional networking events as opportunities not granted to female students.

Some male final club members, however, did not believe that these privileges constituted discrimination.

“I don’t recall any kind of gender discrimination at all in a college context,” said Peter Y. Lee ’88.

A member of the Delphic club, he noted the number of exclusive female and male social organizations, like fraternities and sororities, at other university campuses.

BEYOND POLICY

Frustration toward final clubs, however, was not restricted to the policy of women’s admission—some students at the time also felt that the clubs contributed to campus elitism.

“I got to college and I hadn’t even heard of ‘prep school,’” Kogan said. “I didn’t know that there was a class system in my country at all.” Kogan said that the social environment at Harvard, particularly that found in the social clubs, quickly brought this class system to light. “We understood that the men that were in the final clubs were of a different class, or aspired to a certain class, or [were] born into a certain class,” Kogan said.

The issue of final clubs reinforcing a classist struc-ture, Kogan said, was not addressed by Bucher’s complaint. Kogan cited the approximately 10 percent of Harvard’s male population that was granted admission to the clubs as a significant barrier to male entry as well.

“While I believe what [Bucher] did was very important and a very positive first step,” Kogan said, “what the case wasn’t addressing was the institutional classism—it was addressing sexism.”

Bucher herself held concerns that extended beyond those her official complaint directly cited. “[Final clubs] seemed to be a locus on campus for sexual violence,” she said, recalling a close call she had during a final club party she attended, during which she had almost become a victim. “There were all these stories that were circulating...about women being vulnerable at these places.”

Bucher hoped that her lawsuit, if realized, could somehow shift this dynamic.

PERSISTING PROBLEMS

Even today, final clubs are not co-educational, and Harvard students continue to debate their exclusivity. “It’s just amazing to me that 25 years, later Harvard still has the same problem,” Bucher said. “It’s so sad for me to know that nothing, where it should have been, changed.”

While final clubs were the primary spaces in which Bucher and other female students say they felt discrimination toward women on campus at the time, Dershowitz noted that he saw other instances of sexism at Harvard from behind the scenes as a professor.

“I think there were many professors who did not think women were academic equals,” he said.

Today, Dershowitz said, in the final clubs and beyond, things are still not perfect.

“I think there’s a residual feeling [of sexism] among people that still exists,” he said. “Harvard’s record has been improving, but in 1988, it was a B minus with grade inflation.”

—Staff writer D. Simone Kovacs can be reached at dkovacs@college. harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter @simkovacs.

—Staff writer Zohra D. Yaqhubi can be reached at zyaqhubi@college. harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @zohradyaqhubi.