Fox Club

The Fox Club is a private all-male final club of Harvard undergraduate students founded in 1898. The Fox Club is not officially affiliated with Harvard University. It is located on John F. Kennedy Street in Harvard Square. History The Fox Club was founded in 1898 by six undergraduate students at Harvard University. It is an all-male final club. 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. Harvard attempted to impose sanctions against members of single-gender final clubs, preventing members from holding student group leadership positions, serving as varsity athletic team captains, and from having fellowships endorsed by the college. However, after acknowledging that this policy against final clubs violated federal law, Harvard rescinded all sanctions in 2019. In 2015, the Fox Club was one of the first of Harvard's final clubs to contemplate admitting 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 taken without input from the club's graduate members who revoked the nine women's provisional membership. 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. Symbols The club's nickname is the Fox. Its symbol is an upright fox carrying the letter "F". Club house The Fox Club house is located on 44 John F. Kennedy Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was built in 1902 and designed by Guy Lowell, a prominent American architect who also designed the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The Fox Club house is a contributing structure in the Harvard Square National Historic District and in the local Harvard Square Conservation District. Notable members J. Sinclair Armstrong, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Steve Ballmer, former chief executive officer of Microsoft Birendra of Nepal, King of Nepal from 1972 to 2001 Van Wyck Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, literary critic, and biographer T. S. Eliot, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Hermann Hagedorn, American author, poet, and biographer Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., U.S. Senate and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, South Vietnam, West Germany, and the Holy See John Davis Lodge, 79th governor of Connecticut, U.S. House of Representatives, and U.S. ambassador to Spain, Argentina, and Switzerland Maxwell Perkins, literary editor and publisher who gave writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald their start. Sinclair Weeks, U.S. Senator and 13th U.S. Secretary of Commerce Paul Withington, college football coach Paul Wylie, figure skater Fernando Zóbel de Ayala y Montojo, painter See also Harvard College social clubs References Notes Bibliography "Fox Club Undergraduate Association, Inc., Summary Screen", The Commonwealth Of Massachusetts, William Francis Galvin, Secretary Of The Commonwealth, Corporations Division External links Media related to Fox Club at Wikimedia Commons