City Council Cowardice

On Oct. 2, the Cambridge City Council voted 8-1 to grant a historic preservation easement to the Fly Club. While the building it inhabits may be old, the club itself is unfortunately a bit of Cambridge history that we would be better off not preserving. While we recognize that the council’s power was limited, we would have hoped for a stronger symbolic vote to register the city’s opposition to the club’s exclusive nature.

Through an arrangement with the non-profit Historic Massachusetts, Inc., the club had sought to make alumni donations for the preservation of the building tax-exempt. Their efforts were certainly within the letter of the law, but not necessarily the spirit: the citizens of Cambridge derive no great benefits from the building’s presence, and the Fly shows no intention of conducting tours of its grounds or otherwise giving back to the community in exchange for its tax exemption.

Moreover, the club’s longstanding practice of gender discrimination promotes a negative image both of the Harvard campus and of the larger Cambridge community. Though many councillors expressed hopes that women would eventually be admitted into the club, we fear that their optimism is excessive and ill-founded. We commend Timothy P. Toomey, Jr., the lone member of the council who voted against granting the Fly Club tax-exempt status, in what was effectively a symbolic vote. We had hoped that other councillors would have done the same.