Harvard's Fox Club - the fellowship whose members have included Bill Gates and poet TS Eliot - has reneged on its plan to admit female members.

In October 2015 the 119-year-old, formerly all-male finals club accepted junior and senior women as provisional members, as part of a year-long plan to go fully co-ed.

But now the graduate board has revoked all provisional members - male and female - and is only inviting the male members to reapply, The Harvard Crimson reported.

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Outfoxed: The Fox Club (pictured) has excluded all its female members two years after they were allowed in as 'provisional' members under pressure from undergrads and Harvard itself

Ladies out: Ex-Fox undergraduate president Daniel T Skarzynski (left), who graduated in 2016, said that graduate board president Hugh M Nesbit (right, class of '77) had announced the decision. The undergrads had been pushing to admit women, to the annoyance of some alums

Former Fox undergraduate president Daniel T Skarzynski - who graduated in 2016 - explained the move in an email.

He said that he had been told of the move by club graduate board president Hugh M Nesbit of the class of 1977.

'For the concerned parties, [Nesbit] also said that if you’d like to be re-considered for membership, you should send an email to that effect,' Skarzynski wrote.

He said the graduate board would then vote individually on those applications.

'However,' he wrote,'[Nesbit] said this invite for reapplication does not apply to female members until such a time as the club votes successfully to add women to its membership.'

The club has been divided over the issue for years, amid pressure from Harvard to go co-ed.

The club's house was temporarily shuttered in November 2015 after the initial vote to let in women was passed by undergraduates, due to a pushback by alumni.

Those members, under the title of the 'Friends of the Fox Club,' circulated emails to dissuade the admission of female students, the Harvard Crimson wrote in 2015.

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'As graduates, we must act upon our sense of duty to protect the club that we love and not allow it to be hijacked by a small group of undergraduates who were only just invited into our membership and still have yet to scratch the surface of the club's legacy,' one email read.

Graduate board leaders ruled that the alumni could not block the vote, due to a clause in the constitution that said undergraduates have 'complete control of the election of new members.'

The 'provisional member' status was agreed upon as a compromise; some male members offered to become 'provisional' too, in solidarity.

But since then two votes have been held on admitting women as full members, both of which have failed to get the two-thirds majority needed to pass.

And now the ladies are out.

Not all alumni are against allowing in female Foxes, however; Reverend Douglas W. Sears, who graduated in 1969, said pushing out the women members was a mistake.

In favor: Graduate Douglas W Sears said the decision put the Fox Club ' on the wrong side of history'. Harvard is also penalizing all same-sex clubs

'Some folks certainly know how to get on the wrong side of history voluntarily,' he said.

This will likely not be the end of the affair for the Fox Club.

Harvard is introducing a new rule for the next class that forbids members of single-sex clubs from receiving college endorsement for several fellowships such as the Rhodes and the Marshall.

They will also not be allowed to lead certain student groups.

However, the dean has announced that a committee will be formed that may be able to revise or replace those penalties.

But some expect a fight, and the all-male Fly Club in September last year retained lawyers ahead of an expected legal battle.