The director of a tennis camp that rents College facilities every summer has written to the Office of Residential Life asking the College to sanction Alpha Delta fraternity for a variety of disturbances reported to Safety and Security throughout the summer.
Mike Gardner, the director of the Adidas Tennis Camp, said that over five weeks this summer his campers, who stayed in the RipWoodSmith dormitory cluster, were kept awake by late night noise coming from AD and were menaced by the fraternity's dogs.
In a telephone interview from Concord, Mass., where he is the head tennis pro for the Thoreau Club, Gardner said that at the request of Assistant Dean of Residential Life Deb Reinders he has written a letter formalizing the camp's complaints and suggestions.
In the letter, Gardner said he wrote that loud music from the fraternity house often prevented campers from sleeping and forced camp directors to call Safety and Security several times each week.
The five-week long camp attracts high caliber athletes between the ages of 10 and 17, many of whom are training for national tournaments, Gardner said.
Chase Arnold '95, AD's summer president, said the music over the summer was "nothing out of the ordinary."
Besides the loud noise, camp staffers also complained about crashing sounds in the middle of the night, snarling fraternity dogs, missing camp equipment, vandalism and repeated late night use of RipWoodSmith facilities by AD brothers.
"I understand that it is typical for fraternities to party and have fun," Gardner said. "But AD crossed the line when they continued playing loud music until 5 a.m. on Sunday mornings. At times it was quieter to sleep on the Green."
Linda Hathorn, the College's director of conferences and events, coordinates all of the summer programs that use Dartmouth facilities. She said that unlike in previous years, she did not meet this summer with members of the College's two Wheelock Street fraternities, AD and Heorot.
"At these meetings we usually inform the fraternities what groups are staying where," Hathorn said.
Arnold said AD brothers did not know they could not use the bathrooms, laundry machines and dryers in the dormitories. "We didn't even know that we weren't allowed to use the facilities in RipWoodSmith," Arnold said. "But once we did we stopped using them."
Arnold said the situation is "completely over as far as we're concerned."
But Gardner said he is still waiting for a response from ORL. Reinders declined to comment.
Despite the complaints, the camp is scheduled to return to Dartmouth next summer.
Hathorn said future problems might be avoided by housing students, not campers, in the RipWoodSmith cluster. But the cluster's proximity to the tennis courts by Alumni Gymnasium has always made it a prime location to house the tennis camp.
Gardner said many of the campers are prospective Dartmouth applicants and make judgments about the school based on their summer at camp. "Some of the students even had on campus interviews during the summer," he said.
Gardner said he is confident that Reinders will handle the situation effectively. "We expect a college with Dartmouth's stature will not let this go unresolved," Gardner said.
