Idealismis not dead at Dartmouth. How fitting that a poem has occasioned the most recent upspring of idealistic commentary at the College. Perhaps I am the cynical senior, but I'm afraid we've seen it all before.
It seems that Beta Theta Pi fraternity has found itself embroiled in controversy once again. A misogynist, racist poem mysteriously surfaced over the summer. While the existence of such a poem has been neither confirmed nor denied, Beta definitely apologized for something.
Numerous guilt displacing techniques have been called into service. Such spin doctoring is a delicate but predictable science. First we must remove blame from the larger bodies. God forbid anyone think such verse is a result of or a reflection on the Greek system as a whole. Therefore official statements are chock full of the term "isolated incident."
This serves to remove the blame from the system and the particular house involved. This is not a Greek problem or a Beta problem, it is an individual's problem.
So are we to blame that individual? Certainly not. For we learn that the poor guy was "really drunk." Our hapless author must have been socialized from a young age into expressing himself in such a manner. Can't you see he's just calling out for help?
There is one grain of truth in the midst of the nonsense of spin: One should not judge other individuals in Beta based on the actions of another member of the fraternity. Any intelligent person knows that individuals should be judged as individuals.
However, it is still fair to judge the house itself based on how the house treats such incidents. In this case we are expected to believe that Beta found the comments in question to be "distasteful and offensive." Officially, Beta does not condone such behavior.
Something is missing here. If Beta, as an organization, has such a problem with such actions, what are they doing about it?
Completely absent is any sort of public acknowledgment that the brother in question will be punished by his house. If these actions do not represent Beta, why don't concerned brothers remove this unrepresentative member?
A question surfaces from the haze of guilt displacement: Does Beta have any standards at all? Is there anything that a brother can do to get himself kicked out of the house?
Actually, it is not fair to direct such a question solely at Beta. In February 1994 Marshall Bass '94 was arrested for firing a pellet gun into a crowd gathered outside his fraternity, Alpha Delta. Did his fraternity take any action? No.
Did Psi Upsilon take any action when one of their own, Michael Srodes '93 was arrested for attacking someone with a baseball bat in the basement of that fraternity? No.
In fact, have you ever heard of anybody getting kicked out of a fraternity for anything?
At other schools men and women are kicked out of their fraternities and sororities for everything from grades to sexual assault, while at Dartmouth it seems that you can't get kicked out if you try.
If the Greek system is ever going to be convincing as it argues for its continued existence on campus it needs to prove to the community that it encourages positive behavior in its members.
At the very least there should be some evidence that there is some minimum level of behavior that is expected of each and every member of the system. If we believe the rhetoric, that bottom line would be drawn some distance above that expected of the average student, but even that would be a good start.
Meanwhile, there are members of Beta who I know to live their lives well above that line. I continue to encourage others to judge these individuals as individuals. But, at the risk of being idealistic, I ask of them: How low must one of your brothers sink before you no longer wish to be associated with him?
