My first reaction to the Trustees' announcement last week that the Greek system as we know it is to be dismantled, is best summed up by an old New England epitaph, "I knew this would happen, but not so soon." My second reaction was that it was the right decision and that it was long overdue.
I say this not because I am new to the campus and don't understand the local undergraduate social scene, nor because I harbor some latent grudge against fraternities and sororities. As the senior active member of the Arts & Sciences faculty in terms of service, having arrived on campus in 1956 (just after Eleazar Wheelock), I have witnessed a number of dramatic changes in the student social environment. The advent of the Interstate highways and the improvement in other forms of transportation changed the College's isolated geographical status and its rather parochial view of social alternatives. At the same time, under President Dickey's aegis, most of the national fraternities were forced to sever their national affiliations and "go local," or go out of existence, because of discriminatory racial and religious provisions in their national charters. Subsequently, Dartmouth was transformed into a coed institution when women were admitted over 25 years ago -- the last of the Ivy League schools to yield to the inevitable. And not the least of these changes was the introduction and implementation of the D-Plan in place of the traditional semester system. As a result, the basic parameters currently defining the possible scope of student social interactions have changed in such manner that they bear little resemblance to those which prevailed in 1956. What has not changed significantly, however, is the mechanism, or structure, by which we, as a community, have responded to the changes in these parameters. Fraternities defined the social response in 1956 and fraternities significantly define that response in 1999. But what might have been an appropriate response 43 years ago is out of date -- and out of touch with today's social realities.
I have mostly positive memories of membership in Phi Delta Theta as an undergraduate. The house met one's needs for socialization and for room and board. There was no hazing, no adolescent initiation rituals and no alcohol (university regulations). It was an appropriate social response in its time -- a very different time than today. Subsequently, at Dartmouth I served as the faculty chapter advisor to Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP) and to Phi Delta Theta. TEP, being a predominantly Jewish fraternity, disappeared from the campus in the early 60's after discriminatory charters were no longer acceptable. It was a great fraternity socially and intellectually, but it no longer was an appropriate response to the changed social environment. However, the Phi Delts, reincarnated as Phi Delta Alpha, and the other remaining local and national fraternities, have continued to play a dominant and somewhat intoxicating role in the social life of the College. Unfortunately, they are increasingly not up to the task. The fraternities have repeatedly demonstrated that they are incapable, among other things, of appropriately monitoring the use of alcohol and of developing an expanded range of desirable student social opportunities. Fraternities are not inherently bad; they are simply increasingly ineffective and irrelevant. And merely altering certain of their attributes won't help. A newer, more acceptable and more effective means of meeting students' social needs has to be substituted for what now exists.
Ultimately, it is the Trustees' call, and their responsibility, to determine what is or is not the appropriate structural response to the social needs of students on campus. It is always possible, but not probable, that the Trustees may have made the wrong call, but it is not at all possible that they can retreat from the position they have taken -- even if they wanted to. The challenge, therefore, for the students, the Trustees and the administration is to seize this opportunity and together devise a decidedly superior student social alternative to the existing outmoded fraternity system. The faculty will provide moral support.
