Recently, the faculty voted 81-0 in favor of complete derecognition of the Greek system at Dartmouth College. Whether this unanimous vote is reflective of the way the faculty really feels or if it is merely the result of faculty members kowtowing to the administration in an effort to show a unified front isn't exactly clear. But one thing is clear -- my grades (read: future) are dependent on faculty members not hating me, so before I go insulting them, I must remember to tread lightly or this whole thing may come back to haunt me.
My biggest gripe with the support for the resolution to derecognize the Greek system isn't that it urges an end to Dartmouth, as we know it. In fact, if I were a professor here I'd probably vote down the Greek system, too. Of course, if I were a professor here I would have already lived out most of my youthful indiscretions. I'd be spending my days clad in worn-out cardigans, smoking a pipe, and chiding students for doing what comes naturally to youths -- finding new ways to let off steam and have some harmless fun. I'd also be endorsing checks from the College, not writing checks to it, so I wouldn't have a four year, $132K investment that I'd be wasting if I weren't having a good time here. But I really don't have a problem with the faculty voting to derecognize the Greek system. What I do have a problem with are the uninformed myths they seem to believe about the Greek system.
In a front page article in Tuesday's The Dartmouth, Omer Ismail writes, "Faculty members argued that the [Greek] system is a discriminatory one that can not be reformed." The fact that faculty members and administrators are criticizing the Greek system for being "discriminatory" or exclusive is mind-boggling. In past years, every single woman who went through sorority rush was granted a bid somewhere. Now that the administration has tinkered with the system and put a moratorium on the creation of new sororities, the Panhellenic council was, for the first time, unable to give each rushee a bid. Is that discriminatory? In a sense, yes. But the reason why the council had to discriminate in giving out bids is a simple one: the Greek system continues to grow in student popularity as its positive effects are felt around campus. However, the administration-imposed moratorium blocked efforts to create another sorority in response to the increasing number of women who want to play a part in the Greek system. Therefore, if rush is discriminatory, in the sense that not everyone who wanted a bid was given one, this discrimination is a direct result of the moratorium.
Ismail also writes, "Citing figures from the steering committee report which shows affiliated students tend to be mostly white and more affluent than other students, [Associate Professor] Ackerman called the system one of 'power and privilege.'" Give me a break. Every single class I've taken at Dartmouth has been loaded with rich white kids. Every time I walk into Food Court I see a preponderance of rich white kids. And God forbid if I ever looked into the Gap. Ackerman criticizing any element of Dartmouth College for having a high percentage of affluent white students is like me criticizing Baker Library for having a lot of books.
Other faculty members spoke out about the unsafe abuse of alcohol, blaming it on the Greek system. And while the SLI statistics do indicate that the Greek system is at least partially responsible for a seemingly unsafe drinking culture here at Dartmouth, these statistics are not the only ones that the administration values. In fact, the "Social Norms" campaign that the administration has thrust in the faces of students seems to speak about an entirely different college. Advertisements in The Dartmouth and on DTV boast that 95 percent of Dartmouth students have never missed an academic deadline due to alcohol use. "Most Dartmouth students have four or fewer drinks when they go out," states another advertisement. If these statistics are reflective of the Dartmouth community in general, then the image of Dartmouth as a school with a drinking problem is just that, an image. Do whole institutions have to crumble just to shake off the erroneous stigma associated with Animal House (and, now, that song from Sunday's "The Simpsons")?
The faculty proposal did get at least one thing right. The College's number one priority should be the construction of new residence halls. Like so many people have been saying from the beginning, to make the College stronger we need to add new things, not take away what we already have. If I offended any faculty members who happen to be grading my papers or exams right now, I just want to state that, for the record, my roommate wrote this entire column and I back you guys 100 percent.
