Odd that here in the Valley on the cutting edge of rustic modernization there is no hopping club scene, nor any sawdust and honky-tonk Cowpoke bars. We find ourselves with a singular focus each Friday and Saturday night. In the absence of NASCAR or good strip-clubs, what else is the bucolic college student to do? Cow-tipping loses its flair quickly, and all of the roadside signs have already been peppered by the buckshot of a townie who was thinking just a little faster than you that "goin' a-shootin'" might be a wholesome, fun-filled way to clear the stress after a long day at Wal-Mart.
Dartmouth is one of those rare enclaves still flying in the face of what the Man is telling people to do by entertaining the culture of the Greek. Given that this culture has recently found itself in endangered status, the undeniable fact still is, and has been since 1842, that Greek systems are the meat and potatoes of the weekends' social smorgasbord at Dartmouth.
It has not always been the case that fraternities were connoted with the "Animal House" image that has pervaded in recent times. According to history professor Jere Daniell '55, fraternities at Dartmouth evolved around literary societies. Such societies were just as the name evokes, social gatherings for the discussion of literature.
These societies developed largely because of the societal conditions afflicting American colleges in the 18th and 19th centuries. At the time, colleges were usually small in size, homogeneously white and church-affiliated -- though Dartmouth never was, religion was still a more pervasive part of the academic experience then than it is today -- and highly lacking in diversions for students.
Any student searching for stimulation outside of the academic arena seldom wandered very far, as extracurricular activities were usually intellectual in form. Exciting examples include literary debates, poetry readings and oratorical contests.
Sometime in the late 1800s, a new generation of students decided that the literary society was stodgy, stifling and not fun. So a new type of society emerged that was secretive and selective on the basis of friendship and shared values. These societies were largely a forum in which students could meet to unwind outside the view of watchful faculty eyes.
This new society was typified and given a name when five William and Mary students founded Phi Beta Kappa in a tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia on December 5, 1776.
Initially, Phi Beta Kappa held many of the characteristics of later fraternities, such as ritual, secret vows of loyalty, a secret handshake, a motto and a badge or crest.
The revolutionary times that saw the inception of Phi Beta Kappa also saw a quick proliferation of the society, with chapters opening at Yale, Harvard and Dartmouth soon after the birth of the society.
At the same time as the Revolutionary War heralded the rise of Phi Beta Kappa, it also signaled the beginning of the end. By 1780, the demise of the William and Mary chapter stifled the growth of the society. By the 19th Century, populism spawned dissent for secret societies, especially the Freemasons.
All of this culminated in 1831 at Harvard when, under pressure from the faculty, the Phi Beta Kappa chapter disclosed its secrets. Other chapters, under similar pressure from faculties at other institutions, soon followed suit, and Phi Beta Kappa became known for its outstanding academic achievement. This distinction remains today, but Daniell laments, "Phi Beta Kappa was stolen by the faculty" of Dartmouth's chapter.
The 1840s saw the proliferation of contemporary fraternities all over the East Coast of the United States. Many national houses can trace their genesis back to this period, and a disproportionate number also trace their roots to a single place, Union College in Schenectady, NY. Considered the "mother of college fraternities," Union was the hatchery for seven Alpha chapters.
Dartmouth was not far behind Union in the creation of its own Greek system. In 1842, a portentous year for the administration and student body alike,Psi Upsilon and Kappa Kappa Kappa, Dartmouth's first and second fraternities, respectively, were founded.
In addition to being the second trend-setter at Dartmouth, Tri-Kap foresaw a socio-cultural movement among Greek houses that was still 120 years away--operating without national affiliation as a "local house."
Daniell characterizes the period from 1880 through the 1920s as witnessing the foundation of "oodles of fraternities at Dartmouth." The peak came during this period with 26 fraternities enjoying the Hanover Plain.
"Fraternities at this time were functional in a leadership sense," Daniell told The Dartmouth, "there was no antagonism with the administration; they were effective models of how Dartmouth people were supposed to act."
Prohibition in the 1920s brought the transformation, or devolution, of the model conduct of Dartmouth's fraternities. Here started the drinking, isolationism and ethnocentrism that soon grew into the uglier shades of the fraternity culture.
It was during these lawless times, rumor has it, that a bootlegging student at Theta Delta Chi was shot and killed, as the story goes, on the stairs leading to the basement. Thus the fraternal nickname "Boom-Boom Lodge" was coined for the house in a shameless exploitation of the dramatic departure of one brother. This event also indicates the first real case of organized crime among Dartmouth's Greeks, an onerous tradition that would be crafted to perfection in the 1970s by the infamous Delta Kappa Epsilon house.
Fraternities at Dartmouth closed during World War II, in equal parts a practical and respectful reaction to the need for able-bodied young men to help aid the Allied war effort.
After the war, Dartmouth entertained the first administrative inkling of ridding the campus of Greek houses. While the campus was embroiled in debate, the Doughboys returned from the fronts and, strangely enough, wanted to go to college. A large enough number chose Dartmouth that another familiar problem reared its ugly head--a housing shortage.
In those pragmatic times the rise of the second problem was the solution of the former. The need for additional beds settled the matter and fraternities were allowed to reopen on March 1, 1946 on the condition that they could demonstrate the funding to stay open for one year.
The presidency of John Sloan Dickey ushered the Greek system through the 1950s and into a progressive era for the fraternities. In 1954, under the aggressively advocated student autonomy and responsibility of the Dickey administration, the student body generated its own referendum on racial and religious discrimination in the charters of fraternities. Specifically the referendum called for the removal of such discriminatory clauses to be removed from the fraternity charters by 1960.
This movement was faithfully followed by a majority of houses. Many went local as this forward move created rifts between the Dartmouth chapters and their national affiliates. One example is Phi Delta Alpha, whose desire to remove the anti-Semitic sanctions on house membership caused the house to end national affiliation with Phi Delta Theta.
Other houses that failed to meet the terms of the referendum eventually faded into non-existence.
But the 1950s were not completely characterized by such pro-social behavior. In what can only be regarded as an appropriate display of the Dartmouth-Harvard football game antagonism, eight Dartmouth fraternities instructed their pledges to destroy the Harvard marching band's instruments--an order that they carried out with zeal. In fact the acute state of bedlam that they created warranted all 8 of the involved fraternities being put on severe probation.
The Vietnam war era was the next season of great change for Dartmouth fraternities. The war itself sparked great protest over the entirety of the country. Whatever constructive modes of protest practiced elsewhere in the country were largely ignored by the Greek culture at Dartmouth. While many young people in the country condemned the Vietnam debacle with peaceful protests, candlelight vigils, and marches on Capitol Hill, Alpha Delta and the other Dartmouth fraternities crafted the "Animal House" mentality that decried the war, the government, and any other emblem of authority with blatant disregard of responsibility.
According to Daniell, fraternities at this point became centers of drug culture and other dangerous activities. It was during this point that Delta Kappa Epsilon, colloquially called Deke, was nearing the blackest moments of its sinister presence on campus. An organized theft ring was run out of the house not to mention the accidental killing of two pledges and a nerd to whom they intended to deliver a ding.
It was also during this period that Dartmouth went coed in 1972. Admitting women was an effort that sparked controversy over the entire Dartmouth community, and fraternities often doubled as strongholds of anti-coeducational sentiment.
As a result female students at the College struggled with this atmosphere in the especially tense early years of coeducation. Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord '79 writes this in her book about the conditions then of being doubly-disadvantaged by being both Navajo and female. In her book, The Scalpel and the Silver Bear, she writes the following describing her experience: "I remember, distinctly, feeling alienated while walking around Dartmouth's campus that year. By my sophomore year I understood what it meant to be invisible. People looked right through me--I moved around the campus as unseen as the air."
Alvord returned to Dartmouth in 1997 and is still here acting as the associate dean of minority and student affairs at Dartmouth Medical School.
Sororities made their debut at Dartmouth in 1977 when the national house, Sigma Kappa established a chapter. In 1989 that house went national and changed its name to the more familiar Sigma Delta.
Sororities have multiplied since then and currently Dartmouth harbors seven, with such notable national organizations as Delta Delta Delta and Kappa Kappa Gamma.
Since the coeducation Dartmouth houses, national charters permitting, have had the option of going coed themselves. Alpha Theta, formerly the national Theta Chi, voted to go coed at once, but few women showed interest so they repealed that decision until 1979 when Alpha Theta went coed once more and for good. Current coed houses include Phi Tau and the Tabard.
In the late 1970s the faculty organized its first vote to abolish the Greek system. The vote was unanimously for the removal of the system, and while the faculty or administration hasn't succeeded in that vein yet, this first effort sparked a power-struggle that has waxed and waned ever since.
This ebb and flow of struggle and periods of peace between the Greek system and administration has not ended. Many fraternities from AD, Psi-U and Beta Theta Pi, to the most recent casualty, Phi Delta Alpha, have run into periods of probation and de-recognition in the 1980s and '90s.
In February of 1999 the Board of Trustees made their fateful, and now famous, announcement of their intent to "end the Greek system as we know it." Since then the execution of that voiced intent has taken the appearance of a gentler phasing out of the system.
As Daniell argues, the mass disapproval of fraternities and sororities the nation over is reflective of a growing level of maturity on a grand social scale. The greater social movements are reflected in administrative decisions such as that reflected in the Student Life Initiative report.
What we have now is "a hierarchy of maturity; the less mature are picked off," Daniell said. "It has calmed down since the 'Animal House' era, because now Neanderthal behavior threatens the existence of the house."
Though houses at Dartmouth have met the administration at every effort, the growing requirements for official College recognition may ultimately prove too stifling a presence for the continued existence of Dartmouth's Greeks as they are now.
As Daniell sadly admits, "this is fundamentally a self-destructing system."
