The subject of the Greek system is a touchy issue, at best. We all know the arguments, but I will hazard to rehash them. On one side of the spectrum, we have the ardent supporters of the Greek system who would sell their own mothers to maintain the status quo. And on the other side, there is an angry mob who, if they had the chance, would try to ban all alcohol from the campus and, possibly, all those who would commit the sin of joining a house. If you have read other articles about the topic, you have probably only read the radical pro or con viewpoint about the system (probably because radicals are more apt to have opinions). I would like to write from a different, more moderate perspective, because we cannot compromise without having moderation. Just as Clinton suffered backlash in his first few years from trying to pass health care, so too will the extremists at Dartmouth. And I am not one of those people who "aren't a member but support the Greek system." I hate those shirts.
The extremists fail to account for the totality of the fraternity experience. My first impression on entering a frat came early in freshman year when I walked into Phi Delt. Anyone who has walked into a frat will remember that subtle smell of urine, alcohol and various bodily fluids. Now I'm also not religious, but, at the time, I felt that my soul truly would be degraded if I spent too long in that place. My roommate, who is now in a frat, agreed at the time. Now, here I will digress into a paragraph-long parentheses.
(Dartmouth's policy of not allowing freshmen into frats during the fall is ridiculous. For those who have heard urban legends from their older siblings or still feel the illicit lure of alcohol, no rules will bar them from the flimsy security of some sophomore standing in front of a door. This ban only makes the appeal of the fraternity system more enticing. Now back to the article.)
Let's put the frat effect this way: I had a girlfriend from Yale. She visited Dartmouth once, went to a frat once. She is not my girlfriend anymore. Now I'm not a betting man, but I figure that her image of me changed a little bit when I, from all accounts, breathed on her after a few games (yes, that last bit is intentionally ambiguous). A friend of mine recently told me something along these lines: "Now, I come from Mexico, but even in the filthiest places in all of Mexico, you cannot go to any bar anywhere that matches a Dartmouth frat."
As the days became colder, frats did begin to seem more appealing, possibly because that combination of alcohol and the sweaty throng of girls in capri pants and guys in J. Crew sweaters at least made me feel warm. And there is nothing like alcohol to make you feel included among people you hardly know. The strange thing is that, because most other social options at Dartmouth don't actually exist -- aka Poison Ivy -- fraternities become more alluring as one becomes more integrated into the culture. They are something to do on the weekends, even if your jacket ends up smelling like Lewis Carroll's opium den.
Then there is pong, a microcosm for all of the problems and praises inherent in the system. Just as an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon falls within so many episodes of The Simpsons, so too does pong lie at the heart of the Greek system. Pong is interesting because it lures the aggression and competitiveness out of so many males (and some females). So many people play the game as if it were a sport -- sort of competitive drinking at the cost of your liver.
I admit that any feminist would hate the fraternity system, seeing as the houses foster homogeneity, aggressive males and submissive females who, in turn, often become marginalized within the fraternities. But I do see that these houses are a part of Dartmouth's history which, though we only score a 4.5 on the U.S. News academic prestige rating because of them, at least makes us unique from other schools. We should not be the school that gives out a keg to the winning A Cappella group (as the dean did in the '70s), but we can't simply eliminate alcohol, since someone will always have the means to get it. We can't sweep these things under the rug.
Whether blight or boon, the Greek system is an institution many choose to go to, because they have nowhere else to go late at night. Perhaps there is no solution, unless we want to ban the Greeks and institute a campus bar like at Brown or Harvard. And I don't want to do that, not with the strange increase in public urination at Brown, which coincided with the advent of the bar (I can't actually verify that fact, but it must be true). Plus, public urination is funny. And if anyone wants to confront me via blitz, bring it on. I am a bored kid.
