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The Dartmouth
July 11, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

The Real World

To the Editor:

The Dartmouth community has been embroiled in controversy over how to change the fraternity/sorority system into something that better fits the ideal view of certain parts of that community. In many ways, this is an admirable struggle, one that any good utopian way would be glad to see occurring. The latest pronouncement on the details of the Initiative is Senior Associate Dean of the College Nelson's report on hazing.

Nelson, representing a committee he chaired, has released a report recommending a broadened definition of hazing. This definition is so broad that the committee stated, in lieu of specifics, that "almost anything that new members are required to do that is not required of more senior members is likely to constitute hazing." This definition could be applied to such new member activities as cleaning the house, something few would have called "hazing" before.

This new policy has many appealing aspects. First, it certainly improves the immediate lives of the new members of fraternities (and sororities to a lesser extent, as these policies are employed to a lesser degree there). It would democratize fraternities and sororities in some ways, perhaps, as differentiation between newer and more senior members could conceivably be eradicated on a grand scale. Doesn't this all sound great?

Well, I happen to believe that there is a significant downside to the destruction of these basic elements of fraternity life. As a member of the Dartmouth community who has recently entered the real world, I am finding value in the experiences I went through at Dartmouth that I had never really seen before. Pledging a fraternity is an experience that prepared me for the workplace in a number of ways.

There is much to be said for starting at the bottom of an organization and working your up. In three years (what, two and a half now?), students rise from pledges who clean up, wear signs, can't sit in meetings and so forth, to leaders within their organization and perhaps all over the community. That rise is valuable in part because of the low status at which members begin. It also teaches the value of hard work and perseverance in the face of adversity. Virtually everyone makes it through that term more tightly bonded to his or her fellow pledges and with greater self-knowledge than before.

Once in this new land we call the real world, most of us learn a lesson. Hazing is a fact of life out here, kids. Believe it. In business, in law, in medicine and most CERTAINLY in academia, most new members go through a period of differentiation where the most distasteful, boring or menial tasks are theirs to perform. Virtually all careers require that we start at the bottom. In my job as a trainee at a Hollywood agency, on my first day I was asked by no less than three separate people, "Did you pledge a fraternity? Oh, ok, good, then you can handle this." And it's true. In a job where someone drops out almost every week, I can guarantee that I will stay the course.

Is this solely attributed to my days cleaning the most disgusting kitchen in New England? Well, probably not. Nevertheless, does pledging stick out as one of the few times that I actually saw some character being built at Dartmouth? Absolutely. Draining the hardship out of life may be admirable and utopian, but the product, the person, will be the worse for it. Removing this sort of experience, which is entirely voluntary I might add, from the Dartmouth experience will make the school a worse preparation for the world, Dartmouth's most important goal.