A Lexis-Nexis Universe search of recent University-Wire articles including the words "Greek," "offensive" and "party" turns up articles about incidents at various campuses across the nation.
More than a quarter of those results describe events at Dartmouth.
Such notorious College parties as the luau-themed party planned by Delta Delta Delta sorority and Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity and the "ghetto"-themed party co-hosted by Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity and Alpha Xi Delta sorority have garnered thorny laurels for Dartmouth as it tries to encourage applicants from ethnically diverse backgrounds to consider the College.
Dartmouth is not alone, however.
Administrators at Auburn University in Alabama and the University of Florida-Gainesville have struggled over the last two years with theme parties at campus fraternities that have offended minority groups at the universities.
Two members of Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity at Auburn dressed up as Ku Klux Klan members for a Halloween party in 1998.Auburn's student body is made up of 91 percent Caucasian students and six percent African-American students, according to the Princeton Review. Within the entire state, 26 percent of the residents are black.
At Florida in March, Delta Tau Delta fraternity hosted a "Mekong Delta"-themed party complete with barbed wire and sand-bag dcor.
A few men came to the party dressed as G.I.s, and several women arrived dressed as Vietnamese prostitutes.
"Hundreds of thousands of people during that period of time were killed and were paying with their lives and that's not something you celebrate -- at least I don't," commented Dartmouth's Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman in reaction to the event.
Asian and Asian-American students at Florida, noted Florida University's Assistant Dean of Students for Greek Life Kara Kravetz Cupoli, "seem to think Delt had this party out of ignorance, not out of malice.
The media, Cupoli said, failed to mention that students also came dressed as nurses and flower-children.
"It was similar to MAS*H parties that people used to have in the '80s based on the television series," she said.
"Essentially, the chapter had this party itself in good faith, if that makes sense," Cupoli continued. "It followed rules of risk management and things like that."
The fraternity, she noted, has several Vietnamese members who supported the Mekong-Delta theme.
"I'm sorry all of you feel offended," the fraternity's president Ben Davis said after the incident. "That was never the intention of the party, and we will never have that party again."
"If a fraternity decided to have a murder mystery kind of night on this campus right now, it could be kind of fun, but how inappropriate would that be?" Redman told said in response, citing the murders of two Dartmouth professors this January as well as the recent deaths last week of a freshman student and a librarian at the College.
Educational institutions are often stuck between a rock and a civil rights bill on this issue, however.
Cautious about censoring the free speech rights of their students while protecting the civil rights of minority groups on their campuses, college administrators nationwide comment on what little can be done to sanction students who participate in inappropriate gatherings.
"We have not historically, nor are we allowed, to censor student organization theme parties," explained Florida's Cupoli.
"As far as being against any particular law or policy, there is nothing," said Auburn's assistant vice president for student life, Grant Davis, to that university's student paper last year after African-American students reported the fraternity members' KKK costumes.
"The individuals did not break any law or policies," Davis added.
Dartmouth administrators often come to this conclusion themselves, deciding that no sanctions outlined within College regulations apply to these situations.
"We don't have a hate speech clause. We don't have a being stupid clause," said Redman.
He noted, however, that Dartmouth's recognition requirements are stringent already and are only tightening with the development of the Student Life Initiative.
Cupoli said Florida does have a clause regarding hate speech, but Delta Tau Delta fraternity was not found to be in violation of it.
A Greek organization which fails to comply with broad ethical principles may not warrant College recognition, which "allows certain privileges," according to Redman.
"We don't have something that legislates against stupid behavior -- we do have principles and peer pressure," Redman added. "The principle of community is not an adjudicable issue; you cannot be found guilty of these things."
Campus-wide marches and forums are the general reaction to offensively-themed parties; rallies and protests were held at Dartmouth in the wake of the 1998 Ghetto Party.
At Florida, a march against hate was held, and Asian and Asian-American students met with members of the fraternity which hosted the Mekong Delta party.
Cupoli emphasized, however, that the march was held mostly in reaction to a graffiti scrawl across the university's Hispanic center reading "No Spics for President," in response to a Hispanic candidate running for student body president.
The proximity of the party to the incident was likely the impetus for the march, Cupoli noted.
No disciplinary action is planned for Delta Tau Delta fraternity, she said.
Students at Florida are designing a coalition for minority students, she said, who make up 23 percent of the university's population, according to The Princeton Review.
Opinion-editorials in the pages of The Dartmouth have lamented the numbers of committees and coalitions that exist to solve racial and ethnic issues on campus.
Cupoli concurred with those students, noting Dartmouth is not the only college where that reaction is likely.
"My guess is several months from now, if there's no follow-up, that kind of resentment will occur," she said.
A good rule of thumb to avoid parties with offensive themes, Redman suggests, is to refer back to the Biblical adage to 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'
"It seems to me that's a pretty good litmus test," Redman said. "If you even have to ask whether something's inappropriate, it seems like you're already going down a dangerous route."
