In a rough draft of its report to the College,
the Greek Life Steering Committee proposed, among other things, that a minimum GPA of 2.3 be required of any student who wishes to rush a Coed Fraternity Sorority Council House.
While I sympathize with the idea that membership in a Greek house is a privilege and not a right, I believe that it should be a privilege contingent on behavior and not academic performance. I am wary of College policies that allow the administration to play Mommy and Daddy to students, thus saying that we are incapable of looking after ourselves. When my mother went to college, she had a curfew. Attendance was taken, all the women in the dorm were accounted for, and male visitors were banished. The College acted in loco parentis, and women were treated like girls at summer camp. If our administrators dictate the minimum GPA for students in fraternities and sororities, what else can they dictate? Who can have sex? Who can live off campus? I can't go to a party until I clean my room? I can't watch television until I eat my vegetables? While this sounds extreme, it is in some respects a logical extension of Greek eligibility rules.
We are all at this school in part to take advantage of the academic opportunities it offers. Yet it is our individual circumstances -- learning disabilities, classes with widely varying median grades, students with poor test-taking skills, students who are depressed or chronically ill -- which make each of us unique, and have taught us (perhaps falsely) that our grade point average does not define us. While I know some students who seek out "guts" or easy courses to keep their grade point average high, I know many more who are willing to take intellectual risks by enrolling in classes that challenge and interest them. The more emphasis Dartmouth places on a student's GPA, the more it devalues learning as adventure, as journey, as experiment. When a student drops Organic Chemistry in favor of Rocks for Jocks to increase his chances of graduating Phi Beta Kappa, when a student shies away from upper-level courses in Religion or Psychology fearing that her lack of experience in the subject might hurt her come midterms, something important is lost. To see the College as an institution contribute to that loss, condone that prioritizing of final result over process, is tragic. A minimum GPA to write an honors thesis? Understandable, if extenuating circumstances are also considered. But a minimum GPA in order to rush a Greek house seems, to me, counter-productive and elitist.
If we are attempting to address the problem of scholarship among Greek members, we need to do so from the inside. Each organization should call upon the strength that lies in sisterhood and brotherhood and the support inherent in the sub-community it creates, to further the emphasis on scholarship and provide resources for members who are struggling and for those who already excel. Most Greek members are familiar with the ways in which their organization can support them emotionally, physically, ideologically. We often speak of the way our chapter has led us to speak out, to serve the community, to be ourselves, to feel connected. We take for granted, in fact we abuse, this power when we allow only the already well-adjusted students to take part. Like all of my extra-curricular activities, my sorority has introduced me to people who encourage, inspire, and teach me. I am thankful that each of them is different, that the group cannot be summed up in a few adjectives. Should this environment be withheld from a student who has yet to find her or his own base of support? Should students whose talents vary from the prescribed, who have differences to offer, be withheld from those of us who make the cut?
A minimum GPA of 2.3 only perpetuates the exclusivity of the current Greek system, rendering it elitist in so many more ways than some argue it already is. Allowing the administration to play the role of parents, giving and withholding rewards, punishes both those who are not allowed to rush, and those who are, because it forces Greek houses to become more homogenous. While academic performance is the responsibility of each individual student, encouraging Greek houses to provide more guidance for those who struggle enables us to strengthen the support system within each house, and address the problem constructively in lieu of labeling and dismissing the student as "not good enough."
