To the Editor:
As Kinohi Nishikawa wrote in his April 19th editorial (The Dartmouth, "The Culture of Denial"), "we all know -- more or less -- what goes on in frats even though we hate to admit it." To put it another way, we have never been innocent of "witnessing" and/or experiencing the exploitation of freshman women, the groping of body parts on the dance floor, the "morning after" walk home.
I would like to address this silence, this complicity of which we are all -- students, alumni, faculty, and administrators -- guilty. Whether through participation in rush and in weekly meetings, through the casual and noncommittal attendance of fraternity and sorority parties, through Monday morning gossip, or through the blind defense of "tradition," we have all aided in the perpetuation of the Greek system, in the preservation of misogynistic and racist attitudes.
What are the things we know but refuse to say? What hypocrisies are we hiding behind the brick faades of Greek houses? With what traditions are we so unwilling to part that we would rather suffer in moral discomfort than speak in defense of our friends and colleagues?
Is it a coincidence that men and women of similar socioeconomic, ethnic and religious backgrounds gain membership each year to particular houses? Does this represent the "choice" of the individual or the "exclusion" of the group? What structures are in place at Dartmouth that necessitate this fracturing into exclusive comfort zones? Current Dartmouth students as well as recent graduates know perfectly well that, aside from a few "token" exceptions, each house draws its members from already closed groups (for example, sports teams) and that membership requires a certain allegiance to a collective identity. This "we" creates a "them." The "inside" creates an "outside," and the frat basement becomes a safe space for the festering of racial and gender myths and for the degradation of a male/female, gay/lesbian, black/white Other.
Why don't we admit a few things to ourselves and to each other? The Zeta Psi fraternity "sex papers" are probably not the only documents of their kind circulating on Frat Row, and the conditions and system of beliefs that have enabled their publication are still at work in our relations with each other. The type of "humor" (as some "brothers" have termed it) intended in slogans such as "bros before hos," in the distribution of "Dartmouth Indian" t-shirts, and in parties that mock the cultures of other Dartmouth students, carries with it a set of "good ol' boy" assumptions that is not at all funny.
That groups of men gather weekly to participate in a ritualized objectification of women, that "brothers" and "sisters" degrade their prospective members psychologically and sexually, that some members of Dartmouth's gay community feel obligated to suppress their sexual orientation, that some alumni and students condemn the efforts of professors to expose the flaws in the Greek system, and that Dartmouth simply is not the progressive environment that it thinks it is should be reason enough for the abolishment of the Greek system. Each time that we sing or think, "lest old traditions fail," let's not forget which anachronisms we are tacitly condoning.
To the '03s and '04s: you will be on campus for the next few years, and if you continue to fight for a real dialogue, a real openness, you might achieve that "Dartmouth community," about which you read in your application packets. There is no "status quo" that you should feel obligated to accept or propagate. Realize, before you graduate, that your time at Dartmouth is a continuum, that you are part of a larger, political picture, that your efforts could improve the quality of life of future Dartmouth students.
