On a warm, bright day in April, 1987, Dartmouth awoke to news that one of the College's fraternities was in trouble.
Already on social probation for alcohol violations, Zeta Psi fraternity, The Dartmouth reported, was under investigation for a newsletter distributed at meetings that depicted the alleged sexual exploits of a house member.
The publication showed a personified hog asking to be sexually abused by a member of the fraternity. "The newsletter shows a woman being raped and acting as if she wanted to be raped," a woman who had seen the publication told The Dartmouth.
A College investigation was launched, top administrators made statements deploring the newsletter, opinions raged in the opinion pages of The Dartmouth and the fraternity's porch was littered one night with tampons covered with mock blood.
Less than a week after the initial revelations, the College announced that Zeta Psi would face a year of derecognition.
If the incident seems to have contemporary resonance, it should. Earlier this week, 'sex papers' published by Zeta Psi became public and a College investigation into the house began in earnest.
The current president of Zeta Psi, Gene Boyle '02, said he had no knowledge of the 1987 case. "I wasn't even seven years old," he said in an BlitzMail message.But others in the fraternity say there is some institutional knowledge about the problems the newsletter has caused. "When the bequest is handed down, the trouble it brought upon the fraternity was mentioned," Alex Nazaryan '02 said.
As people close to the investigation continue to affirm the possibility that Zeta Psi might be permanently derecognized, the 1987 case could help indicate how the administration will respond to the current allegations. It establishes, in an explicit fashion, a College precedent for derecognizing houses that publish sexually offensive newsletters.
And for those students who claim that the sexist newsletters have an institutionalized role in the fraternity, the case could similarly prove their point.
"I haven't gotten to that piece of the investigation yet in the process. That piece of information that something else has happened in the past I'm aware of," Assistant Dean of Residential Life Cassie Barnhardt said.
"If there's a pattern of behavior that is determined to be consistent over time, it will definitely be considered in the investigation. If it's 1987, and it was solved, and 15 years later something similar was repeated, that's a very different situation," she added.
Following the announcement of Zeta Psi's yearlong derecognition, the entire fraternity wrote a letter to the editor of The Dartmouth, promising to shape up. "We, the brothers of Zeta Psi fraternity, offer our unqualified apology to the College community for the recent incident involving our newsletter," the letter said.
"Zeta Psi is taking steps to ensure that the attitudes and behavior which led to the writing of the newsletter are eliminated from the house," it continued.
The fraternity stopped publishing the newsletter for at least three years, according to a member who graduated in the Class of 1990 and was a pledge at the time of the controversy.
"After that happened, I didn't see it anymore. I thought the tradition was eliminated the minute we got derecognized," the member, who requested anonymity, said. "We realized how stupid our behavior was, and how many corrections we needed to take."
But unlike the later derecognition of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, which was abolished after the College unearthed a series of rules violations, members of Zeta Psi in 1987 were allowed to continue living in the house. They just weren't allowed to host social events or provide alcohol.
In 1996, a chain of events involving Beta Theta Pi set a precedent for College reaction to sexist and racist behavior in the Greek system. A year earlier, a member of the fraternity had read an allegedly racist poem that targeted Native Americans at a house meeting. Though administrators publicly deplored the poem, they filed only social sanctions against the fraternity, citing the poem as well as a series of confirmed violent acts.
But after Beta Theta Pi was found to have violated those social sanctions, the administration moved to permanently derecognize -- thereby eliminating -- the fraternity. That was the only time that such a move was taken, though last year Phi Delta Alpha fraternity had its recognition suspended for at least two years.
At the time of Zeta Psi's 1987 newsletter controversy, the administration warned that such newsletters would not be tolerated at the College.
"The College is giving a clear statement to Zeta Psi that their newsletter is an unacceptable part of the community as are all newsletters like it," Assistant Dean of Residential Life David Sloane said.
"This is more than pure penalty," Sloan said.
"We are asking Zeta Psi to look at itself, examine its goals and purposes as a Dartmouth organization, and re-emerge as a stronger organization," Sloan added.
