To the Editor:
On the night of April 18th, I stood out on the lawn of Zeta Psi fraternity and sat there wondering why I felt as if I'd stood there once before. I looked back on four years of being pissed off and realized that things hadn't really progressed too much. Once a term a fraternity, college magazine, or some other entity does something so offensive that a whole group of people get together and have a big protest. Usually the only other people who show up besides the offenders and the offended group are the representatives a conservative newspaper on campus, and they try desperately to hurt the offended even more in the hopes of getting some attention. The offenders host a panel discussion, perhaps a workshop, and issue an apology letter, thereby absolving themselves. We get them to say sorry for all the bad things they've done and they go on with their lives never really realizing why what they said or did was wrong. The results? Two years later they only remember that the ghetto party was "a bad idea," but don't understand why it's inappropriate to use the term ghetto. Two months later people don't understand how a couple of drunk guys yelling "wah hoo wah" and "scalp'em" was threatening to the young woman walking by. And two weeks from now the only thing people will say is "well, why was someone digging through their dumpster?"
So when I read the headlines in The Dartmouth, I was more shocked that it was Zeta Psi than that it actually happened. The following day people were saying, "but all the Zeta Psi guys I know are nice." I myself only know a few and they seem like nice guys, but so are some of the guys that I know in every other fraternity. But what does that fact have to do with anything? This situation is not about individuals -- to be honest it isn't even really about frats. What it is about is a campus that fosters an environment which makes these things acceptable and deems people who complain to be "over sensitive" at best. It's about a campus where people still feel like they aren't safe at Dartmouth, a campus where someone felt comfortable enough to make a newsletter poking fun at date rape because, even if it was a "sick joke," he knew his friends would laugh at it before they tore it up.
The truth is that night when those two nice guys came out and tried to answer a large crowd of angry women and men, I couldn't help but feel a little bit depressed. Part of me wanted to rip those guys to shreds like so many other people there, but part of me understood that the problem is bigger than those two guys. It's bigger than Zeta Psi. It's bigger than the Greek system. It's easy to see how the Greek system is involved in everything, but it's not so easy for us to admit that misogyny and sexism is also present everywhere from the men's locker room to the classroom. The problem exists in so many areas and communities within Dartmouth.
An atmosphere of male supremacy and aggression toward women doesn't start in fraternity basements. It starts when we step on campus and get a series of lectures on plagiarism and then find out that it's an offense more punishable than rape. It starts in the classroom with the low number of tenured women professors. It starts with the limited funding of the Women's Studies department. It starts with the hamster tunnel where the Women's Resource Center is hidden away. It is expressed in so many ways and in so many areas of daily Dartmouth life that we rarely stop to question it.
And the issue is not just a gender one -- it's a race issue, a class issue. It's a sexuality issue. It's a religion issue. It's an apathy issue. It's a status quo issue. It's an action versus reaction issue.
I want to know when Dartmouth is going to stop talking and start acting? This institution and its administration must lead by example. They must show the student body that they believe in change and that these changes mean something more than yet another committee or a proposal tucked away on someone's shelf. Dartmouth must follow through on its commitment. These changes might mean that the Dartmouth "as we know it" won't be here five years from now. However, if we are to make Dartmouth better than we found it, then it shouldn't be.
