Add to the increasingly daunting laundry list of my personal shortcomings and character flaws a horrible sense of timing. It's been nearly a month since Katie Greenwood's guest column in these pages (The Dartmouth, Jan. 30, "System Failure") once again shed light on the exclusivity of the Greek system and sparked the predictable smattering of letters to the editor that pass for discourse at this school. But, Dartmouth being Dartmouth, controversies -- no matter how large in scale or atrocious in nature -- tend to have a pretty short shelf life in the collective consciousness of our seemingly A.D.D.-riddled student body. So, by waiting this long to add my voice to the din, perhaps I'm doing nothing more than flogging an already rigor mortis-ed horse. But, in addition to extreme laziness, there's another reason why I've hesitated to tackle this issue. I was hoping I wouldn't have to. I was hoping somebody else would say what I'm about to.
Not too long ago, my fraternity house was set on fire. While not much good can come out of something like that, it does make for a rather apt metaphor (if I do say so myself) for the Greek system in general. Greek life at Dartmouth today is a lot like a burning house: get what you can out of it while it's still standing. If that means lifelong friends -- great. If that means memories you'll cherish for eternity, fantastic. If that means as much cheap beer as your liver can stomach; well, there's something to be said for that, too. But understand that the Greek system, in its wounded, post-Student Life Initiative condition, cannot and will not be all things for all people. But what it should never be is a faceless, Orwellian institution that wipes clear individuality for the sake of providing a shelter that one can cower behind when he or she screws up (which happens at least once a term).
This is neither a spiteful diatribe against a system that let me down or excluded me, nor is it a blind, heartfelt defense of that system, ignoring or trivializing its glaring flaws. This is my current opinion (and my stance on the Greek system reinvents itself more often than Madonna). It is a critique of certain aspects of Greek life that I've experienced first-hand, as someone on the inside.
Maybe it's the way the Greek system is structured. When you enter into an organization as a "pledge," you give up a certain part of your individuality for the sake of becoming part of a group. To join the choir, you have to give up a bit of your own voice, and, ideally, the end result is melodious -- but far too often it seems as though the Greek system is less of a choir and more of an incubator for a type of highly contagious aphasia. Dissenting opinions get drowned out. For whatever reasons, people become afraid of being individuals because it might somehow lessen their status as part of the group. The process is not entirely unlike the significantly less mild brainwashing that you hear about (or don't hear about, if it was effective) from people who have gone through basic training in the Army. If I were to compare initiating pledges into a fraternity with the process of "breaking slaves" as described by people like Frederick Douglass, I would be crossing a line that need not be crossed. But would I be entirely wrong? Can't parallels be drawn, perhaps by people braver than I?
I'm in no way saying I'm above all of this. I'm in it up to my elbows. When our less-than-Whitmanesque barbaric yawps are sounded up and down Webster Avenue on Wednesday nights, I'm right in there, mired in the basement muck of the old boys' club, acting out whatever crude, often misogynistic, borderline homoerotic (hey, I'm as loath to admit it as the next guy, but c'mon) primalistic urges like the frat boy I am.
Agree with me or disagree with me. Love me or hate me. Affiliate with me or don't. In the end, it doesn't make a whole lot of difference. I'll still be me and you'll still be you. What we'll always have in common is the fact that we're flawed, imperfect people trying to scratch out an existence in a flawed, imperfect world. And I'd like to think that, though we might differ in outlook, approach and opinion, deep down we're all trying to do the best we can with what we've got.
Am I a hypocrite for being aware of these problems on a conscious level and still not doing anything about them? Have I fallen prey to the same insidious forces I'm attempting to criticize? People, even people I call my "brothers," will pose the very valid question: if things are really as bad as I make them out to be, why don't I just leave? Just as the Greek system is allowed to be exclusive when it determines who it lets in, don't I have the option to be equally exclusive when determining whom I associate with? I could walk away. De-pledge. It'd be the easiest thing in the world; all I'd have to do is just let go. Hell, I know a bunch of people who probably wish I would. But I'm not going to. Because that wouldn't solve anything. It wouldn't change who I am and it wouldn't change "the system." We're flawed as individuals, and we're flawed as a collective system, and those are the cards we were dealt; I just wish we could play a better hand.
To steal a line from my favorite bitter, depressed college kid (Hamlet): "If, in writing this, I have shot mine arrow over the house and hurt my brothers, so be it." If that's the price of progress, it will be well worth it.
