Claire Unis '95 grew up feeling comfortable in coed situations. Even now, as a busy doctor completing her residency, she lives with two male roommates. While at Dartmouth, however, she said a Greek-dominated social scene, with its emphasis on brotherhood and sisterhood, struck her as unnatural and stifling, instead of liberating.
As an undergraduate, Unis was the editor of Spare Rib, a women's and gender issues publication. She was also known as a Sigma Delta sister who depledged her sorority, and with some other idealistic and energetic students, helped found the undergraduate society Amarna as a "mainstream social alternative to the Greek system."
Yet Unis never considered herself an opponent of the Greek system and said she disapproves of the kind of "engineered social programming" that Dartmouth has instituted under the Student Life Initiative.
"Even when I was at Dartmouth, there were Collis parties that no one went to," she said, laughing. "And it wasn't really because there was no alcohol -- it was because the initiative for social life needs to come from the students."
That was the beauty of Amarna, she said. While Unis had nothing but praise for the support the administration gave to her and the other founders, she stressed that Amarna was a place where people could express their individuality, instead of feeling pressured to conform to some fixed notion of what social interactions should be like.
While Unis was at Dartmouth in the early 1990s, the role of the Greek system was a matter of almost as much debate as it is now, nearly 10 years later. Although she did de-pledge Sigma Delt, Unis never considered herself an opponent of the Greek system nor did she see herself as a visionary who would change the social culture of Dartmouth by establishing Amarna.
"We set up Amarna for people who felt somehow unfulfilled by the existing social options. We didn't consider ourselves an affront to the Greek system. We considered ourselves something different -- an addition to the Greek system."
By the time she established Amarna, however, in 1994, Unis had decided that she did not want to be part of the Greek system. She had originally gone through rush because she was reluctant to pass judgement on the system until she "knew what it was all about." Unis decided to pledge Sigma Delt because the house affiliated itself closely with the Women's Resource Center in its programming and in fact referred to itself as a feminist house. Additionally, one of her mentors, a co-editor of Spare Rib, was a senior sister there.
As time passed, though, she became increasingly disillusioned with several aspects of being in a sorority: the superficiality of the rush selection process, the house's group-centered mentality and the fact that "sororities didn't set their own agenda. They took all their cues from the frats."
Unis, her voice a bit pained, described an incident in which a male friend visiting from Princeton was turned away at the door of a fraternity party that Sigma Delt was co-sponsoring.
"I don't know whether it's relevant that he's African-American or that he was from another school -- regardless, my house didn't stand behind me, and there was nothing I could say or do to make it better," she said.
When she left Sigma Delt, the house president told her the house would be sad to lose the editor of Spare Rib.
"It was not 'oh we're sad to lose you, Claire, we'll miss you so much,' it was 'well now we will have one less prominent person in our sorority,'" she said.
Amarna gave her Unis an opportunity to make her voice heard.
"What was so exciting about Amarna was that we were seeking to create situations that didn't make you lose your originality," she said. She described the lively weekly meetings and Monday night dinners with professors where members debated and "people's personalities really showed through."
The success of Amarna lay in the culture it created, she said -- the house celebrated individuality while remaining ever-conscious of operating within the mainstream of the Dartmouth social sphere.
The house's early parties were popular and represented a diverse cross-segment of the student population, Unis said, something she took as evidence that men and women from very different social spheres could in fact come together in a single place, as long as the atmosphere was right.
Whether the effect has been as enduring as Unis hoped is ambiguous. Her other great contribution to the school, Spare Rib, has since faded into memory. And the Greek system to which Unis sought to create an alternative remains, something that does not surprise her.
"The Greek system is a culture and a big part of Dartmouth, and it's not going to go away with Collis programming," she said. "I think that for the College to meet the goals of the Student Life Initiative there needs to be a culture of meaningful coeducational experiences outside of the classroom and a culture of accepting and embracing the differences that people bring. For me, Amarna realized those goals."
