To the Editor,
In his recent article on COSO, John Stevenson delivered a slight to all of the good people living in the United States south of the Mason-Dixon line and East of the Mississippi when he stated the Southern Society aimed to pull off the "greatest feat of all; finding Southern culture."
This sort of statement would have produced an uproar, had it been levelled at the Afro-American Society, La Allianza Latina, or the Native Americans at Dartmouth.
Though he might have simply been insulting his perception of Southern art, music, and food as a sarcastic reflex action or for some humor, Stevenson illustrates the occasional double-standard involved with cultural-identity groups (WE are entitled to one, THEY are not) and the common assumption that "the majority" is somehow one big bland mass indestinct from one area of the country to another.
Whether or not the Southern Society sincerely feels perpetual "otherness" at Dartmouth or not, perhaps the bigger picture is that these groups focus on the differences between various subsets of our student body, instead of beinng centered on the common characteristics that make us the great College that we are.
My fear is that despite their aim to foster and direct the interest of students, to their betterment and education, in all of the multitude of cultures here at Dartmouth, these groups decay into de facto exclusionary membership based on culture or race and worse, Balkanize our campus--those not historically or commonly accepted to be "othered" or different need not apply.
In any event, as a person who considers himself mostly a New Englander, the few times I have been to the American South, I daresay their culture was recognizably variant from mine and an even greater contrast to Hanover. I think in face of common stereotypes of hillbillies, rednecks, and worse the unconscious bias against almost all of the Southern accents, perhaps the Southern Society can indeed educate the Dartmouth Community on their rich culture and varied history.
