Just as sure as it brings gusts of wind so cold you think you'll pass out, winter in Hanover brings with it a new crop of fresh-faced sophomores who will literally be passing out in pools of their own bodily fluids as pledge term progresses. Unconcerned with the adverse health effects of having intoxicated students fall asleep in snowbanks or even perfectly sober women prance around in barely-there dresses from sorority to sorority in single-digit temperatures, the College continues with winter rush, and, much to its chagrin I'm sure, rush continues unfazed. Indeed, this was a successful rush term for fraternities, sororities and coed houses alike, and the numbers will probably only get better when the rest of the '05s return for mud season in the spring.
So is that all there is to a successful rush? Numbers? According to Sigma Phi Epsilon president Pat Granfield '03, who was quoted in The Dartmouth on Jan. 17, "There are differences between quality and quantity." So, essentially, the superiority of the men joining Sig Ep this term makes up for the relatively low rush turnout.
Well said, Pat. By explicitly identifying an overall level of "quality" as a personal characteristic Greek members can objectively assess, Granfield succinctly summarizes why so many people oppose the Greek system. I'm personally a Greek supporter and a member of a fraternity, but, as often happens on this campus, attempts to defend the system by listing its benefits are quickly silenced, often by Greek members themselves, by comments such as these that bring to the forefront many of its problems.
Let's get a couple things straight. First of all, there is no such thing as quality when you're describing a human being. Nobody has some inherent characteristic making them superior to anyone else -- everybody is human, plain and simple. People do have different personalities that make them better fits in certain social settings, and this is probably what Granfield meant. However, as long as comments are made describing rushees according to their character, how "solid" they are, or whatever metaphor for personal quality you might use, we are implicitly making judgments about that person as a human being. It reflects poorly on the Greek system that decisions are made using this sort of terminology, reinforcing the stereotypes; what's worse, it becomes an ingrained part of the Greek mentality to judge a person based on some brief superficial interaction and immediately extrapolate some objective level of quality from it.
Secondly, even supposing every individual did have some distinct level of quality, the idea that it could be assessed accurately given the amount of exposure a particular house has to that individual during the rush process is absurd. Rush itself is a notoriously absurd process. No one likes it. The only thing that I can be thankful for with respect to it is that I'm not a girl, so I didn't have to waste an entire week engaged in a hundred different superficial conversations with strangers; men only need waste a couple hours on a couple of nights. Additionally, fraternities, as the true host to social life, have more opportunities to become familiar with recurring guests than do sororities, so at least there is the potential for a fit to be made ahead of time. Nevertheless, the process of rush itself is by no means capable of illuminating the intrinsic quality one person holds; since many rushees are first introduced to a particular house during rush, there is little to no chance that many of the members of a house will know anything about that person, let alone enough to be able to make a judgment about his or her "quality."
Amazingly, after all the superficiality and absurdity of the rush process, decisions made during rush usually end up working out. When you join a house you are largely deciding the fate of your social life for the remainder of your time at Dartmouth, and the fact that the Greek system remains so popular is a testament to the fact that, in some mysterious way, it succeeds.
That is to say, it works for the people who join. Meanwhile, the decisions of those who do not join are only reinforced by the (correct) belief that the process of joining is superficial. The Greek system is not exclusive except by self-selection; minorities have just as strong a chance of receiving a bid as anyone else, and fraternities, in spite of a growing list of increasingly oppressive regulations, keep their doors open for parties. However, self-selection out of rush happens largely because of perceptions of exclusivity, perceptions for which the Greek system itself can be held accountable through comments such as Granfield's. Who would expect a minority student, already feeling marginalized by social norms, to feel comfortable rushing a house when the rush process itself is characterized by the president of one of Dartmouth's biggest fraternities as being based on someone's innate "quality" as measured by a bunch of strangers?
As a member of a fraternity, I know that one of the biggest frustrations within the Greek system is the label of exclusivity; houses often blame minorities for not rushing rather than themselves for not making them feel welcome. And I do believe that the Greek system is inclusive. But, if it ever wants to overcome the perceptions that plague it, Greeks will have to stop shooting themselves in the feet by continually reinforcing them, and, in doing so, internalizing them.
