To the Editor:
I could not help but notice the omission of Alpha Phi Alpha, Lambda Upsilon Lambda and Alpha Pi Omega from the front page chart of CFS GPA rankings ("Greek GPAs fall just short of College average," Feb. 2). For those unfamiliar with these Greek names, APA is the only national black fraternity at Dartmouth, and the other two are members of the Latino Fraternal Organization. APA's fall-term GPA is mentioned later in the article (2.51) while the other two are not mentioned at all. Upon further investigation, I found the Latino Fraternal GPA's were 3.17 (APO) and 3.19 (LUL).
While I am guessing that The Dartmouth's nominal reason for omitting these GPAs was because of a dearth of members, (each reports less than ten individuals in their total) I point to a possible underlying motive for omission that is damaging to these minority groups. What about these organizations' GPAs makes them unfit for prominent placement on the front page? Furthermore, why are the three minority organizations the only ones that are not included in the comprehensive list? Is it really because the sample size for these organizations is too small? If you were to choose randomly five to eight individual GPAs out of another organization's total, the probability is that this mean would approximate the total mean for the organization.
On the contrary, I believe it is because The D felt that emblazoning these GPAs on the cover would be embarrassing to these organizations (in particular, APA) and thought a favor was being done to them through omission. In arriving at this conclusion, I asked myself a few hypothetical questions. If APA and others had a larger membership and the same GPA, would they have been published? Yes, there would have been no excuse not to. If APA or these others achieved a 3.8 and led the rankings with the same small membership, would it have been printed on the front page? Yes, I believe so -- it speaks to minority achievement.
The fact that these three organizations had low membership was just a convenient way to leave them all off the chart, and brush them under the table. However, leaving these three organizations off the chart marginalizes them and their members. It says, "If I were you, I would be embarrassed to be at the bottom. You should not be held responsible and furthermore, no one has to know about this." In reality, there is no reason for these organizations to be embarrassed and furthermore, it is not The D's job to make this decision. For someone glancing at the cover and seeing GDX's and TDX's GPAs as the lowest, it would have likely caused a chuckle as we all know the common stereotype: "drunk athletes don't know how to hit the books." But the stereotype common to APA would be too difficult for most to swallow. I see this omission as an even more dangerous racial comment than to admit a shortcoming and address it. It is a slight to minorities at Dartmouth, particularly to those in the aforementioned CFS organizations.
