This is not a letter of equality, this is a continuation of the battle of the sexes. It is an article pointing out the complete lack of support that men receive on campus. My writing stems from a poster I ripped off the wall on the third floor of Collis, entitled "10 Things Men Can Do to Prevent Gender Violence." It details 10 things that men can do to help women on campus, including (point 10) "Try hard to understand how your own attitudes and actions might inadvertently perpetuate sexism and violence," or, my personal favorite, (point one) "View men not only as perpetrators or possible offenders, but as empowered bystanders who can confront abusive peers."
In four years at Dartmouth I have not seen a single poster or advertisement intended to help straight men at Dartmouth deal with their issues. Look in The Dartmouth, on the walls or at the College website. The paper will mention men mostly in the sports pages, posters will detail the sexual assault rates on campus against women and offer to help them, and the website describes groups like the Sexual Abuse Peer Advisors, Eating Disorder Peer Advisors and Mentors Against Violence -- all programs designed to help women at Dartmouth. This is all important stuff, but where is the representation for the other half of our campus?
I investigated, starting with the poster's eighth point: "Attend programs, take courses about multicultural masculinities." In six terms of classes listed online among the departments of sociology, psychology, English and women's and gender studies, I found only four classes with titles which might be construed to be about men. One was a freshman seminar, and one was on men in the colonial era. The only class completely directed towards men, with a focus on learning about men's issues, was Professor Peter Travis' "The Masculine Mystique." As suggested by its title, the course explores the modern-day problems facing men.
In an interview with Travis, he pointed to the problems facing men at Dartmouth. Addressing the claim that Dartmouth is already a male institution, Travis pointed out that this limited perspective does not apply to all men on campus. Consider the differences among the hard-fighting tough guy John Wayne, the sophisticated James Bond, the lost wanderer of Jack Keroauc's The Open Road or the tortured writer Ernest Hemingway. Each is a renowned man from the past, and each embodies a different type of masculinity. Yet, belying the stereotype, Dartmouth does nothing significant to help its students explore these differences in masculinity. As Travis said, "I do not laugh scornfully at men saying they feel disempowered, marginalized. They feel they're not heard. Because that's the way they do feel." Consider your male friends. How many of them have ever felt depressed? Then, take a moment to consider their options to get help.
Finding an open forum to talk about being a straight male at Dartmouth is nearly impossible. The Office of Pluralism and Leadership offers a few two-hour seminars each year on male attitudes; ironically, the suspended Men's Project was mostly designed to help women; Travis' class is only offered every four years and will be capped at 35 people; our psychiatrists are overbooked and UGAs are not trained for such a level of difficulty. In fact, the only institutions on campus which exist for the sole purpose of doing something for men are the fraternities, which are under constant attack from the administration and various other groups.
Lacking any attention or structure from the administration, the message that comes through to the men of Dartmouth is that they need to suck it up and deal with it; the same message that men have received for centuries.
To give the administration the benefit of the doubt, I interviewed Professor Judith Byfield, the head of the women's and gender studies program, and Dean of the College James Larimore. Both seemed generally concerned, and interested in pursuing men's support. However, neither could point to current projects. Byfield noted that there was clearly an interest because of the great attendance in Travis' class, and assured me that "a good part of [the women's and gender studies department's] last discussion was about integrating more about masculinity into the core courses." Additionally, Larimore said it was a great idea and one worth looking into, but he had heard about nothing in the works.
The biggest discovery that I made was that a sociologist named Michael Kimmel from New York has applied for a job at Dartmouth twice. He has been rejected twice. Kimmel has written 10 books on the subject of masculinity, many of them on modern day issues, and one of which Larimore has been reading in preparation for raising his sons. The women's and gender studies program lobbied hard for Kimmel's acceptance. Byfield even described his work as "a field that is developing." Kimmel is a well-published professor, in an area of study that has an obvious interest at Dartmouth, in a space where there exists no alternative, and he was denied a job. Throughout my four years, Dartmouth has ignored the problems facing men on campus -- 50 percent of the population -- assuming that they will take care of them on their own.
The solution lies in creating a structure. The Men's Project needs to be rebuilt as something designed to help men. There need to be more courses offered on the subject of the modern-day male, and there needs to be a program which spans several terms with the sole priority of helping men understand themselves and what they want.
Professor Travis told me a story about a banquet celebrating the 25th year of coeducation at Dartmouth. At the dinner, when a woman was asked if she would send her daughter to Dartmouth, she said that she would because women from Dartmouth turned out "strong and independent-minded." On the other hand, Travis made clear that men go "around trying to keep together, trying to sustain a sense of significance." In a patriarchal school, there is no support for men to become who they want. Every male freshman who enters embarks on his own series of trial and error, trying to find his own way, emphasized by a school who tells them to "do it yourself."
