An Office of Residential Life document ranking the average grade point averages of the Greek organizations showed that, overall, sororities boasted a slightly higher academic record than coed organizations, and both had a higher average GPA than fraternities over Fall term. Greek affiliated students, with an average GPA of 3.33, did better than unaffiliated students, who averaged 3.26.
The academic information for each house is released to specific individuals affiliated with each Greek house each term, despite the concerns of some that circulating such information is unethical. It is technically confidential, but Coed Fraternity and Sorority Administration Assistant Director Megan Johnson acknowledged that she understood the information would likely become public.
"Once you give anything to anyone it's public information," Johnson said. "I don't think that it is necessarily a horrible thing, but I question, how is that campus news?"
Director of Student Activities Linda Kennedy, Gamma Delta Chi fraternity's house advisor, expressed her concerns with the current policy, which she believes sacrifices student privacy. Once concern of Kennedy's is that the information propagates stereotypes, although she would not comment about specific stereotypes she was concerned about, or how public release of average GPAs would affect perceptions of any Greek organizations.
"I think that grades are something that you consider to be confidential," Kennedy said. "I think that we have plenty of stereotyping about ... different organizations that go on at Dartmouth that we don't need to add to that."
Johnson agreed that the concern about stereotyping was valid, but said that after serious consideration, ORL decided that positive aspects of releasing the information outweigh this concern.
"For some this is a reinforcing factor [as far as stereotyping], for others it's a 'hey, we need to step it up,' type of thing," she said.
Kennedy also expressed concern for the anonymity of members in smaller organizations. The data on Lambda Upsilon Lambda fraternity and Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, the two ethnically affiliated fraternities, were comprised of the GPAs of only three and four members, respectively. LUL and Alpha Phi Alpha had the lowest mean GPAs of any Greek house.
Kennedy said that the circulation of the average GPA for a house with small membership is "too transparent" as far as individual GPAs and noted that if the GPAs of three people from any larger organization were to be averaged, the result would likely be very different from the total house average GPA.
"Statistically, it's a nightmare," Kennedy said.
Jose Ojeda '07, president of LUL, said he saw the publication of GPAs of smaller organizations as validation within the community.
"I remember times when GPAs of houses with just one or two members have been published. It can be argued that it is not fair. As a statistic of comparison, it seems kind of silly, but at least these smaller houses are actually getting recognized as equal members of this campus community, despite their numbers," he wrote in an e-mail.
However, Ojeda said he did not believe the GPA averages should be made public at all.
"We as a house do not appreciate our personal information, in this case our GPA averages, being disclosed without our permission," Ojeda said. "However, this has nothing to do with the number of individuals in our organization -- be it three or 100. Nor does it have to do with our 'ranking' amongst other houses on campus. This has to do with personal respect that should be shown to all students and the ability for students to choose who and who not to have their information disclosed to."
Kennedy suggested informing organizations of the house's own average and ranking compared to other houses, and offering the GPAs of other organizations without their names attached.
"While I think it's interesting for houses to know where they stand among all the others and compared to Dartmouth students as a whole, I don't think it's anybody's business what the rankings are, and there are ways to provide the information on how your house is doing compared to everybody else without disclosing the names of the other houses," Kennedy said.
