Winter Carnival of 1999 was
marked by a march on College
President James Wright's house
and the coordinated cancellation of
21 Greek-system parties, as roughly
1,000 stunned students protested the
Board of Trustees' and Wright's proposed
Student Life Initiative, which
Wright had said would likely end the
Greek system "as we know it." The
SLI, announced Feb. 16, 1999, was
drafted to expand Dartmouth's social
options and make the College's social
scene more inclusive, according to
Wright, although many understood
the initiative to be an attack on the
much-loved fraternity and sorority
system.
Described in The Dartmouth at
the time as "the most significant
change at Dartmouth College since
coeducation," the SLI established five
guiding principles, aimed at creating a
new social system "that's not built on
single-sex houses." A poll conducted
by The Dartmouth via e-mail found
that 83 percent of students favored
continuing the current Greek system
and numerous opinion articles
expressing student outrage were
printed in The Dartmouth.
The SLI was not a bid to end the
Greek system, Wright said in a recent
interview with The Dartmouth, but
rather an attempt to create a greater
sense of community outside of the
classroom, make Dartmouth's social
scene more coeducational and inclusive,
and address issues of alcohol
abuse on campus. He attributed the
outcry to a failure of communication
on the administration's part.
"I think that it was defined coming
out, again because of our stumbling,
as kind of an anti-Greek initiative, and
certainly it was meant to challenge
the Greek system, no doubt about
that," Wright said.
He added that the quotation in the
headline of The Dartmouth following
the announcement-- that the SLI
meant the end of the Greek system
"as we know it," a phrase he said
became the symbol of the SLI -- was
taken out of context. Wright said he
had hoped to encourage members
of the Greek system to conduct
self-analysis to make the system
stronger.
Then Student Body President
Josh Green '00, who wrote an opinion
article in The Dartmouth titled "Hear
Us Your Highness" that compared
Wright to Louis XIV, said in a recent
interview with The Dartmouth that
he also believed the opaque nature
of the initial decision-making process
was responsible for much of the
student outcry.
"It was a decision made behind
closed doors without student input
and communicated in such a way
as to suggest that students were not
entitled to have a say in terms of how
the school was going," Green said,
referring to Wright's statement to The
Dartmouth at the time that the SLI
was not a "referendum." "Students felt
that they had no choice but to rally
and take their own position, which
was 'no, don't change a thing.'"
At the outset, the SLI attempted to
curb excessive drinking on campus,
through the removal of all permanent
bars from Greek organizations' physical
plants, stricter keg regulations, expanded
alcohol-education programs
and a May 1999 moratorium on the
formation of new single-sex houses
until the College had solidified a new
plan for Dartmouth's social spaces.
The moratorium was lifted in June
2005.
The Board had hoped these developments
would decrease a perceived
campus emphasis on alcohol, Dean
of Residential Life Martin Redman
said.
"For the most part, you walked
into a fraternity house and the only
thing the organization owned was
a three-tap kegger-ator and a bar,"
Redman said. "There was this whole
apparent culture that suggested that
drinking had really gotten out of hand.
'Boot and rally,' -- this is what you
do when you go out and party -- you
drink until you get sick ... Permanent
bars and kegger-ators had to go."
Still, Redman admitted that alcohol
policy continues to be a source
of tension between students and administrators
today, even as he traced
the formation of College's Good
Samaritan policy, widely recognized
by students and administrators as a
success, to the SLI.
The new Alcohol Management
Policy, comprised of guidelines
created by review-committee of students
and administrators, will likely
replace the SLI-created Social Events
Management Policies gradually over
the course of this school year, Dean
of the College Tom Crady said in
interview.
Students advocated changing
SEMP because they believed that it
discouraged the use of kegs, which
many students said were more sustainable
and cheaper than cans, since
cans are usually thrown away rather
than recycled. Students have also
argued that a more keg-friendly alcohol
policy will also help slow alcohol
consumption, as it takes longer to distribute
alcohol from kegs than from
cans. Redman told The Dartmouth
that the idea that SEMP does not
allow kegs is a misconception, as
the SEMP never placed a maximum
on the number of kegs that could be
registered for one weekend.
The main problem with the SEMP
policy, Student Body President
Molly Bode told The Dartmouth in
spring 2008, is that it is too confusing.
Streamlining and clarifying the
policy was one of the main goals of
the SEMP review committee that created
the AMP, Redman, who led the
committee, told The Dartmouth in an
interview prior to the announcement
of the AMP but after the creation of
the committee.
The AMP will allow student organizations
more discretion by allowing
them to develop their own alcohol
policies and management procedures
within a set of guidelines established
by the College, Jenny Fisher '08, a
member of the committee, said in
an August interview.
The College's alcohol policy, both
in 1999 when the SLI was announced
and now, is designed to protect
student safety, Redman and Crady
said.
"The reality is that's why we pay
attention to alcohol, because it really
is the drug of choice on every college
campus," Redman said. "At the end
of the day, what nobody at this institution
wants to do is call a student's
parent and tell them their son or
daughter died because they drank
too much at a fraternity party."
As the principles of the SLI became
clearer back in 1999, according to
director of Coed, Fraternity and Sorority
System Deb Carney, students
became less angry and more accepting.
"As students and alumni learned
more about what those five principles
meant, what the directive was and
what the outcome might be, the
confusion got cleared up," Carney
said. "No, we were not getting rid of
the Greek letter system. In fact, we
wanted to enhance the Greek letter
system."
The process did become more
open, Green said, with the February
1999 creation of the SLI task force
including students to make recommendations
to the Board about the
implementation of the initiative.
Green, a member of the task force,
said he came to agree with the principles
of the SLI, despite his initial
opposition.
Following the plan's initial phase,
the College instituted six "guiding
principles of Greek life" in response
to the SLI, and resolved to hold Greek
organizations to "standards of excellence"
as opposed to the "minimum
standards" that had been previously
required. The College also began to
require each organization to produce
an individual action plan to address
the six principles in 2002 and temporarily
delayed Greek recruitment
from sophomore fall until sophomore
winter from 2001 to 2004.
The SLI also sparked a safety audit
of all Greek organizations' physical
plants. The audit found that each
organization needed to renovations
that would cost an average of $800
thousand, with one house requiring
renovations that could cost as much
as $1.4 million, Redman said. The
College will make these renovations
Controversy over Student Life Initiative marks early years
