Lately, a slew of columns have questioned the decision to rush (Dmitriy Gutkovich '10's "The Unaffiliated Path," Sept. 30), the rush process ("Verbum Ultimum: She's Nice, But...," Oct. 17), and the alleged pledge process (Brian Solomon '11's "Hazed and Confused," Oct. 20). Given these arguments, it may be difficult to see why over 60 percent of us choose to join a Greek organization over the course of our career here.
The sorority rush process can be enough to make the face of even the best smiler on campus hurt. At the same time, the looming presence of the allegedly notorious pledge term of some fraternities is enough to make even the bravest soul wonder what's going to happen over the next two months.
There is a whole spectrum of reasons why people join Greek houses, but most of them feel either superficial, blatantly untrue or Hallmark-esque to me. The cliche answer is that we want to join a brotherhood or sisterhood and form intimate connections that will last us a lifetime. By the time we rush, though, we've all already been here for at least a year and have friendships we will probably maintain for the rest of our lives.
Some students cite alumni connections as a strong reason for going Greek. Given how annoying all of the alumni were over Homecoming, I can tell you that, at least personally, I want no part in alumni connections.
Some students say they want to meet new people. All you have to do to disprove this is to look around any classroom at Dartmouth and see how little people talk to the person next to them; you'll see how little interest most of us have in actually meeting new people. We all have many opportunities to meet new people right in front of us every day, and we rarely take advantage of them.
Then there are the superficial, affected reasons people cite for joining a house. Pong is often listed, but if freshman year has taught us anything, it's that we can play pong at houses where we aren't affiliated, even if we do get bumped a couple of times. Some people say they want their own social space, and this is what I think perhaps strikes closest to the heart of the issue.
In my opinion, we are all homesick at Dartmouth. We aren't all necessarily crying into our pillows and wailing, "Mommy!" but we all miss not having a home to go back to at the end of every day.
With few exceptions, we don't feel like any of our classes or our dorms or our extracurricular activities are truly our home. When we are freshmen, our 'freshman floor' fills this void in our lives. But once that's gone, we need something else. Whether or not we achieve this goal, we decide to rush so that, among other reasons, we can have a new physical home and a new family to call our own. It certainly isn't the same type of home we had in high school (or at least I hope it isn't) and there isn't anybody mothering us, but at least we can have a place that we can call our own.
All of the other reasons for going Greek boil down to having a place where we belong. Sure, this place may offer space for pong and other social activities, but it's more about having a space to enjoy as we see fit. We do get to form the intimate connections as cliche dictates, but it means that much more to us because they are our intimate connections. We get all of these advantages, but we can only do this because we have something to fall back upon, somewhere where we can always go and will always be welcome. And OK, the fact that we can play pong whenever we want is nice, too.
