In all my years of assessing and experiencing gender relations at Dartmouth, I'll admit I've definitely taken a beating or two. Whether it stemmed from the Greek system or not, I have been, in some way, shape or form, offended, appalled, insulted and bewildered by the interactions between males and females on this campus, and the criticisms that ensue between the two parties.
Never before in my Dartmouth career, however, has one of these affronts come from an uninformed male who assumed he had omniscient insight into the world of the females; so much insight, in fact, that he felt confident enough to write a scathing attack on it. No, I'm not talking about the stuff they teach middle school boys in sex-ed that, sadly, those boys will continue to not understand through their early 20s. I'm talking about Sam Buntz '11's "The Treehouse Effect" (Oct. 27) and his misguided understanding of sororities at Dartmouth.
As a creative writing major, I have been exposed to the popular "write what you know" mantra. While there are indeed some dissenters who think it more beneficial to one's craft to "write what you don't know," an Opinion column is not fiction. Even if Buntz had been a fly on the wall at a Wednesday night sorority meeting, it would not give him nearly enough ground to criticize the entire sorority system in the way that he did.
For starters, I concede to Buntz that the sorority selection process is not perfect. Rush has an inefficiency and illogicalness that can be equated with that of the Electoral College. But, dear readers, unfairness is the way of life. Rush for both fraternities and sororities may end up denying a spot to many deserving students, but so does the Admissions Office every year, and I don't see application numbers dropping.
Buntz asks why the sorority system exists, and posits that girls' happiness is based on the house where she spends her three years. Again, another point Buntz wouldn't know about, seeing as he's never actually been in a sorority or attempted to rush one. While sororities can have a major impact on a student's life, she also has a much larger life outside of that house. Dartmouth women and their accomplishments are not confined to the Greek letters with which they associate themselves, where they spend Wednesday nights and the friends they make there.
If one wants to make a case assuming a sorority eats up someone's identity at Dartmouth, if anything they should be looking at the fraternities, not the sororities -- just based on how much more time men spend at their fraternity houses than women do at theirs. Why take down the sororities? Why not take down the whole system? Or maybe Buntz believes the ideas of cattiness or superficiality are female-centric.
On that note, I would like to applaud Lee Cooper '09 in his "Frat=Fun" column (Oct. 29), in which he plainly states what most affiliated students are not brave enough to: "Too often these pages are filled with an us-versus-them mentality that sticks an unnecessary wedge into any constructive dialogue about the reasons for -- or merits of -- Greek life."
I couldn't agree more. If someone would like to approach me to have an informed, open discussion about the benefits and flaws of the Greek system or sororities in general, by all means bring it on. But all I saw in Buntz's argument was a blind rant with lots of pointless literary references stuck in that did nothing more than attest to the quality of Dartmouth's English department.
While Buntz is singing the praises of unaffiliated life and calling for it not to be looked down upon, he is simultaneously doing just that -- looking down at the "other half" -- not to mention lumping together seven very different sorority houses to arrive at a singular critique.
In "Frat=Fun," Cooper expresses a concern that no one will take his argument seriously because they will write him off as a "frat guy," and I feel his pain. I know many affiliated and unaffiliated students alike will read my column and write me off as a biased, and perhaps dim-witted, "sorority girl."
Buntz claims that meetings consist of catty talk of "looks and clothing." Seriously? Did you get that idea from peeking at Cosmo or renting "The House Bunny"?
Give us a little more credit than that -- we may be "sorority girls," but we are still Dartmouth women.
