In a now-infamous blitz to the Parking Office last spring, Niral Shah '08 decried his parking ticket, issued at 5:48 a.m., as "one of the many ways in which this college is a terribly unfunny joke." I've recently come across another way.
On Friday, The Dartmouth reported that three Greek organizations had been placed on social probation and further sanctioned due to allegations of misconduct surrounding the houses' fall formals ("Five Greek orgs. may be placed on probation," Jan. 30). But this article didn't tell the whole story. At least one organization (and probably all three) fell victim to a dysfunctional judicial system that far too often gets it wrong. The following account is based on my personal knowledge as an unofficial advocate for Sigma Delta sorority in its judicial proceeding.
The morning following their formal at the Dartmouth Skiway, Sigma Delt's formal chair received a nasty, unprofessional e-mail from Peter Riess, the assistant general manager of the Skiway, who claimed that the lodge had been absolutely "trashed," and demanded $1500 to cover clean up and repair costs. He said that if the sorority did not get a check "on his desk" by the end of that week (incidentally, the week of Thanksgiving recess) he would contact the Dean's office.
Instead of just forking over $1500 based on a description of the condition of the lodge that Sigma Delt's executives knew was grossly exaggerated, the sorority's executives decided to look into the terms of the organization's contract with the Skiway. It stated that any "extraordinary" cleanup would be charged at a rate of $50 per hour. In Riess' initial email to Sigma Delt after the formal, he estimated that it would take two people an entire day to clean up the lodge. Even accepting this dubious claim, that still only amounts to $800, nowhere near the $1500 that he had demanded. Given this vast discrepancy, Sigma Delt's executives asked to see an itemized list of cleanup charges before writing Riess a check. They also proactively contacted the Greek Letter Organizations and Societies office to inform it of the situation.
Almost a month went by with no word from Skiway management or the Dean's office regarding the incident, until Dec. 22, when Sigma Delt's president, Kristen Rounds '09, received notice from the Judicial Affairs office that accusations of misconduct had been made against the sorority. Because Sigma Delt had failed to give in to the Skiway's extortion attempt and did not fork over a check without seeing so much as a list of what the individual charges were, the Skiway decided to go crying to the Dean's office to compel the sorority to pay the arbitrary sum of $1500. (Not so incidentally, this was the same exact amount that Sig Ep was being charged by the Skiway for another formal incident.) That there was any mess at all was due to a misunderstanding whereby Sigma Delt did not appreciate that, in addition to paying a $1600 rental fee, it would be responsible for returning the lodge to its pre-event condition -- an expectation unheard of at other formal venues.
In what amounted to a sham proceeding, Sigma Delt was given a hearing to present its case, which consisted of nothing more than a meeting between Rounds and Dean Kate Burke.
Rounds said that upon hearing Sigma Delt's case, Dean Burke scoffed at the fact that instead of simply expressing remorse, Rounds asserted that Riess had made embellished claims and threatened to tattle to the Dean's office in an attempt to force Sigma Delt to pay much more than it owed. Burke did not take kindly to the insinuation that Skiway management was being less than forthcoming, and put Rounds on the defensive for the entire hearing until she had no choice but to give the standard line that Sigma Delt was 'sorry' for any trouble they had caused and had decided to implement a set of 'best practices' to ensure this kind of thing did not happen again. For those unfamiliar with organizational adjudication hearings on this campus, the words 'sorry' and 'best practices' are golden. Any type of a legitimate defense however, is not looked on kindly.
Sure enough, Sigma Delt was found guilty of disorderly conduct, and, like both Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and Delta Delta Delta sorority, sentenced to four weeks social probation and barred from holding off-campus social events for two terms. Contrast this with Alpha Xi Delta sorority's formal last fall, at which 35 people were issued citations by the police and at least one guest was taken to the hospital. Because that incident somehow fell under the College's "Good Sam" policy, AZD faced no College disciplinary action. Yet, inexplicably, the administration dropped the hammer on the Greek system because of a formal at which no alcohol was served, no one was arrested, and no one was taken to the hospital.
Sigma Delt was ordered to pay restitution and write an apology letter to the Skiway (and, for some reason, the bus company, even though it registered no complaint). Still insistent on seeing an invoice before paying a dime, Sigma Delt finally got one on the day before its ordered restitution was due. The amount for cleaning? $562.50. And the damage the Skiway claimed needed repair? According to the invoice, there wasn't any. The Skiway had indeed been lying all along, yet its claims regarding the nature of the so-called damage and the aftermath of the event were taken as gospel by Dean Burke. When Rounds brought this discrepancy to the attention of the Dean's office, she was given an updated invoice that reflected a small damage charge of $37.50, presumably because the Dean's office realized that without those damages, it had decided the case in error and needed to quickly cover its ass.
The administration was so concerned with sending a message that it ignored the facts of the case, as evidenced by the equally appalling proceedings over the Tri-delt and Sig Ep formals. And what's worse is that, based on my knowledge of numerous judicial proceedings over my four years at Dartmouth, the facts are frequently ignored, both to the detriment and the benefit of the accused. Sigma Delt executives did the right thing and saved their sisterhood over $900 that they didn't owe, yet the sorority was punished dearly for refusing to submit to a blatant extortion attempt.
To the Skiway managers who sought to take advantage of Sigma Delt by making false accusations, and the co-conspirators in the Dean's office who sat by and allowed it to happen, I have but one question: Where is your letter of apology?
