The latest Dartmouth controversy concerns a Mirror piece written by a disaffected Dartmouth student, Matthew Ritger '10. Ritger, in both his original piece ("The Gospel According to Matthew," Oct. 9) and his follow-up ("The Gospel According to Matthew," Oct. 16), displays a commendable concern for the problem of sexual abuse, one which I wish all Dartmouth students shared as passionately. He also correctly identifies other severe problems with the social atmosphere at Dartmouth. He is, however, deeply misguided in placing the blame on the fraternity system.
The problem with this campus is not the Greek system. All the fraternities and sororities do is organize and centralize the party scene, which would otherwise be fragmented.
The Greek system is thus valuable to our campus, because an organized, open, public party scene actually promotes safety and inclusivity better than the alternatives. The Greek scene is, in many ways, the best way to arrange and give structure to the campus social life. The problems that we have here are pretty much universal, which shows that they have very little to do with the Greek scene at Dartmouth. The roots of our social ills lie not in the Greek system, but in our generation's seriously misguided views toward alcohol and sex.
College-aged students are fond of pointing out that current drinking laws that prohibit drinking until the age of 21 have helped to foster an unhealthy attitude toward alcohol in the United States. I happen to agree with that opinion, but I also think it distracts us from the heart of the problem: At some point, we have got to stop blaming the legal system and start taking responsibility for our own actions. The laws do not make anybody drink too much. Only the individual can do that to himself. The unhealthy use of alcohol is, in the end, the fault of person who is using alcohol unhealthily.
If you know you can't be trusted to act morally, responsibly, and safely when you are trashed, you shouldn't get trashed. If you do things you regret when you are drunk, don't get drunk. People need to stop using alcohol as an excuse for their actions, and they need to stop blaming our legal system or campus regulations or whatever for their drunkenness. No matter how we change the structure of the Greek system, nothing will change until people learn to get their drinking under control.
The second root of our problem is the prevalent attitude toward sex: that one's partner is solely an object with which to fulfill one's sexual desires. The fundamental problem with sexual abuse is that it declares the desire for pleasure more important than the inherent worth and dignity of the person being abused. The aggressor is so much more concerned with his own pleasure than with the other person that he will ignore the fact that she is drunk or hasn't really consented. He is so interested in using the other person to gratify himself that he completely ignores her wishes and desires, and her intrinsic value as a person. And yet this logic of abuse is striking similar to the attitude with which people on this campus tend to approach sex. We treat hook-ups not as people who deserve our love, affirmation and respect, but as relatively unimportant means to our hedonistic ends.
This way of looking at sex is inherently dehumanizing. It turns a human being with dignity into a tool for one's own gratification. It is no wonder that in a culture of pornography and casual sex, which objectifies and dehumanizes the Other, we would see sexual abuse. Every time we treat consensual relations as just another successful, gratifying conquest, we are inviting abuse. The other person becomes insignificant, only having worth insofar as he or she satisfies us. How could this attitude not lead to severe problems?
The inhuman and unhealthy attitudes toward sex and alcohol are the real enemies, not the frats. These attitudes are universal, and spring from something much more fundamental than our Greek system. If the frats reflect these attitudes, it is only because the national culture at large aggressively promotes them. Until the culture of meaningless sex and unsafe drinking habits is changed, these problems will be ever present.