To the Editor:
The column "Correlation, not Causation," by Jordan Osserman '11 (May 17), makes what to my mind is the most important point in any debate about the Greek system at Dartmouth. Single-sex fraternities and sororities engage, quite openly, in discrimination that looks to most of us to be directly contrary to Dartmouth's stated policy: "Dartmouth does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, military or veteran status in access to its programs and activities." Fraternities and sororities count as Dartmouth "programs and activities" and most of them (not all) openly discriminate on the basis of sex. Not so openly, some also discriminate in other ways forbidden by Dartmouth policy.
Now I understand that single-sex houses and some secret societies have been given a pass on this policy. So has football, for that matter. We could, and should, argue about whether it is good to make such exceptions, and whether the reasons for exempting football differ from the reasons for exempting fraternities and sororities. Dartmouth adopted and revised its non-discrimination policy because we believe discrimination of the sort prohibited disintegrates our community and makes it difficult, even impossible, to pursue Dartmouth's mission with well-founded hopes for success. Routinely granting what look like dramatic and largely unexplained exceptions makes it look like we're not really serious about non-discrimination. At least that's the message we risk sending to students, and it's not hard to see that that is precisely the message many get.
Thomas H. LuxonCheheyl Professor of English and Director of the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning
