Correction appended
Despite official College policy that prevents any local Greek organization from colonizing on campus, the Inter-Fraternity Council officially recognized Beta Alpha Omega fraternity as a local fraternity on March 8, making Beta an exception to the six-year College standstill, acting Director of Greek Letter Organizations and Societies Kristi Clemens said in an interview with The Dartmouth.
Although the Board of Trustees lifted the ban on national organizations in 2005 overturning a moratorium on any new national or local Greek house enacted by former College President James Wright in 1999 College officials agreed to prevent local Greek organizations from forming at the College and prohibited national Greek organizations from becoming local chapters, Clemens said. The policy has remained in place ever since, Clemens said.
Beta's re-recognition as a local organization marks an exception, not an annulment, to the College policy, according to Chief of Staff David Spalding. The Board will review the policy during Spring term, and will eventually decide whether additional local organizations that meet certain requirements may join campus in the future, he said.
The College will likely require potential local organizations to meet the criteria Beta fulfilled prior to its re-recognition, according to Spalding.
"Some of the things we saw with Beta were a strong local alumni advisor, which we think is a key success criteria for Greek houses," Spalding said. "Secondly, we saw strong alumni giving to the house and thirdly, we saw an organization that was on very firm financial footing."
Establishing a new local sorority at the College would be difficult because the College would want to ensure the organization's "financial solvency," Clemens said. In order for a new organization to sustain itself, it would have to recruit enough members to pay dues as well as gather funding to maintain its physical plant, she said. Panhellenic Council president Ellie Sandmeyer '12 said bringing another local sorority to campus would be difficult, but not impossible. The founding group would have to prove to Hanover Police and the College that they wanted a local house "to facilitate more than just parties," she said.
Strong alumni ties and funding which were important factors in Beta's re-recognition are not available to women attempting to create a local sorority chapter since women have been at the College for a short period of time compared to men, Sandmeyer said. The College first became coeducational in 1972.
Dani Levin '12, president of Sigma Delta sorority, one of three local sororities on campus, said she would like to see more local sororities and co-ed houses on campus because the majority of social spaces are "skewed towards the host, which is usually men on this campus."
The College de-recognized Beta formerly Beta Theta Pi fraternity in 1996 due to a series of disciplinary breaches throughout the early 1990s, The Dartmouth previously reported. It returned to campus in 2008 as a local organization. Beta's removal from campus was followed by unconfirmed student hearsay about the so-called "Beta-vision," a system purportedly installed in the house in the 1990s that allowed members to watch other members have sex with unsuspecting partners.
"To violate other students' privacies and bodies that way, [and then] to come back, to be welcomed back into their physical plant and fully restored with full rights almost immediately, is an unequivocal statement that the College doesn't care about female students on this campus," Levin said.
Former Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman and former GLOS Director Deborah Carney, in consultation with Wright and former Dean of the College James Larimore, decided to allow Beta to return to campus as a local organization.
Levin said her disapproval of Beta's existence is not related to the current members of the fraternity.
While Levin said she fully supports bringing more local Greek organizations to campus, she does not expect many national Greek houses to cut ties with their national organizations to become strictly local chapters because of the benefits enjoyed by national organizations, she said. Such benefits include financial support, scholarship opportunities and a national network of members, according to Levin.
Levin is a member of The Dartmouth Blog Staff.
Staff writer Emily Fletcher contributed to this article.
