Around this time every year, whisperings of sorority and fraternity rush infiltrate conversations on Collis Porch, at Greek house meetings, on First Floor Berry and in sophomore dorm rooms. This informal, often gossipy conversation is emblematic of the lack of transparency inherent in the rush process. Students navigate rush without much concrete guidance, and much goes on under the radar.
Most women going through the rush process attend parties at two houses for the final round of rush, known as preference night. Every year, a small number of women opt to "suicide" one of their preferred houses, indicating that she is only interested in joining one house and will not accept a potential bid from her second choice house. If the potential new member does not receive a bid from the house she suicided, she will have to wait an entire year to rush again in accordance a recently adopted rule of the Panhellenic Council, the governing body of Dartmouth's sororities.
An affiliated female '12 who wished to remain anonymous said she suicided her top choice because she couldn't imagine herself in the other house from which she potentially would have been offered a bid.
"I just didn't like the stereotype that the other house was identified with," she said.
Panhell officially discourages women from suiciding.
"Suiciding protects the principle of mutual selection during rush," Panhellenic Council president Ellie Sandmeyer '12 said. "A girl should never have to accept a bid to a house she doesn't want to be in, but that being said, suiciding is sometimes abused and we want girls to give every house a chance."
If too many women suicide, houses will end up with fewer pledges than they expected and potentially miss out on accepting other rushees into their organizations, Sandmeyer said. The anonymous '12 feels that the consequences of ending rush without a bid are not as great as finding yourself in a house in which you feel dissatisfied or uncomfortable.
"I don't really see why Panhell discourages you from suiciding if you know you don't want to be in a certain house," she said. "People have ended up really unhappy when they decided not to suicide."
Ironically, the anonymous '12 has not been to her sorority's meetings in over a year.
"As a sophomore, getting into my top house was a big deal, but now I don't really want to have anything to do with it," she said. "I may as well be unaffiliated. I was even thinking about being inactive."
As some women select to suicide in hopes of voicing her number one preference, several male freshmen who are already set on a certain fraterty choose to "dirty rush" certain fraternities or join them before they are technically eligible to do so. The Interfraternity Council allows only male students who have completed three terms at Dartmouth to participate in the rush process, according to IFC president Kevin Niparko '12. No one interviewed by The Mirror would verify or deny the occurrence of "dirty rushing."
Despite the options to "suicide" and "dirty," students' own preferences in choosing a Greek house are limited. How someone is chosen to join a Greek organization by its current membership is not always transparent, and discrimination on the basis of race and sexual orientation in particular is a concern for many students.
An affiliated male student, who wished to remain anonymous, said that he did not experience any noticeable discrimination while rushing as an openly gay person, but he said this may have been partly because he did not challenge the aesthetic stereotype of the house.
"I fit in with the heterosexual image of the house and I didn't fit the effeminate gay stereotype," he said. "It's possible that if I hadn't fit the image of the house, I wouldn't have been accepted."
"I think houses on campus need to be more accepting of all rushees who challenge the institution's traditional stereotype," he said.
The student said that although he feels entirely "comfortable and happy" in the house he decided to join, he doesn't think he would feel comfortable as an openly gay man in a few other houses on campus.
"The fraternity system doesn't make it easy for guys to come out," he said, "and although I think over the past five years the Greek system has become a lot more open-minded, it still faces serious challenges concerning gay acceptance."
An affiliated male '13 said that although his house does not discriminate against potential members based on their race or sexuality, the house also does not make it a priority to seek out gay or minority students.
"Although our house is pretty uniformly white, we would never discriminate against someone because of their race, sexuality or what sports team they're on," he said.
Some students find that the disparity between the number of minority students on campus and those who participate in rush is a result of a cultural disconnect that runs along racial lines.
"I personally don't think I experienced any discrimination during rush," an affiliated female '13, who is Nigerian-American, said. "But I've definitely heard a lot of members especially the African-American [girls] say that they don't feel comfortable with rush and Greek houses in general."
She added that she has observed a divide between African and African-American students at Dartmouth.
"I've definitely heard about African girls being preferred over African-American girls in sororities across campus," she said. "I think it has to do with family structure, culture and socioeconomics Africans tend to feel more comfortable during the rush process because they're often from wealthier backgrounds."
She said that her experience as one of only two black girls in her predominantly white private high school conditioned her to feel more comfortable perhaps more so than other minority students in a sorority that is also predominantly white.
The '13 said she has heard of certain houses enacting informal affirmative action policies for minority girls during rush.
"Last year people talked about how a few different houses decided they wanted more black and Asian girls and so ended up recruiting a relatively large number into their Fall and Winter pledge classes," she said.
This type of recruiting is not standard at all houses, she said.
"I know of countless African-American girls who dropped out of rush," she said. "A lot of them just felt like the [affiliated] girls didn't understand them and they didn't understand the sorority culture."
She added, "I'm slow to say they've been discriminated against. I just think that many African-Americans feel uncomfortable with the rush process for cultural reasons."
