Dirt: a timely issue for The Mirror, given our recent hazing scandal. We don't like dealing with dirty things here at Dartmouth. We prefer to keep our dirt in our basements.
The ultimate Dartmouth man looks something like this: a smart, funny, impressionable guy who also knows how to ditch his books and get after it in the basement. This dichotomy between Ivy Leaguers and party animals slick corporate types and cavemen is what we're known for. It's a quality often expressed in euphemisms that help make our lifestyles seem more palatable to administrators and parents. "Work hard play hard, know what I mean?"
Well, euphemisms for the juxtaposition between our daytime and nighttime activities and the negative behaviors they try to excuse have pretty much lost their validity since Andrew Lohse's column. The bizarre hazing that goes on here has more or less always been "just one of those things," but now that the real dirt is out in the open not just the frat grime on our shoes I doubt it can be swept back down the basement stairs.
It's hard to know what kinds of changes, if any, will occur. The important thing is that conversations are happening that aren't normally possible. Normally, initiation rituals are rarely questioned or discussed by those who find themselves in the midst of morally questionable situations. Hazing is so ensconced in the language of tradition and brotherhood that it's nearly impossible to question. A pledge or a brother who wants to speak up when he sees something wrong rarely acts on his moral conscience because he's afraid, and rightly so, of being shouted down and ostracized for his non-conformity. It's the sort of McCarthy-esque control mechanism that an outsider would find strange at a place like Dartmouth, but which is all too familiar to those who go here.
As shocking as it was freshman year to hear about pledges accepting the kind of degradation required of them to become brothers, I can't say I was all that surprised. I played sports my whole life and was no stranger to the concept of men needing to prove their manhood to older men. Because that's what this is all about. It's about young men exercising their ultimate insecurity: the possibility that in the eyes of other people, specifically of other men, they are not "real" men.
I can hardly think of any all-male group that isn't defined, to a certain extent, by the drive to prove one's manhood. It's not necessarily a bad thing either, so long as that energy is channeled in a healthy way. For example, on a sports team, the new guys have to prove themselves by exerting themselves to extreme ends during practice and conditioning. But there's a common goal worth striving for there: athletic achievement. Fraternity initiation gets out of hand because the worthy goals and values of these institutions, such as brotherhood and personal development, become conflated with things that just don't matter, like one's drinking ability or social status.
Some men find value and camaraderie in the challenges they faced alongside their pledge brothers. But many others struggled their way through it, and their cheap laughter and reminiscence not to mention the hazing they themselves now put the next pledge class through are their way of covering up the discomfort, and in some cases the trauma, with which they have had to deal.
This begs the question of what exactly a fraternity's purpose is, if not for providing a safe space for men to feel valued and validated by their brothers. Fraternities at Dartmouth, which are ostensibly good institutions, are plagued by cycles of fear and bullying, cycles that keep us small and inhibit honesty, compassion and other hallmarks of true friendship. I wonder how many of us can look our brothers in the eye and say we truly believe in the value of everything that goes on during our pledge terms.
There are many of us who love our houses and our brothers. The question now is whether or not we love them enough to suck up our pride and rethink our values and practices not only for the sake of what's right, but for the sake of each other.
