Although Dartmouth itself is the subject of perennial national conversation Which fraternity will Rolling Stone lambast this term? Which incident will Gawker sensationalize this week? its student population remains incapable of engaging in even the most cursory discussion of the issues plaguing the college. If anything, media attention has further polarized students. Opposing sides have retreated deeper into their respective camps (or their gaudy flair) and attempts to address Dartmouth's issues devolve time and time again into name-calling and recrimination worthy of the messiest break-up.
I do not think that Real Talk, Dartmouth's radical contingent, is innocent here. The infamous Dimensions demonstration alienated the very populations it sought to transform; the protestors cried out into the wilderness of a massive communicative failure. But at least they mustered the courage to levy substantive criticism against a dominant social structure, even if their strategy left something to be desired. That's more than can be said of mainstream Dartmouth, whose members continue to prance around in pledge attire and insist that Dimensions was, like, sooooo fun without even stopping to examine their participation in a system that is odious to much of the community and much of the country.
Which is to say, the failure of communication at Dartmouth is not only everyone's responsibility, it is everyone's fault. What all those alarmingly cheerful Croo members stubbornly ignore is that they are at least as guilty as Real Talk when it comes to forestalling productive dialogue.
Every time that a serious challenge to the Greek system is articulated, affiliated Dartmouth responds by fixating on trifles and ignoring the meat of problem. When Rolling Stone reported on a kiddy pool of vomit and semen, Dartmouth's hallowed halls rang with indictments of Andrew Lohse '12's character; whenever an anti-Greek article appears in The Dartmouth, ad hominem attacks on the author litter the comments section (see below, where I'm sure such attacks will accrue en masse); when Real Talk staged a demonstration, they were regaled with physical threats; and god forbid anyone try to host an activism workshop, because the Dartmouth community will rant about the poster, without even attending the workshop in question.
I'm sure that many of these criticisms are well-founded. But discussion of the means need not exclude discussion of the ends, and it is beginning to look a lot like denial. Nothing is disreputable (Lohse), disrespectful (Real Talk) or disagreeable (the activism workshop posters, apparently) enough to justify our casual disregard for the victims of homophobia, racism and sexual assault. There is no excuse for overlooking abuses of this magnitude and there is no way that an aggressive poster or even an aggressive screaming fest could be as hurtful to anyone as sexual assault and discrimination are to everyone. Shocked prospective students will recover; sadly, the same cannot be said for many of Dartmouth's discontents.
I don't condone rudeness, and I'm fed up with one-sided discussions that are inaccessible to large portions of the Dartmouth population, with dialogues that devolve into monologue, with protests designed to engender catharsis for their participants rather than precipitate campus-wide change. But I'm even more fed up with the insulated, self-important culture that is so caught up in defending itself that it has become blind to its own, very serious, failings. As frustrating as Real Talk can be, it's not nearly as frustrating or damaging as mainstream Dartmouth's dismissal of much greater and more serious issues.
I trust that this year, as the impending horrors of pledge term hell nights approach and as Halloween and the specter of Lohse loom on the Hanover horizon, we can all do better. Let's try to talk in a way that is intelligible to each other. Let's try to acknowledge that there must be some reason that large portions of the nation and the media condemn the fraternity system. (They weren't hazed into submission, and there's a gaping hole where their cognitive dissonance should be. Jonestown called, and it wants its Kool-Aid back). Let's thank Real Talk for hosting a workshop about effectively resisting oppression, which is a productive step in the right direction. And let's try to engage the substance of the criticism this time, shall we?
