The College should offer more gender-neutral spaces for students to casually drink, freshmen should be required to take a sexual assault course and mentorship programs should be strengthened. These are among 250 ideas aimed at reducing high-risk drinking, sexual assault and exclusivity, summarized from submissions by more than 500 students in a report released Wednesday.
Student group Improve Dartmouth: On the Ground prepared the report for the "Moving Dartmouth Forward" presidential steering committee, which is tasked with developing recommendations on ending high-risk behavior.
Thirty-six submissions suggested making all sororities local, making this the report’s most frequently mentioned idea. Advocates said the change would move some parties into female-dominated social spaces.
Ideas were taken from 740 submissions on the Improve Dartmouth: On the Ground website between May and July. Suggestions were posted on the website as part of a series of dinners that Improve Dartmouth: On the Ground hosted with 36 student organizations, in addition to five sessions open to campus.
The report also lists student responses to what the group calls"root causes" of dangerous behaviors, identifying the "Animal House (1978)" image as a cause of binge drinking, male-dominated social spaces as a cause of sexual assault and the Greek system as a cause of exclusivity, among other factors.
Earlier this month, the presidential steering committee released a summary of the 1,673 online suggestions it had garnered.Abolishing Greek life was the most popular submission received online, receiving more than 250 suggestions. Alumni comprised the vast majority of all respondents. In Tuesday’s report, eight submissions advocated for eliminating the Greek system.
The presidential steering committee is expected to present College President Phil Hanlon with its recommendations by the end of the year, part of a timeline that was recently extended. Hanlon was originally scheduled to present to the Board in November, but is now expected to do so in January 2015.
