The following contains content that may trigger survivors of sexual violence.
As a member of Dartmouth’s Class of 2020, I was horrified but not shocked to read about seven Chi Phi fraternity brothers allegedly drugging and gang raping their female classmate at Cornell University. The reason is because I myself was in a fraternity at Dartmouth. I profoundly regret that choice.
At one point, I told myself fraternities could be reformed and tried to do my part. But the truth is that Greek life was and still is a major source of sexual violence at Dartmouth. The system needs to be abolished.
Like most students, I rushed my sophomore fall, in 2017. I was excited about the social life, the relationships and the “brotherhood.” That fall was also the beginning of the #MeToo movement against gender-based harassment and abuse. I told myself I could change the culture from the inside.
I started in my sophomore winter, in 2018, by writing an amendment to Alpha Chi’s constitution permitting our internal adjudication committee — composed of seven elected members — to expel alleged assailants without a house-wide vote. Within two years, at least two brothers were expelled from the frat or “asked to depledge.”
In my sophomore spring, I joined the Sexual Assault Peer Advocate program and started supporting students who were survivors. I used my SAPA training to facilitate conversations in Alpha Chi and led trainings on consent and rape culture. Junior winter, I co-authored another amendment to our constitution with a detailed policy for handling alleged sexual misconduct. Brothers were required to inform leadership if they were being investigated by the College’s Office of Judicial Affairs or law enforcement for abuse. Our new policy automatically placed them on social probation, barring them from events hosted by Alpha Chi or jointly with other Greek houses.
During the same term, I wrote an op-ed criticizing Dartmouth’s response to a $70 million lawsuit filed by female students who alleged they were sexually abused by their professors. Two months later, following an internal discussion during Take Back the Night — a day of protest and solidarity with survivors — Alpha Chi started serving drinks from sealed containers. In my senior year, I started volunteering for overnight shifts with WISE — the Upper Valley’s crisis center for survivors of gender-based violence.
None of it helped. Rape culture and sexual assault endured, and, if anything, I probably made things worse by legitimizing my fraternity and Greek life in general. Alpha Chi brothers would say, with an embarrassed half-irony, that we were a “good guy frat.”
Meanwhile, countless numbers of my friends were sexually assaulted and raped in fraternity basements, in upstairs bedrooms and in the dorms. Some battled severe mental illness and attempted suicide, even after they graduated.
In hindsight, it is obvious that we need to abolish the Greek system. Houses are, by definition, exclusive. They reinforce sexist gender roles and discriminate by class and race. They give men physical control over campus social life, backed by alumni resources and legitimized by their prominent, official status at Dartmouth.
Then, of course, there is the hazing. Older members of Greek houses humiliate and degrade new members. There is a direct line between this conditioning and the normalization of sexual violence in Greek spaces. Hazing also kills fraternity brothers, either directly or by normalizing binge drinking, dangerous behavior and conformity. There is a reason why Lydia Jin ’26, after the tragic death of Won Jang ’26 at age 20, wrote last year that joining a fraternity ended Jang’s life.
Within Greek houses, the combination of hazing, sexual violence and access to social power and alumni job networks breeds a mafia culture of silence and loyalty. According to a screenshot of a Snapchat group chat, none of the other 50-plus brothers in Cornell Chi Phi intervened after Jonathan Newell sent the message, “free pussy upstairs.” In 2019, after Cornell freshman Antonio Tsialas attended a Phi Kappa Psi hazing event and was later found dead at the bottom of a gorge, the brothers “closed ranks” and stonewalled investigators, according to a New York Times investigation. His family never received answers.
There is a saying in systems thinking: “The purpose of a system is what it does.” When I rushed in 2017, 34% of female Dartmouth undergraduates were sexually assaulted with “physical force or incapacitation” before graduation, 1.5 times the national college average. Men were also assaulted, often by other men. There was a culture of terror on our campus, rooted in fraternities that protected sexual predators and taught men to treat women and each other like subhuman objects.
So many women and queer men, many of them survivors, told me to depledge while I was a student at Dartmouth. They told me the system had to be abolished. Social life needed to be mixed-gender with protected spaces for marginalized groups. Greek houses should be shut down, with their physical plants converted to non-exclusive residential spaces. It would not be sufficient to end rape culture completely, but it was absolutely necessary. (Similar arguments were made in 1999 by former College President James Wright and by The Dartmouth’s Editorial Board in 2014.)
Deep down, I knew they were right, but I did not want to listen. I did not want to give up the social power and career access that came with being in a fraternity. So I rationalized my choice: Without me, the system would be worse. Hadn’t I made improvements? Who would advocate for survivors if I left? I was using the tools of reform to ease my own guilt.
At the same time, I was also absorbing and participating in the toxicity of fraternity life. I used sexist and homophobic language “ironically” and embraced the persona of an abrasive frat bro. I stayed in the closet and learned to hate myself and dehumanize the women who had always been there for me as a queer man. It took me years to unlearn these patterns in therapy, none of which absolves me for how I hurt people.
Dartmouth is dominated by Greek life. As a student, I was afraid of losing my friends and being lonely if I depledged. But that anxiety is nothing compared to the fear that women and queer, trans and gender-nonconforming people face under the threat of violence from men. Trust that everyone in your life who lives outside the safety of traditional masculinity — your mother, your siblings, your friends, your partner — knows this fear in some way.
So where do we go from here? College President Sian Beilock is best known for smashing student protests and appeasing our fascist government. It is hard to imagine her administration unilaterally abolishing Greek life and potentially imperiling donations from rich, nostalgic alumni. Change will have to come from elsewhere.
Men of Dartmouth, I urge you to depledge. Do not lend your name or your credibility to these violent institutions. Leaving will strip the houses of the social dominance they require to function. Even a few men leaving could trigger a domino effect that prompts other men to depledge as well.
I promise you can still have fun and make genuine, lifelong friends. It was not until after graduation that I experienced a healthy social life. There is so much relief and growth that comes with building community outside of the violent, segregated system of Greek life.
Please, just depledge. Convince your brothers to do the same. You still have time to do the right thing.
John Caramichael is a member of the Class of 2020. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
