The following contains content that may be harmful to survivors of sexual violence.
The recent lawsuit against the Chi Phi fraternity at Cornell University and the university itself, regarding an alleged gang rape of a female Cornell student in 2024 has triggered a nationwide reckoning, prompted by The Cornell Daily Sun’s reporting and subsequent editorial board column. Much like other students across the country, we have been considering how our own campus’s rhetoric and culture enable sexual violence.
When an act of sexual misconduct occurs at Dartmouth, the first thing you hear is not that someone has been harmed by another member of the campus community, but that an individual or fraternity “has a Title IX.” Title IX is a civil rights law banning sex-based discrimination at schools which receive federal funding. Whether intentional or not, the use of “Title IX” as a substitute for sexual misconduct is a euphemism that hides alleged sexual crimes behind bureaucratic jargon, positioning the disciplinary procedure above the actual violation that took place. It is crucial for our community to be intentional with our language and remember that every “Title IX” suggests there was a perpetrator and, more importantly, a victim who has to face the doubt and stigmatization nearly universal among abuse survivors. Counting the Title IX claims against a Greek house like it is some point-based demerit system not only minimizes each of those sexual misconduct cases, but effectively shields the perpetrators from accountability. This culture casts the blame on a faceless organization that cannot itself face justice.
It is nauseating that we refer to an act of sexual misconduct by its disciplinary procedure rather than naming the violation itself. Dartmouth’s Equal Opportunity, Accessibility and Title IX office handles discriminatory complaints across the spectra of discrimination on the basis of race, religion, sex, gender and sexuality. Yet when someone “has a Title IX,” it is commonly understood to mean a reported accusation of sexual misconduct. Such a widely understood shorthand prompts us to reconsider the frequency of such acts on campus and the pervasiveness of a rape culture required for “Title IX” to have become synonymous with sexual misconduct.
As more details have emerged in the case at Cornell, many are attempting to pick apart the story of Jane Doe, arguing that the fact that she had initially described that night as consensual and later came to understand it as an assault undermines her credibility. We strongly refute this argument. This pattern of gradually coming to terms with sexual victimhood is incredibly common. Some of us have even seen this change happen in real time and firsthand: As a peer or friend recounts a sexual experience, they trail off, reaching a point in their recollection that makes them uncomfortable because hearing the memory out loud makes them reconsider the encounter altogether.
Victims are often wary of sharing their story if they do not feel that their case fits the archetypal image of sexual violence, for fear that there will not be consequences and the risk of public shame is not worth it. But rape culture is a spectrum. If our campus does not call out sexual harassment and assault because it does not fit a commonly understood image of rape, we cannot claim to be a campus that is working to dismantle a culture of tolerance toward sexual abuse.
Greek life is the pillar that sustains the engrained culture of sexual abuse at Dartmouth. Fraternities’ main identifiers are brotherhood and intoxication, both of which are powerful aggravators of sexual misconduct. The idea of protecting your brothers over all else inculcates a culture of silence, especially for newer members who are still finding their place and are worried about retribution for calling out problematic behavior. Alcohol and drugs exacerbate issues of sexual abuse, reducing accountability and making consent impossible. While drink spiking is not prevalent on Dartmouth’s campus, it is not absent — there is a reason batch containers are tightly taped, some frats are willing to give closed cans to girls and rumors fly about frats where these crimes have allegedly occurred.
When women express concerns about sexual misconduct in Greek spaces, there is often a simple dismissal: “If you’re so concerned about it, don’t get involved in Greek life.” But at a place like Dartmouth — where over 70% of eligible students are affiliated and social life orbits around Greek spaces, particularly fraternities — this argument all but necessitates that women remove themselves from the dominant Dartmouth social scene. In other words, the options for women are to abstain from hegemonic social spaces or desensitize oneself to sexual abuse.
True families hold each other to account. If fraternity brotherhoods turned the logic of self-preservation on its head in favor of creating a familial obligation of mutual accountability, our college and other campuses across the country would be safer for everyone. An example of this form of accountability happened on our own campus four years ago: In April 2022, a visiting Dartmouth alumnus and Theta Delta Chi fraternity brother raped an 18-year-old female Dartmouth student on the roof of his former fraternity house. After the assault, the girl ran back into the house and disclosed her attack to another TDX fraternity brother, who shielded her in his room and testified against the rapist — his former fraternity brother — in a January 2025 trial. On Jan. 31, 2025, the attacker was found guilty on 12 counts of felonious sexual assault and acquitted on two counts of second-degree assault involving strangulation.
Sometimes, however, there are institutional problems that call for institutional discipline. In 2001, the College “permanently” derecognized Dartmouth’s chapter of Zeta Psi after the fraternity’s internal newsletter included a reference to “patented date rape techniques.” The Dartmouth covered the event extensively, but one of the most telling lines came from the first article published about the scandal: One of the students who found a copy of the offensive newsletter was “told by a brother of Zeta Psi that the fraternity would never stop printing the weekly newsletters because they are an ‘institution,’” a reporter wrote at the time. In other words, sexual misconduct was engrained into the fraternity’s identity.
In 2009, the fraternity was formally re-recognized, “heralded by an alumni fundraising campaign that raised millions of dollars,” according to Zete’s own website. In bending to appease wealthy alumni and their nostalgia for their youthful glory days, the College sent a message to its students: Erasure of sexual misconduct is for sale.
The hazing of new members can also contribute to an abusive culture in Greek spaces. When older members of a house take advantage of preexisting power dynamics to exploit and violate the boundaries of new members, everyone in the house is sent a message: Behavior like this is tolerated, if not embraced. The complete elimination of hazing should be a top priority of the College and should be understood as closely linked to sexual assault prevention.
All of these things considered, some are calling for the total abolition of Greek life on Dartmouth’s campus. This push is not new and has come at various points in the College’s history to no avail. We believe that it is more feasible to focus on incremental changes to the Greek system, and that a regulated Greek system may be safer for students than the unregulated network of social spaces that would inevitably spawn as a result of Greek life abolition.
There are a number of small changes that the College may consider adopting, including: hiring outside bartenders for registered fraternity events to mitigate overserving and the serving of alcohol to those under the legal age; requiring all Greek house members to undergo rigorous and targeted sexual violence prevention and consent training twice per year; requiring training programs for fraternities to challenge toxic views of masculinity and rape; and requiring every Greek house to have multiple active Sexual Assault Peer Alliance members. Being a member of Greek life at Dartmouth is a privilege. The College should make it clear that noncompliant members will be summarily removed from membership rosters and noncompliant chapters will be formally derecognized by the College.
If the idea of brothers holding other brothers accountable for sexual misconduct sounds implausible, then to whom should this responsibility fall instead? Outside of the College administration and law enforcement, this burden lies on the Dartmouth community. While it is regrettable that the onus of preventing sexual violence has been given to the student body rather than institutions of justice or the perpetrators themselves, social pressure is the most powerful tool to change peoples’ attitudes.
The normalization of sexual assault in Greek life — treating it like it is an inevitability — naturally emboldens perpetrators and their defenders alike. If the campus community treated members of Greek houses that shield guilty brothers from punishment as themselves complicit in the accused’s actions, then far fewer cases of sexual misconduct would go unreported. Likewise, if we decided to discard the term “Title IX” and call it what is — “This frat has X number of accusations of rape or sexual assault” — logically, fewer students would want to associate themselves with that Greek house.
We hope that change will come from the College administration or Greek spaces themselves, but if not, it must come from us, a Dartmouth community that will no longer tolerate perpetrators of sexual violence or their widespread network of enablers, deflectors and apologists.
The Editorial Board consists of opinion staff columnists and the opinion editors. It is separate from The Dartmouth’s newsroom. Views expressed represent those of the Editorial Board members, not The Dartmouth.
