Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: Rush It Real Good
First things first. If you are the soulless thief who took my red Columbia ski jacket from SAE last Friday, give it back! Not only does it have my name all over it, so you will never be able to wear it again without me attacking you, I hid it in a closet … so you clearly exerted some real effort in finding it instead of taking one of the dozens of coats all over the floor. No, it didn’t have my passport/driver’s license/family heirlooms/iPad in it or cost thousands of dollars (looking at you, ’17 girls who blitzed out this week), but I am cold and I would like my fracket back — please and thank you.
And we’re back. I would write about the ice all over campus, but that’s a little played out, don’t you think? In an effort to keep things fresh and interesting, I’ll be writing about a topic nobody has ever talked about before: women’s rush.
First, I have to make a disclaimer. I pledged my national sorority my sophomore winter after going through rush for the second time. We are not allowed to talk to the press as part of national policy, so I want to make it clear that I am not speaking on behalf of my organization or anybody in it. This is just me.
Rush, as you know, is happening. As you read this, PNMs (potential new members) are waiting for their list of houses for Round Two to be handed out in very public places such as Collis and Novack. Presumably, Panhell decided to do this because they think all the ’16s will all be already dressed up and decide to just go to their parties. Actually, this just means that they cry right before their parties and in public, which is great because rush isn’t already stressful and closely watched enough. Not that crying over rush is normal, but it’s sophomore year, so nobody knows better.
So how about that Panhell boycott? It strikes me that perhaps the issues they brought up – socioeconomic inequality, discrimination against minorities, sexual assault, among others – could have been just as easily talked about in the fall before rush, or after. Maybe it was just more dramatic this way. Whatever, I’m not here to judge people with good intentions.
I am here, however, to judge the Greek system. Now don’t get me wrong – I think that ours is actually a big step up from the systems I’ve seen and heard about at other schools, which include guest lists, cover charges and a much greater divide between Greek and non-Greek students. But it’s far from perfect. When we have 14 male social spaces (used to be 15, but RIP TDX) and only three female social spaces, there’s obviously a problem. And not just a problem with the post-rush state of things – it’s not like the droves of women that drop out of fall rush are doing so because they’re having so much fun they just want to go through it again next term. A lot of people advocate getting rid of the Greek system, but aside from the fact that it will probably never happen in one fell swoop, it might actually be more dangerous than keeping frats where they are. Think about it – with fraternities and sororities alive and well, Safety and Security has 17 (18 if you count Late Night Collis) central places to patrol where they can be certain that they are encountering the majority of the Greek system and much of the unaffiliated student body as well. Even if you account for the exempt-from-walkthroughs areas of private rooms, there’s still a generally central location for safety patrols to check for dangerous situations.
Without the Greek system, students will still be drinking, but in smaller groups and in more places. There are seven affinity programs with their own physical plants, in addition to 75 on-campus dormitories with a total of 156 floors. There are between 35 and 40 Safety and Security officers at the College, and not all of them are patrolling on Friday and Saturday nights. Even if they all did, Safety and Security does walkthroughs in pairs, so assuming at most 20 pairs of officers, it would still be incredibly difficult to make sure students are being reasonably safe. I can’t even tell you how many times my freshman floor had pregames that should have been broken up that the school had no idea were going on, and it’s not like we were especially sneaky about it – it’s just impossible to keep tabs on that many different locations at once.
That being said, there are a couple of things that I think would significantly improve rush and the Greek system. Short of making all houses coed or getting rid of the system entirely, there will be no semblance of gender equity in social spaces until we have the same number of sororities as fraternities and all sororities are able to hold open parties.
It shouldn’t be impossible for freshman women to meet affiliated women outside sports teams or campus groups, and your house shouldn’t be determined by four five-minute conversations that nobody remembers anyway. Seriously, if you don’t pledge my house we’re not going to remember each other for more than a day unless one of us was incredibly rude or did backflips or something, and that sucks. Subjecting girls to the frenetic pace of rush parties under the guise of “getting to know one another” is laughably futile – based on what I’ve seen, sororities have absurdly high dropout or inactive rates when compared to fraternities, and a huge part of that is probably because we choose a group of women to call our “sisters” after spending at most three hours of time with them.
Obviously, this isn’t enough. We need at least three or four more sororities to counter the grip fraternities hold over campus, and I’m not sure whether it’s possible to mandate that all national sororities disaffiliate from their national organizations, but doing so would be a step in the right direction. This would bring down the cost of belonging to a sorority several hundred dollars a year. Space issues aside – since going local won’t make much of a difference in resolving the social inequities surrounding the Greek system unless all sororities have physical plants – having 10 or 11 local sororities open to campus would allow women to get to know each other in a social space and really get a sense of which groups they feel comfortable with. Hopefully this will lead to higher retention rates, for both minority and non-minority students, and in general a better Greek experience for those who choose to rush. This isn’t going to be an easy or cheap process, but I really believe it’s necessary.
So there you have it – my two cents. I know this wasn’t really a funny column, but I promise next week the jokes will be back. To all the women across campus going through rush, good luck!