Stuff Dartmouth Kids Like: My Dartmouth
The world can be a scary place. As part of that world, Dartmouth can be a scary place, too. Bad things happen here – sexual assault, dangerous levels of alcohol consumption, incidents where racism rears its ugly head. With every publicized incident that takes place – I say publicized because I am sure there are many episodes that never see the light of day – campus discussion follows a predictable pattern: outrage, condemnation, blame.
A quick trip down memory lane – my first week at Dartmouth, an anonymous user blitzed the entire Class of 2014 a song called “Out of Control” detailing the sexual assault of a female student, accompanied by a poem promising that we would “surrender what [we] hold most dear.” Last year, Parker Gilbert, a former member of the Class of 2016, was arrested on four counts of rape. And recently, a male member of the Class of 2017 published a “rape guide” on Bored at Baker.
I took great pause when I began to write this article, not because I am unsure in my beliefs or because I am afraid of the response it might receive. I took pause because according to the current tone of campus dialogue – at least dialogue that has been published – as a senior woman who is not white, I should feel unsafe at Dartmouth. I should have experienced disempowerment at the hands of cisgender, affluent, straight white men. But I haven’t.
Nobody’s experience should be discounted. There are many people on this campus – people of all genders, sexual orientations and races – who have not felt at home here, or worse, felt unsafe or victimized by other members of the Dartmouth community. I cannot speak for anybody else, and I do not claim to. I can only speak from my own perspective, about my own experience.
It is easy to generalize. It is easy to say that fraternities hold “responsibility for any incident of sexual assault, wherever it may occur.” It is easy to write that fraternities provide “entitled” men with the power to rape women “in droves.” It is easier to write off a system as evil and broken than to acknowledge that we are all capable of terrible things and maybe there’s not a silver bullet that explains why we hurt each other.
The people who argue that there is a problem at Dartmouth certainly have a point. The Bored at Baker rape guide was disgusting and indefensible, and as I argued several weeks ago, the fraternity system does place undue amounts of power in the hands of men. There are certainly those who would defend the Greek system to the death, and they are not right either. The truth is more complicated than that.
It is easy to recognize that our Greek system has flaws, but it should be much harder to view all its members as one faceless, homogeneous threat that the fraternities transformed from innocent boys into antagonistic men. It is impossible to blame the Greek system for all Dartmouth’s problems without putting that burden on the shoulders of all Greek men as well. There is no separating the two.
It is hard for me to impugn these men in one fell swoop because I, like all of you, know these men. I’ve studied for midterms and finals with them, eaten meals with them, run around the bonfire with them, sung the alma mater with them, played pong with them and fallen asleep next to them. They are my friends and my classmates, they are brothers to women and sons of women and boyfriends to women and men, and they are wonderful.
It is hard for me to stand in judgment of them because I have been in situations when it would have been easier for the sons of Dartmouth to do nothing, but instead they took action. There are power dynamics between men and women, but hierarchies exist within fraternities, too. My Dartmouth is a place where these hierarchies have never interfered with what was right.
There was the time my freshman spring when I was playing pong with a senior, alone in a basement with a rapidly dwindling crowd. The senior was aggressive and I grew increasingly uncomfortable, but I didn’t know anybody in the basement and didn’t know what to do. Two men, who I now know were pledges based on their outfits, must have seen this, because they came over and got the senior to leave, even though it would have been much easier for them not to challenge him.
There was the time a brother was rude to me and was asked by other members of his house who didn’t know me from Adam to apologize and leave.
There are the times I know of and have heard about where brothers accused of harming women had their house membership revoked or were placed on social probation.
And then there were all the times I didn’t feel disrespected, or threatened, or afraid, which is pretty much every time I’ve been in a basement or interacted with men at this campus. There are all the times men have said “no” to hooking up with women because they recognize that one or both of them is too intoxicated to give real consent.
That is my Dartmouth. A place where I don’t have to shimmy myself into a tight dress and heels hoping to pass muster at a fraternity door to be let in. A place where I know I can always have my friends with me to have my back because we don’t have a door policy here. A place where the men I know have acted exactly how they should – like decent human beings.
I know this is not everybody’s Dartmouth. There are many people here who have felt disrespected, or threatened, or afraid, sometimes all at once. Their experiences should be heard. But it is important to keep in mind the other perspectives, too, because we cannot begin to meaningfully address a problem without first understanding the big picture.
It is possible to love fraternities and the men who pledge them while also hating sexual assault and people who ignore the word “no.” It is possible to talk about sexual assault without resorting to the trope that men are the evil spawn of fraternities. It should be possible to share these opinions without being called an apologist, or a defender of the status quo, or blind to reality. There is middle ground here.
It is wrong to lump all fraternity men together, just as it would be wrong to deny that predators do exist among us. Listen to the stories of hurt and pain and cruelty that your classmates have to tell and become outraged, but be careful not to generalize, stereotype or blame those who are also on your side. We all want a better Dartmouth. Let’s work together to get there.