Verbum Ultimum: Abolish the Greek System
(10/17/14 2:18am)
The Greek system undeniably enables and institutionalizes harmful behaviors.
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The Greek system undeniably enables and institutionalizes harmful behaviors.
Every Friday, The Dartmouth editorial board prints a weekly column — our Verbum Ultimum — on page four. Today, we changed things up.
I entered my first Greek house at Dartmouth as a junior in high school. I was up at Dartmouth visiting my older brother, a member of the Class of 2013, who was currently relishing in sophomore summer. That night, I ventured out into the great unknown. Greek life was perhaps one of the main factors on my mind in considering whether Dartmouth would be right for me. I held a range of both fears and questions about the system, ranging from the trivial (do they actually throw toga parties?) to the more serious. My most serious fear was about exclusivity of the Greek life. Would my social life at Dartmouth be dictated by the whims of these fraternities and their brothers, whoever they were?
I remember that day during spring 2013 when classes were cancelled and we had speakers talk to us about the problems at Dartmouth. One of them said that there are a few bad eggs out there screwing it up for everyone else with bias incidents, sexual misconduct, and hate. This puts the blame on a handful of people, reassuringly, but is ultimately untrue. The blame for these behaviors falls on everyone who fails to step in when the roots of these behaviors are displayed.
I am sick of your abuse. You make me need you, you hurt my friends and I keep coming back.
The current outlook on Dartmouth’s Greek system has led to a vicious cycle of negative media coverage, and Greek organizations are increasingly portrayed as corrupting influences, bastions of classism and hotbeds of sexual assault. Fueled by horror stories and a lack of understanding, critics are putting fraternities and sororities on the whipping post for a host of higher education’s ills. These are dangerously uninformed assessments.
When I was asked to recount my experience editing and publishing “Telling the Truth” (Jan. 25, 2012), the opinion column that sparked much of the current discussion about hazing and the value of Dartmouth’s Greek system, I was lukewarm about the idea. The column, by Andrew Lohse ’12, was one of the most important pieces published during my tenure as the 2012 editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth, but I had largely put my role in editing the piece behind me, and I prefer to focus on the conversations that have taken place since.
Say what you will about us, we have a flair for the irreverent.
Change is happening at Dartmouth. We all know it. On a campus of 4,000 driven and proactive undergrads, it’s hard not to recognize the transformations that occur each day. Many of these changes revolve around the Greek system and its role on campus.