Fraternity Issue

The efforts of Dartmouth undergraduates to remove racial and religious bias from the charters of all fraternities on the campus continued in the news this past month. The Undergraduate Council, top organization among Dartmouth student governing bodies, entered the picture in micl-January when it voted to hold a student referendum on whether or not to penalize Dartmouth chapters having discriminatory clauses. One proposal is to bar such houses from all interfraternity competition after April 1, 1952; the other, less drastic, is to withdraw Council recognition from such chapters if they have not exhausted all possible means of eliminating discriminatory clauses, short of severing national affiliation.

Previously the students voted overwhelmingly against discrimination in Dartmouth fraternity life. It was this earlier vote by the entire student body that led the Undergraduate Council to appoint a committee to recommend the best means of implementing campus opinion.

Commenting on the action of the Undergraduate Council, its president, Thomas E. O'Connell '5O, said, "It is an attempt by undergraduates to eliminate a situation which we do not believe should exist at Dartmouth College. It is a compromise between a do-notfeing policy and the issuing of an ultimatum which might possibly sever national affiliation for some houses."

Meanwhile, the December action of the Dartmouth Interfraternity Council, supporting the joint efforts of New England colleges and taking the lead in calling upon the national interfraternity conference to go on record against racial and religious discrimination, won favorable editorial comment all over the country.