Fraternity Freedom

THE Trustees at their spring meeting also accepted and approved the recommendation of Dartmouth undergraduates, as expressed in their March referendum, that fraternities at the College must within six years rid themselves of nationally imposed membership restrictions based on race, religion or national origin. Any Dartmouth fraternity chapter that has not eliminated discriminatory membership clauses by 1960 will be barred from all fraternity activities, including rushing — in other words, will be through.

In the campus-wide referendum conducted by the Undergraduate Council the students, by 90 per cent of the votes cast, backed the principle of removing fraternity discrimination. This stand by the students was expressed in 1,128 votes cast for the i960 deadline and 848 votes cast for a second possibility, that of continuing the present effort to remove the clauses without a deadline but with a yearly judgment by the Undergraduate Council of each chapter's progress. The referendum's third option, that of halting all efforts to eliminate discrimination, received only 278 of the 2,248 votes cast.

For four years, under the second option, Dartmouth undergraduates have made some progress in ridding Dartmouth fraternities of discriminatory clauses. In this period one chapter disaffiliated from its national organization and went local and another chapter succeeded in dropping the offending clauses without severing its national ties. Most students agreed with the Undergraduate Council that progress was too slow, and the i960 deadline, with Trustee action giving it teeth, now controls which Dartmouth undergraduates have shown nationally recognized leadership.

One letter from an alumnus to the ALUMNI MAGAZINE mistakenly protests against depriving students of the right to have fraternity brothers of their own choice. The banning of discriminatory clauses does not remove this right or the College's recognition of it. The action taken by the Trustees simply guarantees that fraternity men at Dartmouth shall have complete freedom to choose their chapter brothers and shall not be controlled by arbitrary and discriminatory restrictions from outside the College.