The Undergraduate
Guest editor of "The UndergraduateChair" this month is Charles F. Pierce Jr.'58, president of the Interfraternity Council, who has been invited to review theyear on the Dartmouth fraternity front.
ALTHOUGH fraternities at Dartmouth are undergraduate functions, they are an aspect of the Hanover scene of importance to many alumni as well. Any discussion about Dartmouth fraternities deserves a few remarks about their uniqueness. While houses are often stereotyped, there is a pervading friendliness among them that surprises many outsiders. The well-used expression, "when you join one house you join them all," is verified every weekend by the popular game of house-hopping.
Isolating the freshmen from fraternities for the entire first year is an excellent idea. It reinforces their loyalty to the overall Dartmouth community. My limited acquaintance with the alumni supports the belief that the College is always their first love. The class is their second love and, if they can remember which one they belong to, their fraternity is third in line.
Each year the Interfraternity Council deals with obstacles that keep the fraternities from fully carrying out their roles. Sometimes we create the obstacles ourselves, and sometimes we do not. A perennial problem is rushing. The 24 fraternities at Dartmouth appear very attractive to most of the men newly arrived at sophomore standing. A College limit of 65 members keeps each house near or filled to capacity, and allows the combined chapters to accept nearly all the rushees.
Like every organization in this era, the IFC attacks its problems through committee work. This year our Rushing Committee adopted a different rushing system. The two main innovations were (1) to use IBM machines for sorting out fraternity and rushee choices and (2) to allow fraternity men to speak, during the rushing period, to prospective brothers in their dormitory rooms. By unanimous agreement, the first innovation was endorsed for the future. But carrying rushing into the dormitories was viewed with mixed feelings. By a split vote this rule will not be changed; no other alternative could be agreed upon. I am afraid of this system. Restricting rushing to the houses used to place the emphasis in the right place. This problem has not been satisfactorily solved.
The next big obstacle we faced this year was the Harvard drum battle, staged between the halves of the Dartmouth-Harvard football game in Cambridge. At its first meeting following the weekend the Interfraternity Council took swift action. By unanimous vote letters of apology were sent to the Harvard administration, the Harvard Band and The Crimson. A cordial answer was received from President Pusey.
The ten houses that had sent pledge trips into the Cambridge area were requested to appear before the IFC Judiciary Council. A five-hour interrogation indeed. Not one of the houses had read the IFC pledge trip regulations, much less followed them. In each case, nothing rough was planned, but errors in judgment were abundant. Based on the Judiciary Council's evidence, houses were given single or double warnings and fines of ten to twenty points. Two days later the Faculty Committee on Administration questioned the president of each house involved. Overriding our rulings, they placed eight houses on social probation for the rest of the semester. I think this was too severe. But, not only did Fall Houseparties pass without trouble; there was even a note of humor as several fraternities decked their houses with all the trappings of deep mourning and then got together to hold a joint funeral for the lost weekend.
Perhaps our biggest fraternity obstacle is nationally imposed discriminatory clauses in the charters of some of the houses. While the 1960 Referendum will bar from the campus all fraternities with such clauses, we have been given few ideas for carrying out the referendum. Proving the existence of an unwritten clause seems to be a problem impossible of solution. The IFC Discrimination Committee, after many meetings, has adopted a new line of thought. Now each house will be considered guilty until it proves itself innocent. Two criteria have been established to prove a fraternity's innocence. The first is a letter to be sent to the headquarters of each national fraternity asking if its Dartmouth chapter can abide by our referendum. The second is a pledge of "no clauses" to be signed by each house president. These criteria will not go into effect until i960.
A system for judging charges of violations of the letter or the pledge after 1960 has been devised. The whole purpose of the referendum is to rid Dartmouth fraternities of nationally imposed clauses, written or unwritten. The battle of discrimination must take place within each man and the outcome must rest on his conscience. This means local autonomy.
Finally, I would like to think about the future for a moment. Education is learning from books and it is learning from experience. The faculty is taking good care of the book side, but the other side is in danger. One of the best experiences a student can have is that of contributing to the Dartmouth community through a student organization. From nearly every one of these campus activities come reports of shrinking membership and decreasing scope. I like the idea of fraternities being strictly social, but they may have to be something more. Perhaps small groups of men from different houses will extend their friendship into working together in a non-fraternity function. They may become the primers that will give the present, fine organizations a new impulse.
Charles F. Pierce Jr. '58, guest editor this month, photographed at the Beta Theta Pi House, of which he is president. From Montclair, N.J., he is a Public Administration major, a member of Palaeopitus and Sphinx, and Vice President of the Dartmouth Christian Union, for which he has served as chairman of the Social Service Commission. This winter he was the fraternity representative on the Winter Carnival Board.
