Your Basic Fraternity?
Heorot, né Chi Phi, will remain on probation through the summer of 1980, but severe social restrictions imposed on the fraternity late in the summer by John Hanson '59, dean of students, were lifted in time for Dartmouth Night and Houseparties.
The first of four periodic reports required as part of the group's probation convinced Hanson that conditions he had found appalling in September had been alleviated sufficiently to warrant removal of restrictions. Heorot had been under a complete ban on attendance by non- members at any social function and the prohibition of alcohol except between 5:00 and 11:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Enforcement, the dean said, consisted of "random drop-ins by campus police" and the good will of members of Heorot and the Interfraternity Council. The IFC, he pointed out, shares a stake in seeing that standards are met.
In a letter informing house president Ross Brownridge '80 of Heorot's probationary status, sent shortly before the start of fall term, Hanson cited "incidents of vandalism and other destructive behavior, inattention to and non- compliance with health and safety requirements, minimal support of the IFC efforts to effect progress within the system, and the disreputable and unacceptable condition dition in which the house was maintained and left at the end of the summer." Specific examples of offenses were hay strewn on the patio and plastic cups on an unmowed lawn and golf balls driven through windows of Alumni Gymnasium. The latter, he suggests, "could hardly be unintentional."
"At a time when the entire fraternity system has been asked to show cause why it should not be abolished altogether, the irresponsible actions of Heorot jeopardizes chapters and individuals well beyond your own membership," the dean declared, in obvious reference to the trustees' decision last winter not to act on the faculty's vote for abolition, pending evidence of improved behavior.
The brothers of Heorot cried foul, and rhetoric in the pages of The Dartmouth grew strident. "Everyone is threatened now that the deans are running amok," charged one columnist, blaming the crisis on "gutless leadership" in the IFC that had left fraternities exposed to "the whining attacks of second-string irrelevant people and misinformed, myopic policy-makers." Heorot, first to suffer such outrageous fortune since a new constitution governing standards and procedures was adopted in the spring of 1978, claimed the house had been set up as an example because their East Wheelock Street location made them highly visible. "We're no better or worse than any other fraternity on campus...." said social chairman Jeff Pope 'BO. "We're just your basic fraternity."
Hanson denies the allegation almost as vehemently as it was made. "I would have responded the same way to any house that put together the record that Heorot did last summer. They claim they were just noticed because of the fact that 1 go by the house every day on my way to the office. But the facts are also that I go by the AD house at the same time and that I jog Webster Avenue three times a week. Heorot was that much worse." The dean has heard the same sort of reasoning from Fraternity Row: "They say they get picked out for criticism because they're clustered."
A 14-page report, enumerating points of progress down the path toward fraternal righteousness, citing chronological chapter and verse on clean-ups, window repair, leaf-raking, and community service, apparently impressed the dean, the IFC, and the recently established Fraternity Board of Overseers enough that the bans were lifted.
Heorot will remain on probation for the full year, Hanson says, in part to see how the fraternity operates through summer term, when acting officers are frequently in charge. Discontinuity of leadership, most parties agree, contributed heavily to last summer's state of affairs. With social restrictions lifted, probation involves "keeping their noses clean and making regular reports the first day of each term," Hanson said. That — and the certain knowledge that the axe, hanging heavy over their heads, could fall again, should there be backsliding.
