When Push Comes to Shove

Like many women and men at Dartmouth today, Gayle Gilman '85 and Fred Pfaff '85, the Magazine's Whitney Campbell interns, have a Dartmouth father. They have shared the Dartmouth experience, even if they don't always see eye to eye.

Gayle: My dad loves Dartmouth. But a daughter there? All he could think of was fraternity brothers on the platform in White River every Friday, all trying to take home the first girl who got off the train. But the way he looked at it, how would guys treat girls who were actually students at Dartmouth?

Fred: That never crossed my mind.

Gayle: You've gotta be kidding...

Fred: Look. I wanted to go to Dartmouth before I knew what college really was. I went to football games, my cousin's graduation, I knew half the songs and I sang along with my uncles whenever they came to dinner. It wasn't just a school. It was a family. Gayle: But it has its squabbles, like every family. Dartmouth's more sensitive than most schools, you know. Take the fraternities.

Fred: I know: "Don't give me that 'tradition' stuff, you guys. Just clean up your act or get out!"

Gayle: Gays getting harassed 'cause they don't fit the mold. And rush hostessing...

Fred: Let me guess. Three words: It degrades women. I don't even read the letters to The D anymore. Gayle: If you wear an Indian jacket, it's like you're some sort of criminal...

Fred: And you don't care about the real world or anybody else's feelings.

Gayle: Sometimes it seems like everybody's got an axe to grind.

Fred: Well, it's the thing to be offended: Write a letter to The D and tell everybody else how narrow-minded they are. It's ironic, isn't it? All those letters to The D trying to sensitize people and saying we all have to come together in a spirit of community. They seem So...

Gayle: Let's face it. They do more to split the campus. A lot of people just shake their heads. Look at what happened a couple of weeks ago - before the KKG-Alpha Chi party. Remember those posters?

Fred: The ones everybody got so worked up about?

Gayle: They had a drawing. It was supposed to be a guy and a girl from each house. The guy had on a button that said - "No Teds."

Fred: What's wrong with that? It's been an in word at Alpha Chi for years. You know - nerds.

Gayle: One girl was walking through the Hop with a friend of hers who's gay. Her friend told her that "Ted" is a put-down for homosexuals. Fred: How's anybody in Alpha Chi supposed to know that?

Gayle: Didn't matter to her. Her friend was embarrassed. So she got ticked off. She even called the Dean, but she couldn't get him. So she called KKG and yelled about it on the phone.

Fred: The letter the girls from KKG wrote to The D - wow! - that was bending over backwards. It was too much...

Gayle: The Gay Students Association - it's a shame. People stop listening to them when every little thing gets turned into some kind of crisis.

Fred: There are a lot more important things you don't hear anyone talking about - hunger, nuclear arms...

Gayle: Come on. How many people have time to get into that up here? You've got too many tests and papers and stuff. And everybody's thinking about their grades, and where they're gonna be next fall.

Fred: The deans think if you put profs in dorms - you know, the new masters - everybody will start talking about world issues in the halls - open up their minds.

Gayle: Sounds good on paper, but I don't know anybody who's really psyched for it.

Fred: The deans say students have to come up with the creative ideas. But guess what? One prof who's a master told me they don't even know yet what kind of programs will fly. They wonder...

Gayle: Don't you think they're trying to make it happen too fast - just like Minimum Standards?

Fred: Everybody's still worried about the College's reputation. You know- Animal House. All that stuff happened 10, 20 years ago.

Gayle: The deans are getting anxious. So are some of the students. I just get the feeling everybody's out to straighten out Dartmouth - and I mean this term.

Fred: things don't change overnight.

Gayle: What about the alcohol monitors you have to have at parties now?

Fred: It's the mandatory cultural events that really get me. They're expensive sometimes, and if houses don't have 'em...

Gayle: Am I a little kid? I thought I was supposed to come here and learn to make my own decisions.

Fred: It's tough to argue. Look at the probations for fraternities and the rules that say you have to live on-campus for summer term and you have to pay a Thayer Dining Hall membership...

Gayle: The problem is we always find out at the end of the term. Right when everybody's pressed for time. A letter to The D doesn't help. The D's already finished for the term.

Fred: The Row gets all these strict rules - just when things are getting calmer. Look at all the people going out on dates. You're not as suspect as you used to be if you start going out with a girl.

Gayle: My boyfriend used to take so much grief, I couldn't believe it.

Fred: Some of these guys - you know, some of the fraternity brothers you'd never think would be caught dead at a symphony - they're going. Some guys I know went to the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra this weekend and came back to the house to tell everybody what they missed.

They weren't embarrassed. Hell, they were psyched up.

Gayle: I don't hear 'em telling everybody about the string quartets they have on afternoons...

Fred: They have to have them. Minimum Standards.

Gayle: The traditional events, like Hums...

Fred: You mean Alternative Hums.

Gayle: Hums, I mean. Like before the

College ruled you had to be really clean and be judged on taste and make a Hums Dean Shanahan could take his family to.

Fred: But alternative Hums just got raunchier.

Gayle: The whole idea there is to be raunchy.

Fred: Nobody explained that to the two girls who wrote another typical letter to The D...all the outrage they could get on paper...

Gayle: Yeah, but don't ignore the letters the guys wrote back. They took the girls' side, even after one fraternity brother wrote that he'd had it with worrying about whom he'd offend if he did anything.

Fred: He spoke for a lot of guys. Where do you get off calling raunchy fun blatant hatred of women anyway?

Gayle: Right there. That's the attitude that shocked them. They didn't see anything like that all year. It wasn't the Dartmouth they thought they knew.

Fred: You think that's a good sign?

Gayle: Like yesterday, this guy I know he just pledged a house where they rage a lot, and sometimes they can get crude. Anyway, he thinks there's never been a better time to be at Dartmouth, except 10 years from now. Coming from a guy...Fred: You know I wish I'd been there Monday night - before Green Key. Everybody knows how the Row likes to put down the President, but he'd had a long day in front of the faculty... A bunch of guys - it must've been a hundred from different houses got together in jackets and ties and called McLaughlin out to his front steps to sing "Men of Dartmouth."

Gayle: I could've cried. I doubt if it could've happened at any other college in the country.

Fred: I think it said something: When push comes to shove, we're behind Dartmouth all the way.

Gayle: We'll always love this place, no matter what. I think that's what I'll take with me.

Fred: Amen.