Life on Campus Is Slated for an Overhaul

The Trustees want to cut fraternity clout; Frat Row demurs

As spring term drew to a close, a series of decisions by the College added yet another topic to the chain of campus controversies: what to do about the frats. Weeks earlier a presidential committee on residential life acted on a Trustee charge to lessen Frat Row's grip on the social scene. Affiliated students howled. The report came in the wake of a sting operation launched by the Hanover Police which resulted in the punishment of eight houses caught serving alcohol to minors.

In the midst of the din, President McLaughlin used the committee s report as a starting point for an overhaul of campus residential life. As his tenure in office drew to a close he took the following actions:

• Approved a revamped alcohol policy.

• Increased the student activity budget for the summer term from $5,000 to $25,000; the annual student activity budget was increased to $150,000.

• Recommended to the Trustees that rush be postponed to sophomore year.

• Abolished single-sex dorms.

• Increased incentives to attract faculty masters—academics who live in dormitories and interject an intellectual element into social life.

• Approved a new housing policy that gives sophomores the highest priority.

• Established a "resource center" (besides the recently approved women's resource center) that will provide programming support for cultural, intellectual and social events.

In conclusion, McLaughlin also asked that the board establish a committee to study the viability of a new student center.

McLaughlin's actions responded to a charge issued in February, when the Trustees expressed displeasure with the speed at which Dartmouth's residential life system was improving. "We have not yet succeeded in reducing the fraternity system's dominance of social life on campus," the board stated.

The Trustees' words had a conspiratorial ring in the ears of affiliated students. Their current wariness of the administration's motives can be traced to the imposition of minimum standards four years ago. Fraternities were required to formalize their leadership, curb alcohol abuse, sponsor community service projects and spend thousands of dollars to repair and install safety devices in the houses.

"It was pretty clear to almost anyone who cared about the system and the values of this College that the fraternities had to restore themselves," says McLaughlin. "They had to be physically repaired and then they had to find a new way to define their purpose in the redefined Dartmouth, or they should go out of existence."

Frat Row, still reeling from a term that saw three houses lose College recognition, suddenly found itself under direct attack by the Committee on Residential Life, chaired by History Professor James Wright. "We believe that the selective and exclusive nature of these organizations, along with a dominant pattern of single-sex membership, is much too restrictive and narrow to continue the recent policy of freshman rush," the report stated.

The committee went on to attack the fraternities' image and even its supporters: "Those who. revel in this institutional image and attempt to enhance it have no real understanding of the nature of the college and probably have no real business being here." The report recommended strong medicine: that rush be delayed one year and that houses be forced to close during the summer.

Affiliated students responded with the argument that a more restrictive alcohol policy was enough of a reform. They backed up their debate with muscle on May 15 when 600 marchers converged on Parkhurst in support of the fraternity system. The protest leaders presented the administration with a petition signed by 2,000 students complaining about the Wright Report.

The students argued that the attacks on the fraternities threaten Dartmouth's very social fabric. Since the imposition of the Dartmouth Plan and semesters overseas, fraternities have become crucial to the maintenance of continuity in campus relationships. Fraternities, which are already hard-pressed to cover the costs of minimum standards, could expect at least a 27 percent drop in income if rush were delayed, according to a report by the Interfraternity Council. Besides, the students asked, how can the College have sophomore rush when many students are off campus their sophomore year?

Supporters of the Wright report counter by pointing to a variety of incidents on campus during the past year, including underage drinking, the shooting of a female student in the buttocks, and the production of a pornographic newsletter. With episodes like these, Greek critics say, who needs fraternities in the center of social life?

A majority of Dartmouth students side with the marchers, according to a poll conducted by The Dartmouth. The respondents favored a student center and improved dorm clusters—along with a strong fraternity system. Students also caution against taking action against the frats until the student center and a strong non-frat social system are in place. (Campus historians will recall that President Ernest Martin Hopkins proposed a similar student center on the site of the Hanover Inn.) Students also ask who will foot the bill for the residential life changes proposed in the Wright report. Dean of the College Edward Shanahan estimates that the total cost could go as high as $25 million.

Meanwhile, some houses are attempting reform from within, examining their charters and the way they enforce their bylaws. Some did it on their own; those that were on probation were required by authorities to contemplate change. In May the Greeks formed a new organization, the United Fraternities of Dartmouth, with the purpose of implementing some of the Wright report's ideas concerning community involvement.

Some administrators and faculty remain skeptical that internal reform could replace the need for sophomore rush. The more venerable critics quote President Hopkins, who wrote to a friend in 1924: "The interpolation of fraternity interests into the freshman year at Dartmouth is a maladjustment. Its processes are harmful to the class, demeaning to the fraternities, and injurious to the morale of the College."

Lest old traditions fail: Affiliated students link arms and sing "Men of Dartmouth" on the Parkhurst lawn