A New Landscape
My first reaction to the Trustees' announcement that the Greek system "as we know it" is to be dismantled is best summed up by an old New England epitaph, "I knew this would happen, but not so soon." My second reaction was that it was the right decision and that it was long overdue.
I say this not because lam new to the campus and don't understand the local undergraduate social scene, nor because I harbor some latent grudge against fraternities and sororities. As the senior active member of the Arts & Sciences faculty in terms of service, having arrived on campus in 1956, I have witnessed a number of dramatic changes in the student social environment. Improvements in transportation changed the College's isolated geographical status and its rather parochial view of social alternatives. At the same time, under President Dickey's aegis, most of the national fraternities were forced to sever their national affiliations and "go local" or go out of existence, because of discriminatory racial and religious provisions in their national charters. Subsequently, Dartmouth was transformed into a coed institution when women were admitted more than 25 years ago—the last of the Ivy League schools to yield to the inevitable. And not the least of these changes was the introduction and implementation of the D Plan in place of the traditional semester system. As a result, the basic parameters currently defining the possible scope of student social interactions have changed in such a manner that they bear little resemblance to those which prevailed in 1956. What has not changed significantly, however, is the mechanism, or structure, by which we, as a community, have responded to the changes in these parameters. Fraternities defined the social response in 1956 and fraternities significantly define that response in 1999. But what might have been an appropriate response 43 years ago is out of date—and out of touch with today's social realities.
I have mostly positive memories of membership in Phi Delta Theta as an undergraduate. The house met one's needs for socialization and for room and board. There was no hazing, no adolescent initiation rituals, and no alcohol (university regulations). It was an appropriate social response in its time. Subsequently, at Dartmouth I served as the faculty chapter advisor to Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP) and to Phi Delta Theta. TEP, being a predominantly Jewish fraternity, disappeared from the
campus in the early sixties after discriminatory charters were no longer acceptable. It was a great fraternity socially and intellectually, but it no longer was an appropriate response to the changed social environment. However, the Phi Delts, reincarnated as Phi Delta Alpha, and the other remaining local and national fraternities have continued to play a dominant and some-what intoxicating role in the social life of the College.
Unfortunately, they are in-not up to the task. The fraternities have repeatedly demonstrated that they are incapable of, among other things, appropriately monitoring the use of alcohol and of developing an expanded range of desirable social opportunities. Fraternities are not inherently bad; they are simply increasingly ineffective and irrelevant. Merely altering certain of their attributes won't help. A newer, more acceptable, and more effective means of meeting students' social needs has to be substituted for what now exists.
Ultimately, it is the Trustees' responsibility to determine what is or is not the appropriate structural response to the social needs of students on campus. The challenge for the students, the Trustees, and the administration is to seize this opportunity and together devise a decidedly superior student social alternative to the existing outmoded fraternity system. The faculty will provide moral support.
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS
SOCIAL INDEXThe Lone Pine No other elite school bonds with the fraternity system quite like Dartmouth. UndergraduateSchoolNumber of HousesCommentsEnrollmentDartmouth17 fraternities, 8 sororities, and 3 coed houses:Forty percent of students are affiliated.4300 Harvard None Students are assigned to one of 12 residential houses, each having dining and social spaces. 6,604 Yale None Famous for its secret societies. 5,236 Columbia 19 fraternities, 5 sororities Thirteen percent of men and six percent of women affiliated. 3,726 Cornell 45 fraternities, 19 sororities Roughly a third of the student body is affiliated. 13,512 Princeton None Twelve dining clubs. All are now coed. 4,593 Brown II fraternities, 2 sororities Twelve percent of men and two percent of women affiliated. 5,625 Penn 29 fraternities, 14 sororities Roughly a third of the student body is affiliated. 9,501 Sources: Barron's Profiles of American Colleges 22nd edition
