Should Greek Houses All Go Coed?: Yes
By Reese Ramponi, The Dartmouth Staff
Published on Friday, September 21, 2012
If Dartmouth’s administration mandated that all Greek houses on campus “go coed” by banning gender discrimination in the rush process, I can only imagine the opposition. Such an idea would go against long-standing Dartmouth traditions and undoubtedly anger many students — not to mention fraternity alumni whose donations would soon plummet. By and large, the student body does not support making the Greek system coed. In a Government 10 survey conducted by Tyler Stoff ’15 this year, 70 percent of the 672 undergraduates surveyed were not in support of a fully coeducational Greek system. According to the survey, the majority of students said that the Greek system should remain as is.
To some, like Stuart Ghafoor ’14, inaction on the issue of a coed Greek system is similar to the administration’s inaction on coeducation until 1972.
In 1960, only a slim majority of students favored the mandatory racial desegregation of the fraternity system. But simply because the students do not support an issue does not mean that it should be dismissed. The administration mandated the transition to coeducation and the desegregation of the fraternity system since they were seen as in the best interests of the College.
The current Greek system is undoubtedly flawed, but would a mandated change to coeducation be able to address the multifaceted problems of sexual assault, binge drinking and hazing within (but not limited to) the system?
The inability of national sororities to hold open events with alcohol combined with the small number of local sororities on campus tips the scale of social control as women are driven to socialize in male-dominated spaces. An increase in the number of local sororities would begin to address this problem, but the power balance during events held at individual houses would remain the same. In addition, issues related to gender equality exist not only in this social scenario, but also within the way the Greek system teaches us to treat each other.
Our four years as an undergraduate are an important time for personal development. It is where we learn to “relate to ourselves and to each other on our own terms” and make lifelong friendships, according to Gabe Rosenstein ’13.
Developing these relationships and having experiences in spaces that are male-dominated and gender-normative perpetuates already strained gender dynamics while making it harder for men and women to form friendships, he said.
“It is preparing [students] to not treat the other gender as an equal, but as an other,” Rosenstein said.
Coeducation could work to combat the power balance between men and women in fraternities, according to Aaron McGee ’14. Women visiting a fraternity would no longer be guests of a brother, but simply guests. For both women and men within the house, coeducation would act as a mechanism for self-regulation. As Brian Giunta ’14 said, “Men would not feel comfortable hazing women like they haze each other.” The idea of men hazing women is “sinister,” Giunta said. The presence of the opposite sex and the gender dynamics that accompany it would allow individuals to see what they had somehow missed — that the hazing tactics that occur within the Greek system are not only dangerous, but dehumanizing and derogatory. Giunta said that having all houses go coed would reduce instances of hazing and sexual assault due to the in-house accountability.
Some argue that there is no need for a coeducational system, but only for coed options within that system.
While coed houses exist on campus, they are not an option considered equal to the mainstream Greek system. Because they are smaller and have a different rush process, coed houses are often self-selective and not considered by those looking for a house to join.
Fraternities’ hesitance to go coed stems from a fear of this reputation and a worry that they will lose their house’s character, McGee said. They are mistaken, McGee said, as it was not coeducation that gave these houses their unique reputations. Rather, it was the offbeat and accepting nature of these houses that made them receptive to the idea of coeducation in the first place.
“It’s not that coed houses can’t be mainstream,” Alpha Theta coeducational fraternity member Van Melikian ’14 said. “Just that the current coeds aren’t mainstream.”
Perhaps the student body would have decided to support admitting women eventually. Perhaps fraternities would have eventually accepted African-American members. But we cannot know how long it would have taken for these changes to come about organically. Even without administrative action on this issue, “there will be a tipping point,” Stoff said.
The system will slowly shift, and in time, the houses that have maintained antiquated single-sex traditions will be seen as discriminatory, Stoff said.
In 100 years, the Greek system’s shift to coeducation will seem much like these historical changes: a speed bump on the path to gender equality.
Okay, so… I think this article really draws a lot of incorrect conclusions, and kind of misses the point. Let me start with what I think is at the heart of your argument:
First of all, I want to say that I believe in gender equality completely. I’m not going to presume to be able to see things from a different gender’s perspective, of course. But I have to say, what you have here is a very twisted view of the Greek system. I strongly believe that this scenario is not the same is co-education, or racial equality, or, I would say, marriage, today. The basic problem with your view is that Greek organizations are not denying anyone anything based on sex; they exist for both men and women, and, since there are co-ed organizations already in existence, the system doesn’t deny the co-ed experience to those who want it, or to those who want an experience that transcends gender. And, new organizations can be founded all the time. Rather than denying people something, the Greek system provides people an opportunity to find community with people who they feel they can relate to, to help them form friendships with those who share their experience. For many, and, I would say, most, people, they find it much easier to make friends with people of the same sex; this is also because of the shared experience that people of the same gender have, and this continues throughout life. This is not something that is unnatural, or wrong, and it never will be. Greek life also does not preclude against people forming bonds with people of other genders at Dartmouth: there is a plethora of other co-ed organizations on campus, that range from acapella groups, to political groups, to you-name-it, and even to groups that don’t exist yet because students will found them this year, and in years to come. Being in contact with other genders is a part of every Dartmouth student’s time there; not to mention that our entire academic life at Dartmouth, a good part of our residential life, and basically all of our other interactions exist in a multi-gender setting, as well as the rest of our lives after college, which is the biggest portion of our lives.
You are conflating issues of the unpopularity of co-ed houses, hazing, and sexual abuse/assault with a huge entity you deem to be the source of these problems, when in reality the current Greek system does much more good than harm, by giving people a social outlet, as I mentioned above. Those are real problems you mention, and they need real solutions. As the interviewee said in your article, co-ed houses have the potential to be mainstream, but they aren’t right now. If people begin to desire to live in houses that aren’t single-sex, I expect that those will become more popular and more mainstream in the future. There’s no reason to accuse single-sex houses for a problem that’s not really a problem. If the relative unpopularity of co-ed houses stems from less funding, in your opinion, I think that will also change with alumni of those houses, and there’s always fundraisers, which the single-sex houses do all the time. I just think, on that issue, this perceived “problem” is just a reflection of where the people on campus feel most comfortable, and what they want to do.
You throw hazing into the mix, sort of piggybacking on this argument. I have to say, that’s a pretty reactionary way to deal with hazing, and it really doesn’t get at the root of the issue. Also, there’s no reason why a co-ed group wouldn’t haze as well. People choose to be hazed because they believe it’s going to bring them closer together with the people they’re being hazed with. On a basic level, it really has nothing to do with gender—do you think there’s that much of a difference between hazing in sororities and in fraternities, in principle? That argument about men not hazing women—in theory, sure, but in a private place where people are using substances and are expected to be very close friends, there’s a lot of grey area. It shouldn’t be hard for you to imagine a group of really intoxicated people of both genders hazing a group of people of both genders. The answer is always education—educating Freshmen more about hazing, and teaching them to recognize troubling situations in their social lives. You talk about reform being necessary from the top down, but you’re wrong about where it should be happening; we should be promoting ideas that will truly change the culture and affect change, not attempting to bypass it and end up not actually changing it at all, while getting rid of a positive institution that’s been, and continues to be, the cornerstone of the experience of most Dartmouth students and alumni.
Most importantly, I am shocked that in an article criticizing the Greek system, you didn’t make one mention of sexual assault, which does happen a lot at Dartmouth, and, as I think everyone would agree, is the biggest, most pressing problem with campus social life right now. To be honest, I think this shows that your argument is fundamentally off from what’s really going on at the root of the problems on campus. The administration should be gearing up its education of Freshmen, and actually, Sophomores who will be rushing, or even upperclassmen, on these issues. And if they aren’t motivated enough to do that, then students need to continue to take matters into their own hands and increase awareness and prevention, to the point where it is really having an effect—and I think that it needs to go further. Crimes like that are the real problem we have on campus.
I think we need to think more about how to fix those problems—like pressuring the administration to do more and better education about hazing, and about sexual assault. It’s insulting to the alumni of Greek houses who care tremendously about these issues (and that’s most of us) to hear you offering up single-sex organizations as a sacrifice to somehow try to get around hazing, and as a magical cure-all that will eliminate all our inequality problems.
So finally, all I can say is, we really need to recognize the current Greek system for the positive force that it is, and not equate the fact that the single-sex houses are more popular than the co-ed ones with some lacking principle of inequality, which is just not true. This isn’t a college denying women education, or politicians denying basic rights to people of a different race, or people not allowing gay marriage. This is an opportunity, not discrimination. These organizations were created for people who’ve had a similar experience to be able to form friendships with those who understand them from a closer place, and other organizations are created all the time that have different bases. There’s no infringement on rights—in fact, the only infringement is to not allow people to form an organization based on shared experience, and with your logic, you might as well throw in affinity houses and any organization where people come together based on some shared experience or reality. And, there are co-ed houses if you want to form friendships in a house with people of all genders, which will get much more popular if there’s more student interest. We need to stop conflating other issues with the question of co-ed houses, and work on real ways to solve those problems, which need to be addressed by better education, and are much more important for the future of our school and our world than this irrelevant, unrealistic, incorrectly informed, and polarizing idea that misses the real issue.
By Nic Chuaqui ‘12 on Sep 22 | 9:50 pm
Expecting the administration to correct the problems by educating freshmen is a cop out – the standard frat patter.
By Anonymous on Sep 23 | 9:41 am