A year ago Andrew Beebe '93 proposed an entirely co-ed Greek system. While I supported the spirit of his proposal, I disagreed with some of the particulars, and spent last year talking about the issue with as many sorority, fraternity and co-ed house members as possible.
As a result of those talks I offer the following proposal: Reorient the present Greek system so that co-ed houses are numerically the majority, the "mainstream" social option. Instead of the present system of 17 fraternities, 8 sororities and 3 co-ed houses, it might mean having 6 fraternities, 6 sororities and 16 co-ed houses.
Not only would this alternative be more balanced than Beebe's proposal, but it would also begin to address the troubling gender attitudes the present system reinforces. The two attitudes I found most striking were a deep distrust between Greek men and women, and a disdain for co-ed social organizations.
In both fraternities and sororities the distrust surfaced as a siege mentality: each gender worried about the other gender infiltrating its social space. When I asked fraternity brothers to imagine themselves in a co-ed house, they expressed their distrust in terms of "sexual tension," of finding themselves acting differently, "unnaturally" around women.
They were concerned about relationship issues, about how problems between men and women house members would add to co-ed tension, something they didn't have to worry about in a fraternity.
Sorority sisters were just as unwilling to yield more social space to men. On a campus that they feel is male-oriented, many sisters said that sororities were the best things they had going for them. And they thought that they'd never find the same autonomy in a co-ed system. As they saw it, any new co-ed houses would simply be glorified fraternities with some women members.
When they looked at why they felt this way, some sorority and fraternity members could point to ways the system did, in fact, encourage this distrust. One sister put it this way: "It was like that," she said, dropping her hand as if pulling a shade. "Guys who were your friends before rush started to pretend they didn't even know you afterwards."
I found this distrust so striking because it was alien to my own college experience in a co-ed social organization and alien to the experience of the Dartmouth co-ed house members I spoke with.
As I've told many fraternity brothers, in my experience a co-ed house was not the end of manhood. Men found plenty of time to socialize alone. Women did too. Sharing space wasn't an issue and I never felt a day-to-day fear of co-ed coexistence. And with both men and women serving as house officers, there was little chance that the house would suddenly transform into a fraternity or a sorority.
I don't mean to make my experience universal. Interested people should ask Dartmouth's co-ed house members about their experiences.
That brings up the other striking attitude, the one toward co-ed houses. I asked two questions of people: "What did you think about co-ed places during high school?" and "What do you think of co-ed places now?"
The answers were amazingly uniform. Most people didn't think anything of co-ed places during high school; when men and women socialized together, there wasn't a stigma.
In answer to the second question, most sorority and fraternity members reluctantly cited the campus stereotypes: Dartmouth co-ed house members were seen as "marginal," "fringe," "weird," "people you don't see around campus much." Everyone clearly recognized these as stereotypes; very few had any first-hand experience to prove or disprove their belief. Still, these were the beliefs.
So the next question was, "What happened between the end of high school and your upper class years at Dartmouth to change your attitude?"
Dartmouth's Greek system happened. In a system where the norm is a single-sex house, it isn't unusual for anything not single-sex to be seen as abnormal or marginal or weird. Numerically, co-ed houses ARE marginal; inevitably that designation has carried over to a judgment of the membership as well.
The result is a system whose attitudes lock it in place. You have men and women polarized in an "us vs. them" struggle, unwilling to give up any territory because the stakes seem so high, and co-ed houses branded as social outcasts.
The by-product of the co-ed attitude is a continued co-ed minority. Many students who might otherwise consider a co-ed house don't because they don't want to wear the social outcast label. One sorority officer put it best: "Before I came to Dartmouth, when I read that there were co-ed houses, I thought it was a great idea. I was really excited. But after I got here, I knew I could never join one."
Would a reorganized Greek system with a co-ed mainstream change attitudes and make co-ed social interaction seem less threatening? I think it would. To test this, I asked fraternity and sorority members to imagine themselves rushing a system with a co-ed mainstream. Many admitted that they would join a house where they found their friends, and if that was a co-ed house, they'd join a co-ed.
I want to be clear, though, that a co-ed mainstream without any single-sex houses is as misguided as a single-sex system without co-ed houses. Fraternities and sororities must continue to exist.
Even in a co-ed mainstream system, many men and women will prefer to join single-sex houses. Their right to choose should be honored; the sorority/fraternity option should always be available, as should other alternatives, such as Panarchy's undergraduate society.
Finally, this proposal is no panacea. In no way do I think that a co-ed mainstream system would eradicate sexism on campus or eliminate sexual assault. But it would address the built-in gender attitudes that accompany the present system, and I think over time it would definitely improve the way men and women perceive each other on the Dartmouth campus.
The clearest example of what I mean happened one evening when I was sitting in a fraternity room talking with some of the brothers about the ways I thought the Greek system influenced gender attitudes.
All of a sudden another brother appeared in the hall. "I hate those people!" he yelled.
"Who?" the fraternity president asked.
"Them. Those people over there," the brother said, gesturing down the hall towards a sorority across the way. "I hate them!" Then he was gone.
It was the kind of unexpected, out-of-context raving that leaves you speechless. No one seemed to know what it was about. We all looked at each other and shrugged.
Then one of the brothers in the room, one who had been opposing my ideas candidly, just shook his head. "He proved your point," he said to me. "He didn't know he was doing it, but he just proved your point."
It would be nice not to need that point proved.
Terry Osborne is a Lecturer of English at the College.
