Drunk version:
Blah blah blah Animal House blah blah. Where the f*ck is Human House. I want to go to there. Hiccup.
Sober version:
I don't care if you hate Dartmouth, or if you love Dartmouth. If you have a brain in your skull you can understand what needs to change. We have 15 IFC fraternities and eight Panhellenic sororities, for a student body that is 50 percent men and 50 percent women (not to mention a freshman class which is 51 percent women). Exacerbating this disparity, only three of those sororities have the ability to host parties open to campus. Every fraternity has that ability.
I understand that because women have only been on campus for close to four decades, the infrastructure to support them is still being developed.
Actually, scratch that, I don't understand it at all. How is this acceptable to anyone here, male or female, alumnus or alumna? After nearly 40 years of coeducation, we idly watch as permanently derecognized frats like Beta and Zeta Psi return to premier campus real estate, while sororities still exist without physical plants, or don't exist at all.
That, however, is last year's outrage. Sigh. It's also beside my point.
My point is coeducation. My point is: More coeducational undergraduate societies at Dartmouth.
What if we transformed three fraternities into coed societies? We would then have 12 frats, eight sororities, and eight coed societies. It still wouldn't be fair, but it would be a step in the right direction.
Think about it. F*ck Animal House. We could go to the Human House. I think we could pull this off.
Say next fall, or this winter even, Sig Nu, or Chi Heorot, or any fraternity started admitting women alongside men. The fraternity would have to drastically reduce or eliminate its hazing activities. The women who chose to rush those houses and who were chosen to become members would have to become equal members immediately. Actually having women move in to the house would, of course, have to proceed on a slightly slower timeline, giving senior members their due deference.
But wouldn't this be exciting? Wouldn't this bring new social energy and enthusiasm to our campus? When Friday night rolls around, we'd have a couple new-feeling places to play pong and let loose just a couple more choices. And when Rush comes around, those young guns would have a couple more choices. We'd all feel just a little less trapped by the Greek system, with the addition of just one or two or three more choices and I think it would make a difference.
This change, however, cannot come from anyone but the students who make up these organizations. You must decide for yourselves that, for the sake of campus social structure, or the sake of sexual equality, or the sake of improving your own social capital you want to go coed. If you decide this, do not be afraid that your alumni will stand in your way. They will not. Even if some do, others will step in. You won't lose funding, because at the end of the day, the alumni just want to stay connected to you, no matter what you do.
Times change, even Dartmouth must eventually change: alumni will get this. Or at least I believe they will. I realize there are also politics involved with national houses but come on. When nationals were segregationist and our chapters here at Dartmouth wanted to accept members of color, they broke with the nationals and went local. So go local. Make it work. Call up whatever alum you know, and ask for his or her support. If I know anything about Dartmouth, they will help you make it work.
But it has to come from you. President Kim can't be expected to focus on anything but fundraising right now, and certainly doesn't yet have the political capital to effect top-down change; not to mention the fact that I doubt he's dumb enough to follow in former President Wright's Student Life Initiative missteps.
It will be years before President Kim can make significant changes; and whether or not he should even be asked to intervene in our social life seems odd. We should be responsible for changing our own social dynamics. And we could do this, now. We could do it Winter term. We could do it next fall.
I'm not claiming that such a change would create a campus utopia. More coed houses would not eliminate social hierarchies any social house will, either through self-selection or some kind of rush process, have to select its members. I can't claim that the existence of more coed houses would eliminate sexual assault on campus; or that more coed spaces would eliminate alcoholism, or elitism, or the class divides, or any of the other things people have said they hate about Dartmouth in this issue of The Mirror.
All I can say is that more coed options would really only bring just that: more options. But with more options, Dartmouth students would be empowered to make more conscious decisions about their social life, instead of falling blindly into what seems the only the thing to do.
Many on campus have expressed to me how much they value the social confidence they've gained through participation in their single-sex house; I think that's great. I just think that both men and women should have an equal chance at that opportunity. And that, in addition, we should all afford ourselves more choices regarding coed houses, where I think we might find the social confidence we build to be even more useful.
Stimm'd-out reading Ralph Waldo version:
In the past weeks, I've been called "the face of the anti-Greek movement" ("Generation Anonymous," Oct. 27) and "anti-Greek/anti-Dartmouth" (BoredatBaker). I would like to clarify: I am not anti-Greek, or by any means anti-Dartmouth. I want what I think we all want: To make this place even more vibrant and more fulfilling than it already is.
The thing is, I am incredibly happy at this school. It's almost too easy to be happy here and too easy to forget what it feels like here for those who are not so happy. I want, merely, for all of us to be less complacent. I want us all to feel empowered to change and grow over the course of our Dartmouth experience, and to help others feel empowered as well. If I were to pray, I would pray that Dartmouth itself could feel empowered: to change and to grow.
In truth, there is only one thing I really dislike about Dartmouth: That you can't see it. For a "College on the Hill," it's nearly impossible to get a good view of Dartmouth itself from on campus you can only really see one or two sides of the Green at a time. And yet, all you can see from campus is campus the White Mountains are obscured, and the Connecticut sways just out of sight. To stand on the Green is to turn in circles, looking inward.
So get out. Step back. Climb the firetower and look out. Climb Baker Tower and look around. Hike up Balch Hill and look back. Gain some perspective. Get to senior year, and then tell me you don't see what I see: That campus would be a happier place with a few more coed societies, a few more social options. That we need to move towards parity between fraternities and sororities, but that now it is time to do so through expanding coed social spaces.
Stand in the center of the Green in the middle of the night and look up at the stars, and tell me you don't see what I see: That we're human. That his and hers are nothing, compared to what is ours. That this house, this college, is ours. That what is ours is ours to change.
