An affiliated female student who lost her virginity through sexual assault by a fraternity brother, and then couldn't convince her friends, or herself, that there is anything else to do here but go back to hanging out in his basement.
Another affiliated female student, who only remembers "crying a lot, and telling him to please, please stop."
A young woman who was date-raped during her freshmen year, tried to press charges but was thwarted, and went into rush hoping to find a support system in a women's society but didn't get a bid.
These are your friends. These are your sisters. These are their stories.
Last week, I waved the campus-controversy magic wand, put "death" and "pledge" in the same sentence and you all came to the dance, as desired. But not everything went according to my schemes. I could never have predicted the unbelievably candid and affecting nature of the dozens of letters I received.
Unsure when another one of your letters would bring me to tears, I had to stop checking e-mail on my phone.
Put this picture on the Dartmouth web site: "Under the autumn leaves at Collis, a boy cries over the unspoken sadness of the school he loves."
So don't tell me, President Kim, that fraternities here have nothing but "a public relations problem." ("Kim to focus on Greek System's public image," Sept. 23) Girls are being physically and emotionally brutalized. There's more at stake than improving our admissions statistics.
And don't tell me, Kevin Niparko, that I am an "outlier" or an "aberration" I am not talking about myself, this time. I am talking about our school's social structure, which facilitates the abuse of substances and our bodies.
An excerpt from one of these e-mails, punctuation untouched.
"i did sit down with this guy eventually, and told him that what he did was wrong and had really affected me. it was the one of the most terrifying things ive ever done. he apologized and said there was no excuse for it. there was no: i misread your signals' or i was really drunk and was confused.' he knew what he did, and i hope to god he never did it again."
If you try to tell me that this stuff happens at colleges everywhere, I'll lose it. We are not just some college. We are supposed to be better. The fact that such an exchange took place between two Dartmouth students breaks my f*cking heart apart.
From a different letter:
"I did everything I was told to do. I went to the hospital, I told S&S, and I even eventually spoke with the police, but it didn't matter. When it came down to it, it was a case of he said, she said. Neither the men involved in my sexual assault, nor their brothers who protected them, felt any consequences."
Don't tell me that individuals commit rape, and there's nothing a society can do to change the behavior of its constituents. That's a cop-out and you know it.
First of all, a society could change its constituency: Isn't it obvious that in the basement of a coed society, this sort of thing would be less likely to occur? Wouldn't some senior sister smack her brother upside the head and send that freshman girl home?
I just don't understand how this institution of higher learning can have learned nothing about itself in the nearly 40 years since our mothers began being admitted to the College. In 1993, then president James O. Freedman predicted that within 10 years, the entire Greek system would be coed.
It's been 16 years, so don't tell me that we don't need to talk about it, or that talking won't help.
Talk to your girl friends. Ask any of them about the pressure they feel to drink their half of the tree, or what a basement feels like for a freshman girl. Or for a senior girl.
Talk to your new president. Tell him what Greek life has been like for you.
Just don't tell me that there's nothing we can do. In 1973, when women were admitted, six fraternities voluntarily became coed societies.
That's something we could do.
