In 1971, Stanford University conducted its infamous prison experiment, wherein researchers arbitrarily chose 24 male undergraduates to each play the role of either prisoner or guard. Stanford sought to discover how these students would cope with the superimposition of power or powerlessness. Six days later, the guards had so thoroughly internalized their superiority within the space of the mock-prison that they began inflicting psychological and physical torture upon the prisoners. The results were, in short, so heinous that the experiment was immediately discontinued.
Fast-forward 41 years. I was walking through a crowd in a fraternity basement when a girl stumbled into me. She was so drunk that she needed either food or medical care. I knew the brothers had ordered bread, so I dragged her to the basement stairs, but a white fraternity brother blocked my path. He informed me I could not take her upstairs because she was covered in paint. I told him she needed food. He refused. I asked him to go get bread for her. He laughed and denied my requests once more. He refused my requests over and over again (though make no mistake, I eventually got up those stairs).
Why didn’t he let me pass? Was it really because of some fear that I would smudge a dollop of paint on his walls, or was it something more sinister? How were the subliminal dynamics of this situation impacted by us both being women and her being black? The inarguable truth is this: that young man believed he had the power to control my physical movements. In fact, according to all the accepted rules of frat conduct, he did. His house, his rules.
The deep-pocketed alumni, administration and a majority of the student body have participated in the crowning of kings on this campus, creating guards and prisoners. Brothers have the power to dominate normative social spaces, and the resulting atrocities — sexual assault, racist, sexist, classist, homophobic and transphobic acts — are largely defended as unfortunate byproducts of a Dartmouth system that values tradition over equity.
But the selection process for guards and prisoners at Dartmouth is anything but arbitrary. The power to control dominant social space is perennially placed in the entitled hands of the white, the wealthy, the heterosexual and the sons of Dartmouth. And yet somehow we are surprised when mob mentality runs its course and outrageous hazing occurs or women are raped in droves. The results are in, people, and they have been since 1971.
To be clear, I am not inherently anti-Greek. What I am against is the systematic coronation of a privileged class of students. The crowned masses, including myself, must acknowledge our complicity in this system that protects perpetrators.
This week, Sadia Hassan ’13 begged consciousness and outrage of every student at this institution. Yet her words were met by infuriated cries of “divisiveness” from countless anonymous users cloaked in nameless cowardice on The D’s comment board and Bored at Baker. Why? Because she did not adequately gloss over the unjust realities of our privilege. Because she admitted that we are not all equal here.
So, as a white-passing, heterosexual and affluent cis-woman, I assert with outrage and fervor: I may not be a king here, but I am pretty damn close. I may not rule this campus as I might were I male, but I am still granted more rights than many. These privileges are not remotely diminished by the number of vigils I attend or the number of blogs I repost or even the number of articles I write. In forcing me to identify myself with the most privileged groups on this campus, Hassan was not promoting “divisiveness.” She just called a spade a spade.
I am not saying that I have all the answers, far from it, but I am telling you to remember Stanford, and what happens when power is systematically unequally distributed in favor of an elite group. Consider what side of the prison bars you fall on. Hassan asked, “Where is your outrage?” I ask, “Is it nestled underneath layers of contentedness with a system that is built for you, around you and to condone you? Do you block stairwells to prevent the ‘lesser masses’ from breaking the rules — to keep your prisoners in check?”
Sarah Fernandez '14 is a guest columnist.
