Letter to the Editor:
For those fortunate enough to gain admission, Dartmouth is one of the country’s most diverse and inclusive institutions. Name another school whose fraternities and local sororities regularly open their doors to all of campus to come drink free of charge. You can’t. Unfortunately, however, Dartmouth’s admirably progressive culture has spawned a small but vociferous faction of malcontents for whom nothing will ever be good enough. They will not rest until Dartmouth eradicates all membership-based social spaces (as inclusive as they might be), outlaws the use of gendered pronouns and summarily expels anyone accused of sexual assault without any semblance of due process. They operate under the guise of tolerance, but ironically it is they who are intolerant of individuals who disagree with their radical views.
These individuals need to realize the real harm they are inflicting upon Dartmouth through their reckless allegations. Dartmouth is not free of homophobes, misogynists or perpetrators of sexual assault, but their numbers are probably fewer than in the general college-aged population, and their presence does not rise to the “epidemic” levels that these individuals claim. Yet just this past Wednesday, The Dartmouth ran an opinion column in which the author brazenly claimed that “women are raped in droves” at Dartmouth and an article on a sexual assault forum at which a participant absurdly equated an ex-boyfriend’s lies to “roofies” designed to procure her consent. These are the true promoters of rape culture. Lest we are content to let the applicant pool shrink even further, we as a community cannot continue to tolerate the slander of our school’s good name.
Christian G. Kiely ’09
Former opinion editor, The Dartmouth
