We wrestled with this piece’s timing. We asked ourselves: Is this the right time? We honestly still do not know the answer, and that is because it depends in part on you.
On July 7, we stood with friends as police officers and onlookers crowded near the rowing boathouse. Some of us stared forlornly at the river. Others frantically fielded calls and texts from friends. As we struggled to catch glimpses of the police boats and divers moving through murky waters, we unavoidably thought: “How did we get here?”
Authorities were searching for Won Jang ’26, our close friend who was reported missing on July 7. Won had gone to the Connecticut River on July 6 following a social gathering with his fraternity brothers. He was found dead in the river the next evening. He was 20 years old. National news organizations rushed to investigate the events of that night, and some have seemed eager to assign blame. This message is for them: We reject all attempts to misconstrue our words as anything other than an analysis of a cultural issue and our grieving call for collective change on campus.
It wasn’t Won’s inability to swim that killed him. It wasn’t the fault of any one person. It was a cultural failure. Dartmouth’s cultural failure. Our cultural failure. We have all participated in, if only indirectly, this culture that encourages Dartmouth students to risk their lives with excessive drinking, dangerous drugs or what may seem to be silly stunts.
Gideon first met Won in fall of their freshman year as floormates in the Great Issues Scholars Living Learning Community. The two quickly became close. Carter met Won that winter through mutual friends, soon realizing Won’s incredible personality.
On July 2, just days before Won died, Gideon ran into Won, who was doing work at a table in Novack Cafe. Won was excited for the weekend, happily gushing about his fraternity’s upcoming social events for the Fourth of July weekend. He mentioned a daytime gathering happening at the Connecticut River — one unrelated to the gathering on July 6 — and someone made fun of him for not knowing how to swim. In response, Gideon urged Won to make sure people knew that he couldn’t swim. Won responded with grinning reassurances. At the time, the group was just poking fun. The horrible reality that we grapple with today never crossed anyone’s mind. Not then.
We all know that Dartmouth has a reputation as a ‘party school.’ Our families and friends may have teased us before matriculating. Some may have asked if we would ever join a fraternity or sorority. They had probably conjured up the pop-culture perception of Greek spaces as dark dens of binge drinking and sexual assault. Some students may have never pictured themselves in Greek life but soon changed their tune after arriving in Hanover. We may have met questions about our social scene with some version of the refrain many of us still believe: “Dartmouth is different … our Greek houses are different.”
It is time to realize the truth: Greek life at Dartmouth encourages the exact kind of dangerous and destructive behavior that makes that weekend’s events — a group of students going to the river after a social event involving alcohol — not just unsurprising but also inevitable. We ask you to consider your own behavior and reflect upon the parts of our social culture that unsettle you — to consider what you can do, whether personally or within an organization that you lead, to replace pressure and complaisance with compassion and care.
To be clear, we harbor no hate for Won’s fraternity brothers. He loved them, and we know they are hurting. Hate will not move us forward in these moments — only love, even tough love. There is no denying that our Greek system builds bonds through the collective trauma of a pledge term. How many of your friends have eagerly drunk more than they can handle? How many have you had to shepherd home?
There seems to be a belief that our drinking culture is opt-in, encouraged and rewarded, but not required — leading many to jokingly insist, “There is no hazing at Dartmouth College.” Although we do not know whether Won was hazed that night, we believe that this kind of cultural attitude toward drinking in general may have led Won to the river on the night of July 6. The circumstances that culminated in Won’s death were not a one-off incident or freak occurrence. Rather, they were the foreseeable consequences of a culture that often rolls the dice with death.
Greek life on Dartmouth’s campus extends far beyond just those who formally belong to a Greek house. After the fraternity ban for first-year students is lifted, those first-years, foaming at the mouth with FOMO, are unleashed on Webster Avenue. They take part in protracted pong games, sloshy mosh pits, post-blackout Polaroids and other electrifying escapades. Moments like these form the basis of the movie-like memories that we use to romanticize Greek life. Sure, we hear of the bad parts, from Good Samaritan calls to campus sexual assault. But we focus on the fun. We’re hooked. Our friends are hooked. Most of the campus is hooked.
Who guides us through our first fraternity forays? It’s not a well-meaning administrator or professor. No, we turn to upperclassmen who have already bought into the system and acquiesced to the accompanying humiliations and hazards of Greek life.
The social playing field at Dartmouth, we thus argue, is stuck in a cycle of victimization that breeds a kind of brotherhood wholly foreign to real fraternity. In so doing, we do not challenge the reality of deep personal relationships among the members of Greek houses. We do, however, challenge the basis of these bonds. Having stayed a steady course — for better or for worse — these victims, often referred to as brothers and sisters, replicate and repeat for each new class the same injurious cycle they once endured.
Ask yourself how many more students you are willing to see Good Sammed, groped, hospitalized, raped, drugged or made to experience any of the other harms that are swept under the rug for the complicit pleasure of Greek life.
Ask yourself how many more students you are willing to let die in the name of ‘fun.’
We know that you know the Greek system sustains rotten cycles of behavior on campus. Behaviors that left one of our best friends who couldn’t swim flailing in the river in the dead of night. Why did Won have to die? We don’t know. But we cry trying to think of something worth giving up for Won’s beautiful life.
Won’s death is a wrong that we can never fully make right. But it is a wrong we can avoid repeating. Our appeal here is individual. Does this shock not lay bare the hypocrisy hiding at the center of our social life? Can you still stand in awful assent to the disjunction that plays out on-night after on-night? Will you accept Won’s death?
Snap out of it, Dartmouth. We must rid ourselves of these cancerous aspects of the Greek system. We must recognize the social burdens that surround us, and from there rise to engage them. Not with alcohol or drugs, but with honest communication. We must speak up for our friends’ safety when we hear about or see dangerous behaviors, even at the risk of our social capital. Indeed, what we are proposing is an individual introspective project to reengineer the way each of us perceives what is socially acceptable at Dartmouth. Only then can we cultivate a collective concern for the well-being of our community. And we must not let this conversation end here. We must all take responsibility within our spheres of influence for the process of healing and the prolonged protection of our Dartmouth community.
We will repeat: we must eliminate the now fatal toxicity present in Greek life. We must do it to save our future classmates’ lives — because we could not save Won’s.
Carter Anderson and Gideon Gruel are members of the Class of 2026. Both are unaffiliated with Greek organizations. Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
