Implications for Now

Beginning in 2014, the Moving Dartmouth Forward committee aimed to combat “extreme student behavior in three critical areas: sexual assault, high-risk drinking and lack of inclusivity on campus.”¹ These behaviors are inextricably associated with Greek life, and the Committee acknowledged this, attributing the Greek system’s prevalence to the College’s “failure to invest in the residential experience over many years.”² The Committee’s research into these issues found that they manifest in ways reminiscent of the same issues in the late 1970s and 80s.

The report states that “many women at Dartmouth have told us that they feel unsafe in fraternities”³ and cites the total of 35 forcible sex offenses reported in 2013.⁴ Aside from the prevalence of sexual assault, the report finds that, unsurprisingly, simply being part of a marginalized group is associated with feeling excluded from the Dartmouth community. The 2014 Living at Dartmouth Survey found that, for each question pertaining to “students with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses,” “LGBT students,” and “students of color,” approximately one third of the students who responded said that Dartmouth is “not at all or somewhat inclusive.”⁵ These statistics suggest the same conclusion as that of the questionnaire by the 1980 Committee on the Quality of Student Life: “the College is, in fact, fragmented into subcommunities divided by intolerance and a lack of understanding of each other.”⁶ The problems that divided Dartmouth students during the 1970s and 1980s may have diminished with time, but even now, the Dartmouth community continually recognizes and voices them. Despite this community’s best efforts, they are alive.

As a recent and strikingly relevant example, the Inter-Sorority Council has begun discussing the problem of excluding non-binary and gender-nonconforming people from sororities. Though some houses allow non-binary members, others do not, citing national chapter rules that limit sorority membership to only “self-identifying women.”⁷ The ISC’s bylaws technically include “any Dartmouth undergraduate who identifies as a women and/or gender non-conforming person…in Formal Recruitment, as long as the person does not self-identify as a man.”⁸ However, the formal rush process requires non-binary people to visit all eight houses, even though they are prohibited from joining many of them.⁹ Thus, if a non-binary person determines they would feel most at home in a sorority (as opposed to a gender-inclusive Greek house, which includes men and may not be considered a safe space for those targeted by gender-based violence), they must consent to being treated as exceptions by the ISC, because they do not strictly identify with binary womanhood. It’s clear that although we’ve moved beyond the days of purging gay brothers from fraternities, LGBTQ people still face discrimination in fraternities and sororities today.

Recommendations

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Because the campus environment I became acquainted with in my research is reflected so well in the environment today, I feel we can learn from these past successes and failures in creating alternative social spaces.

While reading the 1983 reports by the Committee on the Quality of Student life that recommended housing clusters, I felt as if I was reading about the House System we have now. Although the 1983 report recommended that students be incentivized but not required, as we are now, to live within their clusters,¹⁰ the social facilities recommended for each cluster¹¹ and the description of Faculty Masters¹² struck me in particular as familiar. Because the social problems the housing clusters were meant to address still exist, I believe we will need methods in addition to the current House System to resolve these issues.

The Students for Social Alternatives did not last very long, but while they existed, they held regular, popular social events that attracted diverse groups of students.¹³ They also created an environment that, despite the generally homophobic climate on campus, produced Dartmouth’s first gay student organization. The SSA’s great success was providing space for students who needed that space, who could not find it through the more traditional routes. It was founded and led by students who understood that need because they felt it themselves.¹⁴

The Council on Student Organizations, around 1977, wrote the following:

While the Council operates from the principle that similar groups should receive roughly equal support, it [recognizes] as well the [existence] of groups with unique and legitimate needs that merit special support. This merely reflects that there are groups of students within the College who have social, cultural, and religious needs which are not met in the mainstream of College life, and which may compound the difficulties of generating a student program here. For such groups…special attention must be given to administrative support and advisorship, and financial support extended to social and cultural programs. As a manifestation of students helping themselves to fill Dartmouth’s social and cultural gaps, the student organization is the most appropriate place for the College to extend its commitment to groups with these special needs.¹⁶

After researching so many of Dartmouth’s past social spaces, I agree with COSO’s statement. This is the philosophy that guides the following recommendations:

1. That COSO, and any other bodies that determine funding for student organizations, consider whether organizations “fill Dartmouth’s social and cultural gaps” as a factor in determining funding.
2. That collaboration between House Communities and student organizations be encouraged. Student organizations have direct ties to the student body, which makes it easier for them to engage with other students than it is for the larger, more high-level House Communities. House Communities, on the other hand, possess far more resources than COSO can grant to any one organization. House Communities and student organizations, therefore, would both benefit from co-sponsoring events. This could be named explicitly as an option for event funding, wherever options are listed. House Communities could also request ideas for collaboration in their regular communications.
3. That safe spaces be preserved. Many of us still remember the College’s efforts to relocate the Rainbow and Pan-Asian Community Rooms from Robinson Hall in 2018.¹⁷ Student organizations that used these spaces objected to the plan, because they worried they would encounter “issues with accessibility and safety”¹⁸ when trying to find a new meeting place. While both rooms still exist in name, they are now reservable by any group,¹⁹ which diminishes their integrity as safe spaces and removes any formal claim LGBTQ or Asian-American groups may have to that space. I propose that any such rooms be made available to reserve only for events that relate to the community the room is affiliated with.

These recommendations are only a few of the countless ways to improve Dartmouth’s social climate for LGBTQ and other marginalized students, but I believe student organizations can lead the changes now just as they have in the past.

Notes