Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/1999/07/08/putting_division_in_diversitys_place.php
Thursday, July 8, 1999
The scramble is on as every student organization, ethnic group, and special interest on campus maneuvers to get a piece of the Trustee initiative pie. The first step of the process toward a final residential life plan, the Residential and Social Life Task Force's report on the Trustee Student Life Initiative, was released last week, and its contents provide insight into the form that the trustee's final decision will take next term.
Although the report is dated June 24, few in the community have been made aware of its existence. The report has, however, been circulated to the off-campus press. Many students first learned of the report's release from the June 30 editions of the Valley News and The Boston Globe.
While previous memos and letters have been made available to students on campus, even distributed to mailboxes, students have been unable to locate a copy of the Task Force report on campus. The Dartmouth College Office of Public Affairs informed one inquiring student that public copies were available at Baker Library and at the Collis Student Center, but no such copies exist.
The bulky report weighs in at about 60 pages, a summary of a reported 250 pages of suggestions for residential life culled by the Task Force, and is intended as an unbiased compendium of suggestions addressing the Trustees' five principles for social and residential life. When the Task Force was created, students feared that its only purpose was to put some time between the announcement of the principles and their ultimate implementation by the Trustees, giving students an impression of involvement in the process, but no real control. The report seems to have done just that: 'Four months of debate and discussion,' writes the Associated Press, 'have produced a menu for eliminating Dartmouth College's traditional fraternity and sorority system.'
Students fear that the Trustees will be overly swayed by the report's overwhelmingly anti-Greek tone. In the report's introduction, the Task Force lauds the Trustees for 'invit[ing] all Dartmouth constituencies to engage in a process of reflection and deliberation about how Dartmouth students could experience in the College's residential and social facilities, programs, and policies the same level of excellence they experience in the College's academic programs.' Hostility toward Greek members is apparent in the lack of Greek society members serving on the Task Force and the absence of pro-Greek suggestions for residential life.
Though a creation of the Board of Trustees, the Task Force insists that it represents 'a conduit, not a filter'—though many Greek leaders have suggested otherwise.
The report 'will be the primary feedback we are going to be getting back from the student body,' said Trustee Susan Dentzer '77 last week. Dentzer will be chairing the Trustee Steering Committee for the Social and Residential Life Initiative, which will meet in Hanover July 10 to review the Task Force's report.
The residential life proposals, concerning students both on- and off-campus, are the first which the report addresses. As part of their five principles, the Trustees mandated that the number of students living off-campus should be reduced and that there should be greater choice in residential living and improved residential space. The proposals call overwhelmingly for increased diversity of living spaces, ranging from more apartments to theme-houses, and more housing availability on campus. The addition of more rooms would allow overcrowded dorms to be 'decompressed' and undesirable dorms—specifically in the River cluster—to be demolished. Also, the scramble for housing that often accompanies changes in enrollment patterns could be put to an end along with the arbitrary housing lottery. Similar goals are shared by many students; it is the Task Force's discussion of new housing options that appear more controversial.
While claiming to promote diversity, many of the housing proposals preclude it, confining students to housing based upon major, specific interests, race, religion, nationality, or other exclusionary criteria.
The Organic Farm wants to create a 'sustainable living center,' the DOC suggests an 'Outdoor Affiliation House,' and the Dartmouth Asian Organization (DAO) wants a 'Japan/Korea Affinity House.' Each proposal would fracture the campus according to student background, with each ethnic and interest group occupying its own self-contained housing and social space. Though the report's verbiage would suggest otherwise, the residential life proposals oppose diversity and integration, and are otherwise incompatible with the stated intent of residential life reform.
The five principles intend to create 'an inclusive culture,' explained Dartmouth President James Wright in an interview with The Boston Globe, and to afford students 'more opportunity to meet students of different backgrounds.'
Many on campus are understandably disillusioned by the College's hypocrisy. Whatever the merits of the Greek system, they recognize, at least it did not segregate students according to ethnicity and social interests, and often brought together students of diverse backgrounds.
Sadly, much of the Task Force report is occupied by demands for creating de facto fraternities, which, if not single-sex, are single-race, single-background, or single-interest.
A Balkanized campus is made more palatable, perhaps, by proposals for various perks: wider hallways, expanded cable television (specifically, that the College provide 'access to the Black Entertainment Television Network'), more carpeting, snack bars, and 'more amenities in residence halls.'
The issue of freshman housing is also addressed: 'While all proposals concerned with first-year housing mention the importance of new students having some interaction with upperclass students, they also note that having first-year students in one place would...improve the first-year experience for students.'
The report goes on to discuss the second of the Trustees' principles, concerning the creation of additional social space controlled by students. The placement of the Rauner Special Collections Library in Webster Hall, ending its life as a common space, the report explains, left a void that has not yet been filled. New social spaces could potentially include a DTV studio, Gender Perspectives space, a bowling alley, an outdoor heated pool, and a dance hall for swing dancing. The Afro-American Society, proposes 'that the college bring more diverse business to the Hanover area to better serve the needs of students of color,' specifically 'a beauty supply store for students of color.'
The report's conclusion: 'the need for more social space to enhance awareness of diversity and develop a real sense of community is a common feeling.'
Interestingly, five proposals call for the creation of women's social space, 'to create a safe space for discussing such sensitive issues as sexual abuse.' Not one considers retaining the sororities.
From that point, the report jumps into the issue of the school's coeducational environment. The report begins with a proposal from the Five Principles Working Group, urging the creation of a 'Social House System,' which would be like today's Greek system, except with sexual house parity and 'strict enforcement of the College code of conduct.'
The Panhellenic Council's proposal advocates special retreats for Greek system members and a 'Brain Bowl' about the Greek system. The Coed Fraternity Sorority Council (CFSC), representing all Greek houses, advocates the creation of alternative social options in their own separately-published proposal. Students should control their own residential life, they say, and be allowed a choice of diverse social options.
As represented by the Task Force, however, the CFSC position comes across as defensive and compromising, calling for Greek reorganization and the phasing out of alcohol. In the hands of the Task Force, the CFSC's proposals for increased alternatives are reduced to 'snack and juice bars, a spa, and improved locker rooms.'
Finally, the Dean's Area and Others' Working Group, comprised of college administrators, dismisses the Greek system in a single sentence, proposing that the college should 'keep single-sex organizations but make them non-residential.'
The weak defense of the Greek system in the report's residential life section is especially troubling to many students, since the Task Force report will be the Trustees' primary exposure to 'student opinion.' Pro-Greek proposals, many charge, were given short shrift or excluded from the report.
The final principle covered by the Task Force is alcohol abuse, which is discussed in two pages. Proposals include mandatory alcohol education, professional bartending, the carpeting of fraternity basements, the creation of on-campus bars, and the proactive confrontation of the 'myths of drinking,' which one Greek and Roman Studies major traced back to Athens.
Whatever the political disposition of Residential and Social Life Task Force, the report that bears its name certainly is full of ideas amenable to the Trustees, and objectionable to students. Although the majority of proposals came from campus groups, they represent the minority of student opinion. The CFSC, which released a single proposal directly endorsed by nearly half the campus, received less space overall in the report than proposals by the DOC or Palaeopitus. The attacks against the Greek system are many; its defense one, in solidarity.
Still, the implementation of the five principles now rests in the hands of the Trustees, where it really has all along. The Task Force report will no doubt be cited to justify the Trustees' ultimate decision. Whatever that decision will be, the Task Force report can be invoked as a student endorsement to justify the Trustees' decisions, however erroneously.