Second-Rate Fraternities

Thursday, July 22, 1999

'As a member of the Student Life Initiative Committee, I am really not at liberty to say where we are at in that group,' James Larimore, the new Dean of the College told a crowd of twenty Dartmouth students at Sigma Alpha Epsilon on July 26. They must be cooking up something important, though: 'I'm telling you, you don't know where the committee is at,' Larimore later assured one audience member. We might not know what the committee is considering—the meetings are closed to the public—but a few proposals have received the attention and support of College administrators.

One of the ideas to emerge from the 'staff working groups' is a 'Common House.' According to Task Force on the Residential and Social Life Initiative report, 'The common house would be inhabited by a small group of students responsible for the organization of events in the house and the maintenance of the programming area. Most of these proposals describe a common house: a large programming space on the first floor, a small lounge with home-like features, once again a large kitchen and also television rooms.' Common house residents would organize social events for the campus. According to The Daily Dartmouth, although 'the house would be a College facility, it would be largely student-organized, although the Office of Residential Life and the Student Activities Office would be responsible for the physical plant and the program in the building and a board of Common House Overseers would include both students and staff.'

'We're completely booked solid in Collis [Student Center], and we just need alternative spaces for students to have the events that they want to have,' Linda Kennedy, Associate Director of Student Activities, told The Dartmouth.
That's right: the College wants to construct a residential house whose members would organize social events on campus. Dean of Student Life Holly Sateia even says that she does not believe 'alcohol would necessarily be precluded' from new College social space.

In fact, the only difference between the 'Common House' and a CFS house is that, while membership in the CFS system is determined by students themselves, residents of the Common House would be chosen by the College 'for the skills that they bring to the job,' says Kennedy. Pretty exclusive.

Other proposals include the creation of 'theme houses,' in which students with common interests would live together in a house and hold programming events—much like they do now, except that students will instead be segregated by academic and social interests, rather than meet people with diverse interests, as they do in fraternities, sororities, and coeducational houses.

Many of the new proposals for social life try to reproduce Greek societies in a politically acceptable, and College-owned, form. The proposals all stress the importance of student-run residential space in which social events occur. There is, perhaps, no greater endorsement for Dartmouth's Greek system than the fact that, in endeavoring to replace Greek houses, students and faculty have decided on...Greek houses.

Second-Rate Fraternities

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