The Dartmouth Review

Condemning Private Obscenities, Sanctioning Public Porn

By Alexander Harrison | Monday, May 7, 2001

The discovery of and debate over the Zetemouth has raised a vitally important issue for our college community: the moral tone of our educational environment. College is where young people form intelligent and influential views on moral issues, from the treatment of women in society to questions of academic honesty and personal integrity. College is where the future of society becomes truly socially aware.

It is for this reason that the Zetemouth and what it stands for is truly upsetting. The sexual exploitation of women, as condoned by Zeta Psi, worries me not as a dictate of our moral environment but rather as an illustration and result of our views as young men. If the administration derecognizes the house, they are putting the cart before the horse. The Greek system does not give birth to sexism, it merely becomes a mouthpiece for preexisting feelings, and hence a scapegoat.

Moreover, if the administration derecognizes Zete, they do so out of pure hypocrisy. Why? It has come to my attention that the college in fact sponsors and condones sexually inappropriate materials. How? A brief exploration of public file-sharing network, the hard drives of student computers, reveals evidence quite in contradiction to President Wright's supposed condemnation of sexually exploitive materials. Referring to the Zetemouth, Mr. Wright claimed that 'in the end, such degradation only debases us all.' This could not be more true.

Sadly, the Dartmouth public network allows for- nay, implicitly sanctions- this degradation. In preparation for this article, I came across a series of files on C. Courtland Gilbert's public network space. Gilbert, a Sophomore, features a video clip titled 'Fullout Hardcore Sex.' This tasty bit of pornography features a woman performing oral sex on a hired actor. She kneels in front of him, wearing only high heels and quite literally sucks his penis, gleefully. At one point, the dominated woman withdraws away from her partner and looks up at him. He proceeds violently to slap her on the face, multiple times. Once her head ceases swaying enough to sit straight up again, the woman resumes her service.

What could embody sexual exploitation and violence against women more? This material is not a special case but rather one of many such files, available thanks to the administration's policy of allowing students to share their materials with the community. This brings up an important distinction between the Zetemouth and Mr. Gilbert's material: the fraternity designed and circulated their newsletter for a private audience, not to be distributed to anyone other than the consenting community within the walls of 8 Webster Avenue. The women who discovered said newsletter were violating and intruding on the organization's private property. Their 'discovery' would never hold up in a court of law. The Zetemouth was an expression, however disappointing, of a mutually agreed upon fraternity comedy, designed for their exclusive private enjoyment. This is not a forum that should be censored by the college.

Conversely, Mr. Gilbert specifically and deliberately placed 'Fullout Hardcore Sex' in a public folder, available to everyone with a computer here at Dartmouth. He has made his sexually violent material available to the community, just as organizations staple posters to bulletin boards in dorms. Without the college's electronic network, we would not have access to his porn; we could not share his enjoyment of that actress being slapped back into her sucking. Thus the college has implicitly sanctioned the moral tone of Gilbert's files. 'These newsletters strike at the core values of this community. They do not represent us nor do they define our relationships with each other,' wrote President Wright in a letter to the student body. What are the core values of this community, if I can sign onto publicly shared files and view a man slapping his partner in the face as she gives him a blow-job? The college must be held responsible for its public network, which, unlike the Internet, can be regulated according to a moral standard set by the administrators. Public files are enabled and sanctioned by the college in a way that Greek houses are not. The public network is about sharing with the whole community while fraternities and sororities are about cultivating a mutually agreed upon atmosphere within a house, not to be shared or judged outside of those walls.

A thoughtful, institutionalized response to my observations would point out that the Zetemouth illustrates and names specific women in the student body, whereas the public network porn portrays professional actors consenting to be filmed for public circulation. Perhaps this differentiation would hold some merit, however two or three clicks past C. Gilbert's folder reveals a more alarming level of hypocrisy on President Wright's part. Thomas Temple (again, a Sophomore) has chosen to exhibit, thanks to the college's public network, a series of quantitative 'profiles' of several Dartmouth women. These slides feature a headshot, taken from the Dartmouth Information Directory, paired with a series of bar graphs rating each female by four attributes: Tits, Ass, Sexual Deviance and Alcoholism. What a merry, merry combination.

Truly, these files strike at the core values of this community. Although Zete's newsletter objectified specific Dartmouth students in a demeaning and disgusting way, the fraternity did so within the confines of their own walls and expressed themselves to each other, which is their Constitutional right. Tom Temple's assessments have been made available to all, thanks to the college's public network. Fortunately, the women profiled received high marks (on a 1-10 scale) in the four categories , although Sexual Deviance did not rank as highly as Tits, Ass, or Alcoholism, probably much to Mr. Temple's chagrin.

William Brennan, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court once wrote that 'sex and obscenity are not synonymous. Obscene material is material which deals with sex in a manner appealing to prurient interest.' Without a doubt, the pornography and personal attacks made available by Dartmouth students are salacious and morally degrading. We as a community should be just as ashamed of these materials as the vocal left is of the Zetemouth. It is the college's right to govern publicly shared file materials to a moral standard; it is not the college's right to judge private thoughts or private expressions of those thoughts.

This is not to say, however, that this article has made me the proverbial copycat trashcan investigator. I am not unearthing private property, but merely viewing public material as it is meant to be viewed by the college information system. Furthermore, I do not suggest that the College should punish students distributing pornographic and sexually personal information here in Hanover. It is their right to hold such views and if they choose, enjoy watching a woman getting slapped into performing oral sex on her partner.

How can we as a community ameliorate the disdainful moral tone held by some students? Certainly the college can force its students to remove some files from the public network. The public network does not function as an open-air environment for free speech; rather, it is regulated and controlled by the college, which is why the administration must be held accountable for the material. Thus, Computing Services should make students remove inappropriate files from the public arena and have students view their pornography in a private forum, just as the Zetemouth was being viewed!

Should the administration care to respond to this article, it might claim ignorance, excusing itself on the grounds that Mr. Gilbert's and Mr. Temple's files were not known to them. This reasoning is unforgivable, however. Just like a bulletin boards in Collis, Hitchcock or Carpenter, the public network represents a forum in which the College implicitly sanctions all of the present material. 'We did not know' is lame and shameless. It is the college's duty to be aware of the moral environment which exists to educate us.

The presence of these materials indicates a broader hypocrisy on the administration's part. Even though the Zetemouth was made for private distribution and discovered only by an illegal and intrusive violation of property rights, the administration will leverage this discovery to gain a stronger grip in their slow suffocation of the Greek System. As they crack down upon Psi Upsilon, Zete and eventually all houses, they have ignored more disgusting and insulting material on their own public computer system. What action would the deans take if a fraternity were found to have been rating women on the criterion of Ass, Tits, Sexual Deviance and Alcoholism on a fraternity website hosted under the Dartmouth domain for public perusal? Exactly.

In not too many years, the Greeks will be extinguished, and it's not because they supposedly promulgate sexist and racist views. The Zetemouth is an illustration of societal immorality, not a cause of it. Furthermore, it is a private expression of privately held views, whereas the public network is a college-sanctioned forum for distributing viewpoints. We as a community should be ashamed of ourselves for both public and private expressions. The Administration as a patriarchal force should be ashamed of itself for its own hypocrisy in taking aim at the Greek system in this way. What a group of Zetas write or say to each other is none of the administration's business, just as what my roommates and I say or write to each other is none of the administration's business.

Christopher Andreae said 'ignorance is a right.' This may be the right attitude nowadays. Andreae is right, but Wright could not be more wrong.