Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2001/05/28/dartmouth_and_animal_house.php
Monday, May 28, 2001
The front page of the May 11 New York Post: 'IVY LEAGUE SEX SCANDAL: 'Animal House' Frat Jolts Dartmouth.' The reference of course is to the 1974 movie written by Chris Miller, a Dartmouth graduate. The movie has about as much resemblance to actual life at Dartmouth as a Restoration comedy has to actual 17th century English life.
Still, the antics of the Zeta Psi fraternity a couple of weeks ago were in fact disgusting, and the fraternity has been de-recognized by the college—that is, effectively abolished on the campus.
The fraternity had published a secret newsletter supposedly describing the sexual behavior of its members and named young women at the college.
The women were described as 'sure things,' 'loose,' 'dirty,' and 'sure hookups.' A 'hookup' in strange contemporary student jargon means a sexual relationship. Does this come from computer experience, or maybe mid-air re-fueling?
'She's dirtier than ever,' read one item. 'If [young girl] hooks up with one more Zete, I'm going to need a flow chart just to keep up.'
The newsletter promised 'patented date rape techniques' in its next edition.
The newsletter, I'm told, was fiction, a sort of National Lampoon effort. For example, the student who was to explain date rape techniques is actually a notably shy individual and the last person to possess such expertise. But nothing ever remains secret, the newsletter got out, and of course the young women named were outraged and disgusted.
This newsletter, amazing to say, was recklessly dropped into an environment in which there is organized faculty support for abolishing the fraternities altogether. At about the same time as the newsletter was surfacing, 101 Dartmouth professors signed a statement demanding just that, and attacking the college's president and trustees for dragging their heels.
This faculty statement is a collector's item for anyone interested in academic culture. It is ludicrously pompous and self-elevating. It is written in a prose so clotted that if you read it aloud it sounds as if you are gargling.
It referred to 'female students and students of color who suffer from institutionalized practices of sexist and racist humiliation that fester largely unabated within secret fraternity culture.'
It is ludicrous that some of those signing this 'open letter' are actually offering instruction to college students in writing the English language. If leaden clichés ('students of color, 'institutionalized,' 'sexist and racist') were horses, intellectual beggars might ride. I treasure the phony precision of 'largely unabated.'
The oatmeal professorial prose goes on and on: 'We ourselves have never felt more disappointed [an obvious lie] by the administration's failure [ruptured syntax] to address the systemic [huh?] and incalculable [wheee!] harm that both our students and our own pedagogical work [the usual word there would be 'teaching'] suffer by Dartmouth's acceptance and support of structures [that means 'fraternities,' de-jargonized] that promote such attitudes of entitlement [reader, please de-code that word] and disrespect [nice verbal anti-climax].'
If a student came to Dartmouth with a good prose style, it might not survive 'pedagogy' by these clowns.
But the administration has in fact been trying to change the behavior of some fraternity members, with what effect I am unable to say. And I myself cannot approve of much that goes on in Dartmouth's fraternities. A 'party' at which a fair number of revelers drink enough beer to vomit on a basement floor is not my idea of a good way to spend the evening.
It does not have to be that way. At my fraternity at Columbia (Phi Kappa Psi), bad behavior was not tolerated. We wore jackets and ties and had sit-down meals. An adult man and his wife had an apartment in the house and cooked the meals. The house held Saturday dances and formal dance on big weekends. Faculty members often showed up at these to say hello. Belushi was not invited. We admired distinguished adults on the faculty and wanted to be like them and be approved by them. We did not want Lionel Trilling to have to step over a sodden member upon entering the premises.
The last thing we wanted to be was 'kids.' In fact, the ads for a popular hair tonic in those days attack another brand as 'greasy kid stuff.' Of course, that was a few years before Elvis.
The adults who came to our parties would, get this, actually like the music they heard. I think it was a distinctive thing about the late 1950s that a special music was marketed for the large cohort of teen-agers, who thus had their own music, kids' music, different from the music adults liked. In fact, the opinions of kids later became valued precisely because they knew so little ('Don't trust anyone over thirty'). A more sensible maxim would go 'Don't trust anyone under thirty.'
It strikes me that fraternity members at Dartmouth revel in kidness. Beer pong, anyone? When I first came to Dartmouth in 1963, I was invited to a fraternity 'cocktail party.' It started at 7 PM and consisted of beer served in plastic cups. I knew we were in deep trouble. It was as if the first line of the Alma Mater were
'Kids of Dartmouth.'
I think the houses at Dartmouth should be clubs, not fraternities. Have members rather than brothers. Hazing and all the rest of the nonsense would be extinguished.
It might not be a bad idea if the College created an apartment in each club and awarded them rent-free to interested faculty members. Assuming the faculty member was not a kid himself, that might do a great deal to improve the atmosphere.
Harvard's houses and Yale's colleges have resident faculty members. Worth thinking about.