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The End of Minimum Standards, But...

By J. Lawrence Scholer | Monday, May 13, 2002

By May 15 all Dartmouth CFS organizations must submit a 'CFS Annual Action Plan' to Office of Residential Life—what a way to dampen one's Green Key Weekend preparations.

The plan looks to guide societies in fulfilling principles that are to 'serve as defining qualities of the Coed, Fraternity, Sorority community at Dartmouth.' The principles, as laid out by Dean of the College Jim Larimore in an October letter, include scholarship, leadership, service/philanthropy, brotherhood/sisterhood, inclusivity, and accountability.

The necessity for such an Action Plan implies that the administration feels that CFS houses do not currently meet the administration's goals. Although the Action Plan is in the form of a thirteen page fill-in-the-blank handout, societies do not have much freedom with their answers if they want to survive at Dartmouth. The Action Plan is to serve as a self-help guide for these organizations—organizations which seem to be functioning quite well without the implementation of any action plan.

The pages of the Plan serve as an outlet for all the popular buzzwords—diversity, inclusivity, conflict management, strategic planning, listening skills, team work, and many others. Does some sadistic administrator gain pleasure from torturing fraternities with words and phrases that have no real meaning? How unfortunate it is that linguistic relativism has reached the confines of Dartmouth fraternities.

A representative from one fraternity described the struggles he and his committee had dealing with the 'Inclusivity Plan.' Mindful that 'inclusivity' is not a formal word, his committee changed inclusivity to 'inclusiveness,' a term, albeit English, that is hardly helpful. What exactly is the College getting at with inclusivity—surely it doesn't mean quotas? Or does the College just want fraternities to insert a blurb into its rush guide: 'We do not discriminate based on race, sexual orientation, creed, ability...?' At the heart of the matter is the belief—and a terribly misinformed one—that Dartmouth fraternities are bastions for the Anglo-Saxon. Step inside any fraternity on a weekend and you'll most definitely see an array of students consistent with the demographics of the College.

When given such a base of buzzwords, groups will be forced to answer with more buzzwords. The Inclusivity Plan asks, 'What are your goals for overcoming any weaknesses and accentuating your strengths?' An acceptable response to that question could be something like, 'We strive to foster an awareness of other cultures and to promote sensitivity and respect for those with other rights and interests.' Probably what the College desires, but so meaningless.

The Action Plan is the first of its kind. It aims to replace Minimum Standards, which dealt mainly with the physical plant, programming events, and other house management issues. Strangely, any mention of regulations for a house's physical plant is absent in the Action Plan. This can't be an oversight on the part of those who drafted the Plan—as physical plant issues were seemingly at the core of Minimum Standards.

The Action Plan, however, is not just a replacement for Minimum Standards; it takes matters much further. The Action Plan seeks to alter the character of CFS societies, turning fraternities and sororities into businesslike corporations rather than social organizations. The Action Plan calls for each house to establish a minimum GPA necessary for membership in a house. While many houses, especially national societies, do require a minimum GPA for its members, for the College to enforce such a standard, is hypocritical. There is no minimum GPA needed to participate in Student Assembly, nor does one need a certain average to live in Cutter-Shabazz or the Native Americans at Dartmouth House.

The CFS Action Plan strikes at the core of houses' independence. The College was very clever in framing the plan in a way so that each house can give its own response. Technically, one cannot give a wrong answer, but a house could give an answer that the College would reject without hesitation. A member of one house described this process as 'more dangerous' than previous standards for CFS societies. A response to a question about 'strategic planning' could deal with sneaking an illegal keg into the house without Safety and Security noticing. A response to a question about teamwork might entail a requirement for right-handers to play pong with left-handers for maximum table coverage. Such answers would be highly refreshing, but would number a society's days on campus.

Many houses have already submitted their plans and are awaiting revisions from the Office of Residential Life. Perhaps then the true intentions of the administration will become more clear.

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