Greek Diversity Training Wheels

By Kevin Parkman | Friday, April 25, 2003

It was 7:55 AM on a Saturday morning.Not only was I actually awake, but I would have to stay awake for the next ten consecutive hours in the interest of 'Seeking Alliances through Leadership And Diversity,' or SALAD. April 5 is now another day that will live in infamy for many members of the Dartmouth Greek community, for it was then that fifty of us, representing every fraternity, sorority, and co-ed house were required to attend the dreadedleadership and diversity program.

The for-profit group Campuspeak sponsors SALAD, which advertises the program as 'a one-day workshop that brings together all of the diverse Greek leaders on your campus with the goal of increasing understanding and communication between chapters and governing councils.' It brings us together all right—with the threat of a stinging crack of the Dean of Residential Life's whip hovering over us if three members of each of our houses don't attend. But the ad continues promisingly: 'SALAD is a 'starting point' in a journey toward a stronger Greek community.' Really? Well why didn't they say so earlier?

Disappointingly, SALAD was in part the brainchild of three students: Andrea Abeita, the Education Programming Chair of the Panhellenic Council; Krista Sande-Kerback, a Panhellenic delegate; and Chanel Frazier, an ORL Intern. They were not without help though; acting Assistant Dean of Residential Life Cassie Barnhardt was, as usual, integral. Cassie's is a familiar face to the Greeks, always using her authority to cook up some scheme that essentially boils down to slave labor. It is her Greek policy that, for example, had brothers raking leaves in front of Hanover residents' houses two weeks past in an act of charity. Cassie is also notorious for her ham-fisted enforcement of the college's alcohol policy, designed to limit drinking in fraternities. Ironically, the task of going to SALAD fell on me and two of my brothers because we lost a three-on-three boat race (brothers imbibe vast quantities of alcohol, first to finish is victorious). Seems that Cassie has all but encouraged binge drinking, at least in my case.

Upon entering the 1930s room in Rockefeller Center at 8:30 AM, I found most of the students already there. Many were understandably dazed and limp, it being the morning after the week's most popular night. The Tri-Kap president, collapsed on one of the plush, green, thousand-dollar government-department chairs, appeared comatose, eyes closed and his head cocked back ninety degrees on top of the headrest. One of the sorority girls, however, a Tri-Delt, was bright and perky, and apparently had the time and energy that morning to don a getup fit for a jaunt down Fifth Avenue.

The conversation heard around the room was the usual morning-after rap session about how drunk one was/is from last night, but after the sign-in sheet was passed around this gave way to introductions from the two who would become our 'trained facilitators' for the day. First was Monica, a Hispanic woman in her late twenties who is the Director of Greek Affairs at the University of Rochester. Second was Elliott, a stocky white guy in his thirties who is the Assistant Director of Residential Life at Lafayette College. Elliott, black hair slicked back with gel, was decked out in hip cargo pants, which immediately identified him as one of us and set things more at ease. Cassie Barnhardt was also present, having taken a seat in the middle of the exit. She seemed harmless at first, keeping to herself with some knitting work, but was later asked to leave because our facilitators felt that students wouldn't be as forthcoming if Cassie were present.

Following the introductions we spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to arrange fifty people in a circle, per the request of the 'facilitators,' in a room of thirty by thirty feet filled with oversized chairs and tables.Once done, we started the first exercise of many to come, which involved giving each person in the room a set of fifteen yellow and blue index cards. On the yellow cards were preprinted positive descriptive phrases or adjectives such as 'impressive,' 'successful,' 'having great unity and pride,' 'progressive,' and 'diverse.' On the blue cards were negative descriptive phrases or adjectives such as 'tries too hard,' 'resting on past success,' 'bitter; angry,' 'some members are out of control,' and 'unfocused.' The facilitators were to bring up a subject and then have everyone in the room first hold up a positive card describing the subject, then a negative card. One of the facilitators would pick someone in the room to explain why they chose a particular card.

The first subject was 'Your house.' I chose for my positive card 'Lots of fun.' My house if full of really fun guys, so I proudly stuck out my hand way up high so everyone would know it. Having made that important point, I chose for my negative card 'Tries too hard,' since, honestly, sometimes we just try too hard. Subjects following included 'white organizations' and 'alumni' which elicited varied and uninteresting responses from the room, but when 'black organizations' came up something different happened. For the positive card, just about everybody held up 'great unity and pride.' For the negative card just about everybody signified 'unknown on campus.' A black girl, from the predominantly black sorority Delta Sigma Theta, keenly pointed out that if black organizations are 'unknown on campus,' then how could most of the room have known that they have 'great pride and unity'? It seems that for the positive card, either everyone was covering his/her ass, or they assumed that because blacks do not all end up together in certain organizations by accident, they must have some degree of pride and unity to have formed them in the first place. Although the black organizations may very well have great pride and unity, I will admit that I was too tired to think and was just covering my ass.

The last subject was 'administration,' and the general consensus for the negative card was that in the college's administration 'some members are out of control.' A few students chimed in to explain their choice, citing examples of the administration putting unreasonable blame on houses. One person told of a severely drunk freshman that entered her house, passed out somewhere, and had Safety and Security called by a friend.The house clearly had no role, but was reprimanded nonetheless. She continued to say that houses get bad reputations because many administrators and students only hear about the punishment and not the circumstance of the incident. Elliott then chimed in with, oddly enough, a food analogy: 'There's a saying in the restaurant business. You serve a good meal, they'll tell one person. You serve a bad meal, they'll tell a hundred.' Well, Elliott, we are sorry about the plight of the restauranteur, but we have our own fish to fry.

With our first exercise done, I felt pretty good, having survived without jumping out the window head first. But then I looked at my watch and saw that it was only 9:30 AM. There were yet eight and a half more hours of inanity to come. I shall not torment you with detailed accounts of the rest of our morning exercises...but I should tell you of the next one, as it was a disaster.

The idea was to have a 'rotating panel' of four spots where anyone who fit the category of the spot could sit and answer questions posed by people off the panel. The catch was that the categories chosen by Monica and Elliott—'Student who has a job,' 'NPHC Member' (a council of black Greeks), 'member of a local house,' and 'person of color in a non-affinity house'—applied to about six people in the room. After five minutes, only one person remained on the panel since one was required to step off once one answered a question.

Monica asked, 'Do you think it is better for a person of color to be in a predominantly white fraternity or sorority?' but the white girl sitting in the 'member of a local house' spot obviously could not answer. So a black Chi Gam offered to help out and take her place. But no! He is not allowed to as Monica says that the girl cannot leave her spot since she hasn't answered a question yet. So the Chi Gam shrugs and goes for the 'person of color in a non-affinity house' spot. No again! Monica says that he has already sat in that spot so he cannot sit there either. Thus, Monica, in the interest of sticking rigidly to obviously ill-conceived procedure, single-handedly brought the whole progression to a halt. Finally, a neglected white sorority girl could contain herself no longer and announced to the room, 'I think people are frustrated because they can't respond.' From this sprung a litany of complaints from person after person lasting about twenty minutes—all about an exercise that lasted but ten. All the while, Monica and Elliott stood by, helplessly pretending they had control over the room. Finally, when a Phi Delt wondered aloud, in all earnestness, 'Was this set up to make everybody mad?' Monica responded, 'This process obviously annoyed some of you. I feel like you are holding back.' Had she escaped to another dimension while everybody in the room vented their frustrations for twenty minutes?

Other exercises followed, but I don't care to recount them because I don't care to remember them. Speeding along, this brings us to lunch which was (how cute!) salad. We were desperate for any respite from the never-ending exercises, even if it meant a lunch of just salad. But it wasn't just salad. For Monica and Elliott had even turned lunch into an exercise. We were each given an envelope containing raffle tickets, and we would each get one topping, such as carrots or dressing, on our lettuce, in exchange for a ticket. I had five tickets which allowed me most of what I wanted, but we would learn later that not everyone had as many; some had as few as two. Elliott asked afterwards what we thought the point of the exercise was. An Alpha Delta asked, 'Was it to suggest that the people with the most tickets should have the most diverse salad?' No,it was to demonstrate to us that we shouldn't assume that others are as well off as we are, and blah blah blah.

Following lunch were, of course, more exercises—this time in groups of eight people randomly assigned via shared vegetable pics on nametags. Mine was the lettuce group. Three exercises took us to 5:45 PM. First was an auction for values, where each group had fifty dollars and bid against each other to win values like 'love,' 'commitment,' and 'brother/sisterhood.' Second, each group was given a fictitious problem, and had to come up with a solution. For us, we assumed an identity as a Latino fraternity that had been charged with hazing for making pledges walk across the Green clad in uniforms. Finally, each group was given a topic—ours was communication—about which they had to construct a plan to improve the Dartmouth Greek community with respect to the assigned topic.

It was just about over, and my head felt like a balloon about to pop. But first Elliott had a personal statement to make: 'I have a confession to make.' What is it, Elliott, pray tell? 'Earlier today I was ready to become a postal worker...' Huh? Is Elliott losing it too? '...and shoot all of you. But what I saw with your action plans amazes me.' Okay, that makes sense. You have amazed me too Elliott, in more than one way. Not the least of which is making me long for the simple fraternity life days when the worst hazing that could happen was scraping dried vomit, urine, and stale beer off a basement floor. Ahh, the good ol' days.

Greek Diversity Training Wheels

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