Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/07/22/new_greek_house_moratorium_lifted.php
Friday, July 22, 2005
For the first time since 2001, when the trustees adopted a moratorium on "the addition or new single-sex, residential and selective organizations," Dean James Larimore is permitted to decide whether to grant recognition to new organizations. The Student Life Initiative (SLI), first introduced in 1999, emphasized "coeducation" even in non-educational settings—the sexes should never sequester themselves away, even in private. Administrators began with a highly antagonistic attitude toward single-sex Greek houses, but now, far from being in danger of disappearing, a Greek expansion looms. Most saliently, several women continue to push for a seventh sorority, and, though perhaps unlikely, Zeta Psi might reemerge.
In 1999, Stephen Bosworth, the chairman of the trustees announced that President Wright and the Trustees aimed to completely eliminate single-sex houses. "College President James Wright has unequivocally stated that single-sex Greek organizations are doomed," editorialized the Valley News. Following a massive, media-covered student-led protest of the initiative, this hard-line stance was mitigated, dialogues were initiated, committees were formed, and no large-scale dismantling of sororities and fraternities took place. Instead, two fraternities, Phi Delta Alpha and Zeta Psi, were kicked off the row, not in the context of a social "initiative" but due to specific disciplinary violations. Yet, for most it was hard not to view the banishments in the context of a larger policy. Phi Delt gained "colony status" and then re-recognition, but Zete has of now no such prospect.
Discussion about the fate of the Greeks increased with the well-publicized trustee election, in which two alumni—dubbed "insurgents" by the Weekly Standard—ran as outsiders, citing, among other concerns, the need for fraternities and sororities as a social option at Dartmouth. Todd Zywicki, himself a Zeta Psi, stated that "the administration's war against the fraternities and sororities must end." And within weeks of their election, the trustees overturned a keystone aspect of the SLI. The College's press release was careful to include that it had been Dean Larimore who recommended the change.
Observers ravenously sought to limn the correlation in political terms. The Chronicle of Higher Education provocatively detected a shift "to the Right," conveniently omitting what meaning "right" and "left" have in relation to Greek organizations and qualifying its article's very title with a question mark. "It was tempting," wrote Doug Lederman, "to read those developments as signs that the college… is responding to the recent alumni pressure by edging back to the right."
Both Zywicki and Peter Robinson are indeed conservative (Robinson hosts a television show on politics and edits a journal for the conservative Hoover Institution), and many of their opponents, including Professor of Religion Susan Ackerman, were eager to brand them "reactionary." A commenter on the Higher Education site named "Larry" added that "Zywicki just wanted on the board because he lies [sic] the idea of fraternities: where kids' parents can buy their friends and cheat." Others, including several Dartmouth fraternity members, responded, claiming that the change of apolitical and simply toward "freedom." Larry retorted that on a visit to Dartmouth, a sorority girl shouting "Whoo!" had lifted up her shirt. "TJ" asserted that "this is a revolution against not allowing hard working students to have a beer and enjoy life—shouldn't really be defined along conservative/liberal lines."
A major change—whether politically relevant or not—has occurred. Consider President Wright in the Daily Dartmouth following the lift of the ban: "I think one of the success stories of the Initiative over the last few years has been the way that CFS organizations by in large, with their alumni leadership and their nationals when appropriate, have really stepped up and have… tried to play a more responsible role in the community." This, in light of his infamous quip of 1999: "This is not a referendum on things." Not a referendum, certainly, but neither an ultimatum.
Verbal incongruities aside, the administration has emphatically returned to an earlier policy toward student socialization. The initiative itself, never fully articulated in public in its long-term form (if such a form existed), was nevertheless heralded by opponents of Greek life as an important first step. "Jim," e-mailed a professor to President Wright, "I applaud the courageous decision that you and the Trustees have made with respect to the termination of fraternities and sororities…"
Previous reporting by the Review revealed what these pages called a "slow-motion institutional agenda"—a deeply seated aversion to fraternities as such among the faculty and many trustees—and what Wright preferred to call the "process, the purpose of which was to make the campus a more inclusive place."
Therefore, it is impossible to assess the "failure" or "success" of the initiative—don't look to Parkhurst for retraction, apology, or even clarification. The original charge of the SLI—"to end the Greek system as we know it"—can, technically, be carried out by any range of policies, including both the system's abolition and relatively unobtrusive regulation; it appears that administrators have opted for the latter, especially in th light of the recent changes to the alchool policy that will go into effect next fall. The SLI, a many-faceted cosmos of an initiative, has obviously conceded something while remaining intact. Because it moved from "not a referendum" to an amorphous "process," the SLI has achieved a kind of sedate immortality, and so, perhaps, has the Greek system.