Everyone Hates Beta—Except AZD

Friday, February 8, 2008

By Christine Tian

Rules of the Bringing Back Beta Game:

Drink one shot for every appearance of the word “Beta” in the Daily Dartmouth issues of January and February 2008.

Drink two shots every time a Daily D column begins with “This isn’t another comment on Beta...” only to, invariably, segue into commentary on Beta.

Drink one shot for a mention of any of the following phrases: gender issues, gender equality, gender relations, gender parity, gender dynamics, gender neutral.

Drink two shots for a mention of any of the following phrases: social spaces, financial motivation, local sororities, permanent derecognition, “do they not understand what a lease is?”

If necessary, repeat. Rapidly expire of cirrhosis.

It’s not that the imminent return of Beta Theta Pi, a legendary Dartmouth fraternity derecognized in 1996, and the consequent dislocation of the relatively new sorority Alpha Xi Delta, isn’t newsworthy, interesting, or significant enough to merit campus-wide speculation and discussion. But the news cycle at a tiny, secluded college populated with articulate, opinionated students can be brutal: for the month after the news broke of Beta’s return, one simply could not pick up the daily paper without encountering yet another op-ed—often hastily dashed off, uninformed, and strident in tone—criticizing yet another group that the author felt had misbehaved in regard to the situation. Wealthy alumni, Board of Trustee members, apathetic students, the Beta graduates of the ‘90s, “The Administration” (invariably portrayed as a mysterious, Kafkaesque maze of sinister bureaucrats), and even the leadership of Alpha Xi Delta—the blame for a complex, tangled web of issues and grievances lay squarely at the feet of one of these institutions (according to columnists), and the personal views of the columnist or guest writer of the day determined which group to target. The Daily Dartmouth, which, unsurprisingly for a daily newspaper concerning the affairs of 4,000 students in rural New Hampshire, often struggles to fill its pages (an indignant op-ed on the inconveniences of Nalgene water bottle use that ran last summer comes to mind as evidence of such desperation...), was in editorial heaven.

The op-eds, which, in the days immediately following the breaking news, had been reasonably measured and moderate, grew increasingly polarized between those who saw the replacement of AZD with Beta as yet another sign of the gender disparity on campus, and those who viewed this campus backlash as nothing more than the latest campus liberal cause celebre and “gender issues” as nothing more than an empty buzzword. Over-exaggerations and selective misreading allowed self-righteous columnists to overlook many simple facts of the matter that the leadership of both Alpha Xi Delta and Beta Theta Pi agreed upon: that Beta retained full ownership of its house and had every right to return to its physical plant; that AZD needed another physical plant to relocate to; that neither organization was solely responsible for any unfortunate mishandling of the situation, such as lack of transparency and lack of adequate notice. Any Dartmouth student or alum not living under a rock in the weeks following January 11, 2008, when the D broke the news, should have known those simple facts, which were reiterated in public statements released by both Greek houses, but hysteria and offense obscured them, as evident in some of the wildly uninformed editorials that questioned whether AZD understood the definition of a lease or argued that Beta should be barred from exercising its property rights. More and more students unaffiliated with either house clamored to speak for each, and a guest columnist for the D, who clearly had not grasped the simple concepts of by-lines and verifying one’s facts, automatically assumed that all the female columnists in the D writing in opposition to the return of Beta were sisters of Alpha Xi Delta, and excoriated the sisterhood for behaving childishly in the writing of such screeds (which, in fact, no sisters were responsible for). At a highly selective, top-tier college, is it really too much to ask that those students who write to the paper be capable of basic reading comprehension?

The controversy did not stop in the pages of the D, of course. The Free Press and the Independent jumped on the bandwagon with editorials expressing their leadership’s views of the Beta situation. The Council of Women’s Organizations sponsored forums on the return of Beta as a means of highlighting broader concerns on the role of women on campus. Anonymous individuals spray-painted anti-Beta signs in the snow; more anonymous individuals posted fliers in Novack Café detailing the misbehavior of Beta members in the 1990’s (reminiscent of the unsigned, angry “Daughters of Dartmouth” fliers of last spring); yet more anonymous individuals compiled a list of Beta’s ‘90’s misdeeds and distributed it to every door of every dorm on campus. The frenzy culminated in a march to Parkhurst to drop off signed copies of a petition asking for more female-controlled social spaces on campus (but not at the expense of existing male-controlled spaces); the D’s coverage of the event amusingly named the goal of the march as “social equality.” (Only at Dartmouth, one feels, do issues of classism, racism, poverty, and improvement of the Greek system all fall under the same umbrella goal. Today Webster Avenue, tomorrow the world!)

And then... nothing. Alpha Xi Delta published a letter to clear up the misconception that this was an “AZD versus Beta” issue; Beta published a similar letter applauding AZD for its maturity in handling the situation; The Daily Dartmouth’s Editorial Board finally reached a conclusion on the issue and released a relatively harmless statement criticizing the administration’s handling of the situation (an easy target, as administrators—unlike members of sororities and fraternities who may take offense at the criticism of a fellow Panhellenic Council or Inter-fraternity Council organization—don’t typically make it a habit to inundate the Daily Dartmouth with angry letters and mal-informed op-ed pieces.) Although the march didn’t exactly change the course of Dartmouth history, the surprisingly moderate petitions deposited at Parkhurst Hall —signed by many officers of both the Panhellenic Council, which governs sororities, and the Inter-Fraternity Council, which governs fraternities—did result in the creation of the Social Life Committee, which aims to help Alpha Phi and Alpha Xi Delta sororities obtain adequate housing and, in the long run, examine campus social spaces. The Social Life Committee may eventually be written off as just another bureaucratic committee that achieves little, but at least it represents a start for working to actually address issues instead of simply writing about them. Anonymous anti-Beta signs stopped popping up in random corners; The Daily Dartmouth ran fewer angry pieces concerning the situation.

This is not to say that the uproar over the return of Beta was unproductive or ultimately meaningless. Some worthwhile sentiments were exchanged in the pages of the D, even given the persistent negative mischaracterizations of Alpha Xi Delta and Beta Theta Pi. The sisterhood of AZD was pleased at the outpouring of campus support and the portrayal of the situation as a campus issue, not simply a sorority issue. Productive as it may have been, there’s no denying that the meteoric rise and decline of campus attention to the issue is quite indicative of the culture of Dartmouth as a whole. Quite simply, we like to talk to ourselves—and we like to listen to ourselves talk. On a small campus full of intelligent and self-important students, everybody wants to have a published opinion. And such students typically find very few topics to have an opinion on within the self-contained bubble of Hanover except for themselves; that we’ve created an entire lexicon of Dartmouth words used to analyze our own behavior (facetime, self-call, etc.) is a testament to that fact. The cause of the day may end up being the cause of the week, or the cause of the month, but as op-ed authors begin to run out of fresh ways to rehash the same arguments for or against the return of Beta Theta Pi, and the campus stops paying attention, the novelty of the echo chamber that is our public sphere wears off. The issue may be pushed aside, or it may be acted upon (as in this case, with the formation of the Social Life Committee), but inevitably, the issue of Beta’s return, while still very significant to campus, has ceased to be the trendy conversation-starter of the day. Beta won’t return until next fall, and plenty of newsworthy developments may occur in their situation until then—but if you’re waiting for the chance to hop onto the Beta bandwagon to express your opinion on its return to the entire Dartmouth population, you’re out of luck: the Beta spin cycle has already passed you by. n

Everyone Hates Beta—Except AZD

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