TDR Interview: Scott Sipple '84

By Aditya Sivaraman | Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Editor’s Note: Scott C. Sipple ’84 is co-chair of the Beta Board of Trustees. After more than a decade without a presence on campus, Beta and the College came to an agreement in late 2007 that would allow Beta to participate in the 2008 fall rush.

The Dartmouth Review: The first question that I’m going to ask you is, how do you personally feel about Beta being re-recognized or potentially re-recognized after–well, it’s been a decade or more now?

Scott C. Sipple ‘84: Well, we are very excited; very excited. You have to understand the context that we have in the organization–this is an organization that actually goes back to the mid-1800s. It started out as a senior society and was also known as Sigma Delta Pi and then it sought and got recognition as a chapter of Theta Beta Pi. It was perceived as a first-class organization here on campus for almost the entirety of its existence. We have Board members—to give you the frame of reference we’re using—we have Board members from every decade through the Thirties through the Nineties on our board, so we get perspectives from six different decades, and what you hear is a very consistent story about the quality of the people in the organization, and so for us we’re really happy to have this wonderful experience. A lot of who we are was helped shaped by our experience of the people we met in Beta, and this is a great prospect for us to be coming back to campus.

TDR: The alumni must be very, very excited about finally being back on campus.

Sipple: Yeah. No, absolutely. It’s great for us, but we’re really focused on the fact we’re the alumni—we had our time here. This is about hopefully being able to bring back the strength and quality of the organization we had historically, but then also finding ways to continue to improve upon that. And, you know, times change and you have to adapt, it’s another part of what we’re to do.

TDR: Fantastic, fantastic. I’m sure you’ve been asked this before, but are there any specific groups that you’re planning on gearing your recruitment towards?

Sipple: The answer is no. We’re just looking for high-quality people, period. And while that doesn’t include or exclude anybody, we are pretty comfortable that we will be able to find a high-quality group of individuals: some people from different athletic teams, potentially, some people in other clubs or organizations around campus; it really depends. We’re looking at the quality of the individual, not any alignment that they may have with any particular organization.

TDR: I have a follow-up to that question. Around campus, different fraternity houses represent different niches, in some respects: there’s a rugby house, lacrosse house, et cetera—

Sipple: Right.

TDR: Do you think since Beta’s coming back onto campus after a twelve-year dark period, that it is going to be difficult for you to find members?

Sipple: It’s a challenge for us because number one, we don’t, you know–all the other people on campus; for example, let’s say, current freshmen are evaluating all the other fraternity options on campus right now, so we’re not part of that process other than just kind of tangentially they’re hearing about us. They probably don’t know much about us; they certainly aren’t visiting our house and seeing other students that they would know on campus to be able to have a level of comfort with and identify with, so we’re at a pretty severe detriment there because we don’t have that same level of engagement with the undergraduates. So we’re very concerned about how we’re able to appeal to the undergraduates. . . it’s going to be tough.

Trying to align with a certain interest group here—that, to us, we know that there are certain. . . it’s not frankly any different, or not much different, than when I was here twenty-five years ago, so there hasn’t been that much change in the orientation of the houses. But you know, we happen to have been an organization representing a lot of different groups on campus, so you know, maybe there are people that might be predisposed to one organization or another because people in that particular interest group tend to flock to that house. Or maybe there’s a couple guys that say “You know, I’m looking for something a little different,” and they might want to take a look at us. And I know that’s the case with a lot of houses on campus. I think it’s pretty rare where one house is exclusively one type of interest group; I mean, there are people from other interest groups on campus that are a big part of the equation.

TDR: That’s true.

Sipple: And I think we’d like to see that with ourselves. There might be a plurality of one type of interest group in our house, but I would strongly doubt it would be a majority.

TDR: This is a question that I’ve never completely had clarified—

Sipple: Okay.

TDR: Will there be a fall of 2008 rush class?

Sipple: Yes, absolutely.

TDR: Absolutely?

Sipple: Yes. I say “absolutely” meaning we would participate in fall recruitment, so we will be trying to recruit new members. If we can’t get any members, well, there won’t be a rush class; but technically, if we are able to find the minimum numbers that we need to go through the process, then yes, there will be a rush class. So we are absolutely going to be participating in fall of 2008. Right.

TDR: In terms of the fall rush class, who will obviously be the only class at Beta (besides the alums), are there any specific issues or concerns because this rush class doesn’t have any kind of upperclassmen influence?

Sipple: Well, there’s two answers to that question. The first part is that as we get into the spring term, we’re going to have a couple of information sessions. Once again, this term, we’re trying to get input from students. We’re not marketing; we’re really just trying to get more ideas of what are some needs and interests on campus among the undergraduates here. In the spring, we’re going to add a more marketing element to that. We will actually be able to speak with upperclassmen, ‘09s and ‘10s, that may wish to help form interest groups in the spring. So those ‘09s and ‘10s could join on—they wouldn’t be rushed, but they could form an interest group. And if we do succeed in finding some of those upperclassmen, then they would be a part of the rush class in the fall that would include the ‘11s at that point. So let’s assume that’s the case that we’ll have those people involved in our recruiting process as well, so to your point, there will be upperclassmen.

But let’s say we don’t get any upperclassmen, and we just have to rely on the ‘11s as they rush in the fall. You know, there’s a great corollary with Phi Delt’s experience; the head of the Trustee Board—he and I have shared a lot of our discussion about how that got restarted—the ‘05s are the first class, so we know one of the great parts of the appeal for that ‘05 class was really the opportunity to build an organization from scratch. I mean, there are some foundational elements, clearly, and the alumni have helped to create that foundation, but ultimately it’s the undergraduates who build the character of the organization and the house, and so, you know, frankly I think this is a great opportunity for undergraduates who are interested in that process of helping build it and form it and really make it a great organization. I know that was a key part of the success of Phi Delt: the fact that you had a strong history, a strong alumni base, and offered this entrepreneurial opportunity to undergraduates: we’re doing a lot of the same things. I feel confident that we’ll be able to mimic a lot of the things the Phi Delts were successful with, and if we are successful with them, then we’ll hopefully have a successful recruiting cycle and a successful launch into the organization.

TDR: There has been speculation on campus that Beta may be dry next year, or next fall—is there any merit to that speculation?

Sipple: Well, there’s two elements to the question, again there. First off, let’s just go through a normal cycle within the College policies: we get a group of undergraduates that join the house in the fall, okay; the College—Phi Delt went through the same thing—the College has policies in place that restrict alcohol in use in the organizations and their chapter houses, and that lasts—and again, it’s Residential Life that has the controls over that—but again, it can last a few terms. And then gradually, if the organization seems to have its legs underneath it, then Residential Life will say “Okay, we feel comfortable that you can have some limited events with alcohol involved.” You know, it’s a gradual process, and the undergraduates basically have to earn their way into that. So there would be a period–and you’d probably have to talk to Residential Life for more specifics of how long that period would last—but it wouldn’t be forever, certainly, but kind of an initial period.

The other element is the national organization, the Beta Theta Pi national organization. They currently have policies in place; to give you the context—there are just under 150 chapters nationally. The majority of those chapters are all what we would consider traditional fraternities, and they have alcoholic parties and all the other stuff. What they did is institute a policy for new chapters that said these new chapters have to have the facility—the house has to be dry. The members can host a party somewhere else, but they don’t want to have, they don’t allow alcohol in the chapter house. And so that’s the new policy.

So were we to come back as a Beta national under that policy, then the chapter house would be alcohol-free. Part of what we’re doing with these information sessions is to really assess—“Well, okay, that’s fine,” from an alum’s perspective or at least from a corporation head perspective—it makes it easy, right? Alcohol means wear and tear on the house; we all know that from known experiences, but we said “Well, is that really what the undergraduates want?” And we weren’t advocating it, but we could see a benefit from our perspective—we aren’t advocating this, but we want to see how the undergraduates felt. So we’ve been doing research for the last two to three years, asking undergraduates, saying “Okay, what would you think of a house like this, that would be alcohol-free—what do you think of that?” And that’s the reason the information sessions in the winter were also there to help us, too, and thus far we have not had a very strong response to that from most people. And you know, we’ve finished the setup of the organization on the pretext of personal accountability, responsibility, that we think that when you go to college, you are maturing adults and you can take control and personal responsibility for yourselves—and we know that alcohol use is prevalent on campus. To try to restrict it, our concern is that we think that as is the case with a number of organizations on this campus that are supposed to be dry but aren’t, that we didn’t want to get into a hypocritical situation and we’d much rather have students accountable for their own actions, rather than try to enforce—and we can’t enforce, and the College won’t enforce a dry policy.

So our concern is: “How do you enforce a dry policy in an environment where we largely can’t act as enforcement agents?” We would much rather start on the premise, the foundation, of responsibility for one’s own actions and hopefully that would derive a culture where people are respectful of themselves, their house, their brothers, their guests, all the undergraduates here on campus, and so that we really have a very balanced approach to the type of people that we get and the type of organization it is. And alcohol use can be their response, and that’s what we’d like to see.

TDR: Do you think that if Beta is dry either in the fall or longer than that—do you think this will have either a positive or a negative influence on your ability to recruit new members?

Sipple: That’s a great question; I really don’t know the answer to that. I mean, we’re going to find out, right? I mean, we tell people that, you know, the house will be dry in the fall or the winter or whatever the sequencing is, if that turns them away, there’s not much we can do about it—that’s College policy. Phi Delt went through the same thing, survived, and it wasn’t a big problem, so that’s kind of our view of it—that it’s a temporary situation. It’s part of the step that a new organization has to take within the College policies for being re-recognized; we think that while that may be perceived as negative on campus, that the offsetting positives would be the ability to start an organization from scratch and rekindle the really strong legacy of Beta on campus. We think those things will offset what may be perceived as a short-term negative.

TDR: You mentioned earlier that you may be trying to form an interest group of upperclassmen who would be interested in Beta, and given that, how would you, the alumni, be involved in the recruitment process?

Sipple: The answer is very—and again, ripping a page out of the Phi Delt playbook, they still get about forty alums who show up for rush. Phi Delt and Beta had a long history of being great friends; we lived right across the street from each other, a lot of guys knew each other very well through a lot of different activities, and we had a very, very close relationship. And so I’ve kind of mockingly said to our alumni: “Okay, hey, Phi Delt can do it, we can do it,” so it’s been a nice challenge. I think we’ll have a very strong showing of people, not only in the fall, but hopefully in the spring as well.

TDR: Great, great. This is one of the big questions that always comes up—you mentioned in passing about Beta national, about how they have a policy of being dry—what’s the current relationship between the Dartmouth chapter of Beta and Beta national? What are its perspectives on how you guys influence your re-recognition process?

Sipple: Well, we’re currently—we’ve been in active conversations with our national for years; obviously, as our discussions with the College have picked up, we as an alumni body understood that we have two groups that we are certainly interested in working with: the national and the College. If we had national backing but not College backing, we wouldn’t be on this campus. Getting College backing and not national backing—the College holds the key to our re-recognition here, not the national, so we had to focus our efforts on working with the College, and that’s how we’ve come to the agreement that we currently have with them, and we’re very pleased with it, it gives us a foundation and the beginning steps to having an organization back on campus.

Our work with the national will be ongoing—we’ve had lots of conversations. It will be something that may take some time to continue to work through, but I will tell you that the great thing is—to directly answer your question, what’s kind of the status of our discussions?—that they are very cordial discussions. We’re both trying to work together to find a solution that we think is going to work here at Dartmouth. The foundation of our organization of Beta, meaning the Dartmouth Beta alumni, borrows heavily from what the Beta national mission principles are. So we’re very tightly aligned. There are a few issues that we need to work through together, and I think we’re doing that in a good spirit of cooperation. It’s hard for me to forecast when we’ll have this all resolved, but as our experience with the College took us eleven years to get this cultivated, you know, we’ve shown that we’re patient, we’re determined. And we’ll do that with the national as well.

TDR: What about the College’s resistance to having new local Greek organizations?

Sipple: Well, that’s the College policy. I think there are people in other camps that have a lot more to say about that policy than we would, other than to say that we’re working within the spirit of agreement that we have with the College and the policy of the College, and you know. Things change, and we’ll work within that, but right now we’re working within the current policy. So that’s really more an issue for people here on campus to opine on and figure out what they think is appropriate. If they want to have that conversation with the College, they should.

TDR: All right. This is one of the questions that relates to why it has taken Beta eleven years to come back—are there any things or specific issues that are still a hurdle to Beta’s relationship with the College right now?

Sipple: No, not any longer.

TDR: Not any longer?

Sipple: No.

TDR: If Beta national—if those negotiations broke down and that doesn’t work out, are there any other national organizations that Beta would consider going to?

Sipple: At this point, we as a Board have not engaged any. The College has made suggestions to us, and it is important that we understand, we distinguish that the College was offering those ideas up to us. Currently, our focus is on the Beta national organization.

TDR: Okay.

Sipple: So, are those options available? They certainly are, but we’re not at that point yet.

TDR: Okay, fair enough. I know you’ve been kind of dancing around this one for awhile–the Student Life Initiative isn’t quite what it used to be anymore, but there is a residual echo of it. How would a returned Beta react with a more or less anti-Greek administrative initiative of the College?

Sipple: Well, I would actually—when the Student Life Initiative came out, I perceived it to be anti-Greek when I first read it, and I think a lot of the people did. I will tell you that in my workings with the College over the last—certainly over the last twelve months or so, I did not feel that the College is anti-Greek. Now certain Greek organizations on campus may feel that way based on some of the policies that they’re having to work under, but I can tell you that in terms of our discussions with the College, we’ve not sensed that–there hasn’t been a tone of “We are anti-Greek.” My own view is that the College is trying to strengthen the Greek organizations on campus and make them better organizations, so hopefully we will be part of that process.

TDR: All right. There has been a number of outrageous things written about Beta in a number of forums—about what Beta did on campus, including in the Daily Dartmouth. Are there any specific allegations that you would like to address?

Sipple: Sure, the one I know that came up—a reporter from the Dartmouth asked me if I had ever heard of “Betavision.” I had never heard of it, nor had Dean Redman heard of it, nor was anything in our files on it. So then we see the next day in The D: “Well, there’s rumor that there was this ‘Betavision’ thing, but everybody’s denying it.” So when we did see this printed, we said, “Well, let’s find out if anybody knows anything about this,” so we started contacting all these alumni of that era, and no one had ever heard of this thing. The only thing we could come up with is two possible explanations. One is that back when VHS was first coming into market, there were two competing formats: VHS and Betamax, and Betamax was Sony; VHS was a more common standard. It’s kind of like the way Blu-ray and HD DVD are right now, two competing standards—well, Sony Betamax ended up losing. Anyways, so we’d heard that the guys in the house started calling the television Betavision because of Betamax. That was one potential source.

Another one was that there was concern in the house that there was a brother who was leaking information to his girlfriend, like actually making notes of the fraternity meetings to his girlfriend. So what they did was they made up a story—they thought they knew who the guy was, but they weren’t certain, so to try to flush out who they thought the person was, they made up a story that they had secretly been videotaping people. And apparently the girlfriend of this guy came screaming into the house one day, quite upset after having read this in the notes, even though it was never true. And of course what they were able to do is smoke out this guy. But those are the only two things we could come up with after doing a lot of research. After clearing out the house, there were no wires found, you know; it’s all nonsense at the end of the day. So it’s just one of those fictional things, but urban legends tend to get a life of their own, and that’s clearly one. Another one was that we had this initiation process of kidnapping a Chi Gam pledge. That’s bogus; there was one isolated incident that apparently did occur, and that’s all it was. I don’t know; are there any others?

TDR: That’s the one I was trying to get at. All right. Over the last decade before the derecognition, Beta had a series of troubling incidents—some of them were just rude violations, some a little more than that. What do you think contributed to that breakdown?—because as you said, it sounds as though Beta has had an illustrious history.

Sipple: That’s a great question; that’s a beautiful question, because there’s two elements. Number one, there were some actions taken by a very small number of people that were, and should not have been, tolerated. We certainly didn’t support them as an alumni board. I don’t think many members of the house supported them, either, but the lesson there is that one or two guys can do one stupid thing and undermine an entire organization. And so I have pulled down the same warning: we can’t let one or two guys do one or two stupid actions undermine the organization. And that, in fact, was the case for us. And the lesson learned from that is we have to make sure we have a much stronger level of governance, because there was a real breakdown.

There was a breakdown in the fraternity’s ability to police itself, our alumni board to intervene effectively; the College didn’t help to intervene, nor did the national organization. I mean, you had failures on four different levels, and we paid a heavy price for those failures. And so I think we’ll be a little more sensitive to making sure that we keep proper governance—and governance doesn’t mean a heavy hand; governance doesn’t mean cracking down every time some guy drops gum on the floor. It means making sure that everybody’s having a good time, things are operating smoothly.

The great thing about Dartmouth and the college student—it was John Sloan Dickey, there’s a great quote there, he makes a statement—it basically is the frightening prospect that we have to be willing to allow undergraduates to make mistakes. Brookings had this theory that he wouldn’t hire people unless they had made big mistakes, because you learn from your mistakes. And everybody’s going to make mistakes—we expect people that join our organization are going to make mistakes. I made mistakes, but you learn from them.

The nice thing about Dartmouth is, you can make mistakes and it’s within a pretty safe environment. So that governance means that when a person does make a mistake, we help them recognize their mistake and learn from that, it’s not to punish them—governance doesn’t mean punishment. It means to redirect them back on track, and that’s what—if you talk to our Board member who’s the Class of ‘96; he was here nearly till the end–they got derecognized six months after he graduated. You know, he said, “Look. We had some model citizens; because we were on probation so many times, we didn’t really do much that could get us in trouble—we just had this legacy of issues that we had to deal with.” And he said, “You know, the overwhelming majority of these guys were great guys. We had a couple guys who did a couple dumb things, and it hurt all of us, so we want to make sure that the governance is in place, and make sure that all those guys are first-class guys who are doing the right thing–that can really benefit from the experience there and not be harmed by a couple folks that need to be redirected.” n

TDR Interview: Scott Sipple '84

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