Dartlog

Opinion: Guns Protect Your Rights

2013-05-24T01:14:48Z

In a series of votes on Wednesday April 17th, the United States Senate acted decisively and put an end to the national debate on gun regulation, at least for the time being. The measures proposed included an expansion of background checks, a ban on so-called “assault weapons”, and a ban on high capacity magazines, but none of them were able to garner the 60-vote majority necessary for passage. Predictably, this outcome generated a storm of criticism from the Obama administration and their usual throng of anti-gun activists. However, all American citizens should be thankful that the Senate acted as it did and preserved what is one of the most sacred and fundamental components of our great democracy.

The United States of America is the longest-lasting continuous democracy since the days of Athens and the Roman Republic, and is the world’s first true democracy in the sense that all citizens enjoy the right to vote regardless of race, gender, or class. The reason for the remarkably long-lived success of this unique experiment in self-government is that our Founding Fathers built an ingenious system of checks and balances into the core structure of the government they created, thereby ensuring that no individual or group could gain too much power and use it for self advantage. Most of the current gun control debate focuses on the Second Amendment and its enshrinement of the right to bear arms as an individual right, but the original purpose of the Second Amendment was much more than that. The Founding Fathers, ever mindful of their fledgling nation’s birth out of the oppression of the British monarchy, embedded the right to bear arms into the Constitution so that an armed society could act as the ultimate check to the power of the Federal government. Ultimately, the Second Amendment is every bit as important a check/balance as the Presidential veto or Congressional impeachment power, if not more so, because it alone has kept the Federal government from accruing an undue amount of power.

Unfortunately, none of the current political debate about gun legislation has focused on the Second Amendment as a check to government power, and both sides are to blame for this to some extent. For their part, conservatives are guilty of allowing themselves to be too easily painted as minions of the gun lobby. An especially irritating trend is their focus on promoting the AR-15 and similar semiautomatic long guns as “modern sporting rifles”, when in fact they are nothing of the sort. The .223 caliber bullet fired by the AR-15, also known as 5.56x45mm NATO, is a cartridge that is not particularly effective for medium or large game. However, it is very good at killing human beings, the purpose for which it was designed, due to the bullet’s tendency to yaw and tumble through human flesh, creating large wounds and imparting massive shock to the target. Similarly, the popular right-wing argument that the AR-15’s 30-round magazines are necessary for hunting and target shooting fall short; a real hunter is a marksman and kills the prey with a single shot, while the argument that it is a hindrance when target shooting to reload more frequently than once every thirty rounds seems grounded in nothing but laziness. The AR-15 is not a “modern sporting rifle”; it is an assault rifle, designed to provide an infantryman with the most efficient tool for killing in a combat environment. Rather than shying away from this fact, conservatives should be actively promoting civilian ownership of assault weapons for this very reason; they would be the most effective personal weapon for US citizens to own in a situation where an armed uprising against a tyrannical Federal government became necessary.

The typical liberal rhetoric against the argument that the Second Amendment is the ultimate check of governmental power is typically something along the lines of “lightly-armed civilians could never fight the US military; try stopping a tank with an AR-15!” While it seems somewhat sound on the surface, this argument fails to hold true in two crucial ways. Firstly, the United States military is not some conscripted extremist force controlled by a dictatorial state. It is solely comprised of citizen volunteers, men and women who represent some of the finest individuals this great nation has to offer. Therefore, the notion that the military would open fire on American citizens if ordered to is absurd to anyone who has interacted with servicemen and women. Secondly, even if the military were to somehow end up obeying the orders of an oppressive Federal government and fighting against an armed civilian rebellion, they would certainly win some engagements but would never be able to win a long-term conflict. Historically, our military has always struggled with counter-guerilla warfare. It took almost a decade of vicious fighting to begin to suppress the insurgency in Iraq, a geographically small nation with a population of only 31 million and an average of 34 privately owned firearms per 100 citizens. Thus, it stands to reason that it would be virtually impossible to attempt the same sort of warfare in America, a huge and geographically diverse country with a population ten times the size of Iraq’s and an average of 89 privately owned firearms per 100 citizens. Because of this, the Second Amendment is truly an effective counter to Federal government power.

In the wake of recent tragedies such as the Sandy Hook massacre, the Obama administration and a variety of other liberal political forces have preyed on heightened public emotions in an attempt to force through legislation that would have dramatically restricted Americans’ right to firearms ownership.

It is a callous and despicable tactic on the part of the left to exploit lamentable events like Sandy Hook to further their political aims. The truth of the matter is that tragedies happen. Human nature is imperfect, and there are always people who are driven to do horrible things to their fellow human beings. Even if firearms ownership were restricted, those wishing to harm others could obtain guns illegally. The real lesson of Sandy Hook is that this country has done an incredibly poor job of developing an awareness and understanding of mental illness. The Senate should have tackled that issue. Despite all the pressure and scare tactics applied by the left, the US Senate decided to preserve the individual right to own firearms as a counter to the power of government.

-- Paul F. Danyow

Demystifying SAPA, COS & Reform

2013-05-23T01:29:00Z

Sexual assault assuredly occurs at Dartmouth, a disturbing and frightening fact for all students, female and male alike. More students than ever are demanding the administration to “take action” against sexual assault. But what exactly is being done now to stop sexual assault from occurring and to hold individuals found guilty of sexual misconduct responsible for their behavior?

SAPAs – sexual abuse peer advisors – are students who are dedicated to supporting their peers who have had experiences with sexual assault. During the winter and spring terms each year, new SAPAs undergo a 32-hour training course, learning the fundamentals of supporting the survivors of sexual assault. After completing this course, SAPAs are certified to work with survivors by providing medical and emotional advice and referring victims to other resources if necessary.

In addition to working with individuals, SAPA seeks to educate the entire Dartmouth community about sexual assault and violence. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), so SAPAs have been particularly visible lately with campus-wide events and programs. On Thursday, April 25, for example, SAPAs held their annual “Take Back the Night” (TBTN) event. About 50 students, faculty, and staff gathered in this march around campus, which concluded with a gathering in the middle of the Green. TBTN events are held at college campuses around the world, aiming to raise awareness about sexual assault and establish nonviolent and supportive communities. The Student Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault (SPCSA), Mentors Against Violence (MAV), Sexperts, and V-Day Dartmouth are other student groups, in addition to SAPAs, that work tirelessly to support the survivors of sexual assault and educate all community members in order to prevent future incidents.

During the Dimensions show, the protestors chanted about specific incidents of rape on campus, often repeating, like a chorus, “95% of rapes are unreported!” The protestors did not cite the source of this statistic during their demonstration. Many studies conclude that between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 women are raped while they are college students. However, figures approximating the incidence of unreported rape on college campuses vary widely. Some studies do suggest rates of 95 percent while others report lower figures – around 75 or 80 percent. None of those are specific to Dartmouth’s campus. Nonetheless, many victims of sexual assault do not report their incidents, usually because of the traumatic nature of sexual assault or fear of retaliation.

Sexual misconduct, which is defined as any nonconsensual, threatening, or intimidating sexual behavior, violates Section III of Dartmouth’s Standards of Conduct. Those found responsible for violating Section III will, according to the Student Handbook, “incur the most serious sanctions the College can impose, up to and including separation.” But how exactly is that enforced? How does the College attempt to make certain that sexual misconduct is punished and survivors of sexual assault are protected? Once a sexual assault has occurred, victims have various routes through which to press charges, in addition to numerous sources of support – such SAPAs, SAAP (Sexual Abuse Awareness Program) Coordinators, and of course the Deans. If the victim chooses not to move his or her incident through the college disciplinary process initially, he or she may still anonymously file a complaint through the SAAP Program, Undergraduate Judicial Affairs, or an Undergraduate Dean.

SAAP professionals can provide counseling and resources to the victim while Judicial Affairs and the Deans can inform the victim about the process of filing a formal charge with the College. The College cannot take disciplinary action against any individuals accused of sexual assault based on these reports or conversations with SAAP, Judicial Affairs, or the Deans. However, after receiving counseling and advice from these professionals, a victim can move forward and file an official report with the College through Safety and Security or Judicial Affairs, if he or she so chooses.

Students who do choose to file a formal complaint must provide a written statement to Judicial Affairs or a verbal account to a Safety and Security investigator. Once these reports are filed, the Director of Undergraduate Judicial Affairs determines whether there is “sufficient evidence to warrant a disciplinary allegation.” If there is such evidence, the accused student will receive an “allegation packet.” This includes a letter from the Undergraduate Judicial Affairs Office that describes the allegation, information gathered during the investigation, and potential outcomes of the case. The packet also includes a form through which the accused individual officially admits or denies these charges. If a student who is accused of a serious violation, such as sexual assault, admits responsibility for the incident in question, he or she can have a hearing before the Committee on Standards (COS) or request a one-on-one hearing with a dean. One-on-one dean’s hearings are very rare in assault cases, but require accused students to admit responsibility before the meeting and provide a statement detailing his or her actions. The meetings are held without advisors or witnesses and, usually, without attorneys. They may not end in a finding of “not responsible.”

If an accused individual does not admit responsibility, then he or she will have a COS hearing. A panel of five members of the Dartmouth community, consisting of two faculty members, two students, and one administrator, will hear the case. In order to find responsibility, for which a preponderance of evidence is necessary, a COS hearing requires a majority vote. The victims of an alleged assault, advisors, and witnesses may be present, and a finding of “not responsible” may be issued.   Accused students must also choose whether to have an open or closed hearing. Any student, faculty, or staff member can attend an open hearing, as can reporters. In a closed hearing, only the Committee, witnesses, accused students, advisors, and the victim may attend. Again, attorneys are left outside the door in a process similar to that described in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal by Judith Grossman. Before the hearing, the COS holds a closed meeting to discuss “administrative details” and questions they plan to ask during the hearing. COS hearings are based on the assumption of innocence. Hearings typically consist of opening statements, questions, and closing statements.   After closing statements, the COS deliberates, first questioning the accused individual’s responsibility and then, if he or she is found responsible, the appropriate judicial action.

Possible sanctions include a warning, reprimand, college probation, suspension, and permanent separation from the College. The accused individual is informed of the outcome of his or her hearing and possible sanctions the next day. Sanctions usually begin immediately. Students can request a review or the hearing if he or she believes there was a significant procedural error during the hearing or if new information that could possibly exonerate him or her has been discovered.

Sexual assault violates not only campus policy but also New Hampshire state law. When allegations of sexual assault are brought before the College, they are not forwarded to the Hanover Police unless the victim is under age eighteen or requests for the College to do so. However, a victim of sexual assault can always request a criminal trial or bring civil charges against his or her assailant through the Hanover Police Department.

This past February, the presidents of 27 of Dartmouth’s Greek organizations voted unanimously to update the College’s sexual assault policy to include automatic sanctions on affiliated individuals who have been found responsible of sexual misconduct by the COS. Previously, an affiliated student found responsible for sexual assault could be reprimanded by his or her Greek organization (in addition to the COS sanctioning). However, some felt that this policy allowed Greek houses to turn a blind eye to assaults in order to avoid adjudicating their own brothers or sisters. This would have been a result of having two separate judicial processes.

Now, after an affiliated individual is sanctioned by the COS for sexual misconduct, he or she will automatically receive additional Greek sanctions. If the individual has received a sentence of probation or one-term suspension, he or she will also be put on social probation, be barred from holding a leadership position in the organization, and may not live in the house. In addition, the individual must participate in an education program, which is individually constructed by representatives from GLOS (Greek Letter Organizations and Society), SAAP, Judicial Affairs, and the student’s Greek house. There is also a second category for more serious violations. In this second category, Greek houses essentially signed over their ability to protect their brothers and sisters in order to help end sexual assault. If an affiliated individual is suspended for two or more terms or permanently separated from the College, he or she will immediately and permanently be separated from the Greek organization. It is interesting that this particular reform hasn’t been discussed in much of the current dialogue on campus.

Even with education and slowly modified policy, sexual assault will probably never be truly eradicated from Dartmouth’s campus or from the world in general. That is the sad truth. However, SAPAs and all individuals at Dartmouth who work to combat sexual assault have venerable goals. While we may sometimes question their specific actions, they do, nonetheless, serve an extremely important purpose at Dartmouth. While the SAPAs support survivors and the COS and GLC policies reprimand aggressors, we as students have the lion’s share of the power to stop these incidents before they occur through bystander intervention and enforcing cultural mores against questionable situations or possible sexual assault.

There are no simple answers to ending sexual violence. No one policy will eradicate all dark deeds from campus. And banning the Greek system will hardly reduce sexual assault if it forces drinking and social scenes out of relatively public and open basements into locations hidden even deeper underground. At least Safety & Security currently knows where most of the drinking takes place on campus. It’s time for everyone on campus to grow up and accept a few harsh realities. The first is that sexual assualt occurs at Dartmouth just as it does at most other places in this country and the world. The second is that only through concerted and prolonged effort coupled with campus-specific and scientific policy changes can we truly impact sexual assault at Dartmouth. This may be a five or ten year project with several different policy tweaks every year, but with a subject so serious, we can’t rush to judgment. As tempting as that route is, it leads towards an abyss full of unintended consequences.

Instead, we need to all sit down at the bargaining table and slowly create beneficial policies that unite our campus in a campaign against sexual assault. Culture wars are not won overnight by a few radical activists. We can unite everyone on campus together under a banner of serious and thoughtful reform. Students and alumni all want to be a part of that process to improve Dartmouth, let’s make sure the administration proceeds in that fashion rather than a careening course calculated to respond to each and every gust of public opinion.

While we do not agree with the protesters’ methods or their seemingly one-minded crusade against the Greek system, we do agree on a few basic tenets. We agree that sexual assault is wrong. The protest is a sign: that the campus climate is ready for a discussion of sexual assault at Dartmouth. The alumni are ready as can be seen in our interview with Susan Struble ‘93. She recently founded DartmouthChange along with other alumni in order to pressure the administration towards making sensible reforms. The faculty seem to be interested given the fact that they participated in the teach-ins and the community exercises when classes were cancelled. The students appear to be ready. At least, we know we here at The Dartmouth Review are ready for that discussion.

Note that we said discussion, not dictatorship. Every member of our community has a voice and should be allowed to use that voice. There are long discussions ahead for Dartmouth, but that’s good. Let us just hope that everyone both on and off-campus is willing to participate in that discussion respectfully, thoughtfully and carefully. After all, we’re meant to be make the world’s problems ours and then to attempt to solve them. Can we honestly shrink from solving the problems at our doorstep simply because they are complicated? Simply because sexual assault is a difficult topic and will require us to continue discussing and changing policy for years? Those are all paltry reasons compared to the moral obligation we have to reduce the violence occurring in our own backyards. First, we must fix our own problems. Then the world’s.

-- Caroline Sohr

Data is the Answer, Not Delusional Hopes

2013-05-21T21:22:00Z

On the heels of the protests by the radical group formerly known as Dartmouth REALTALK (now known as Dartmouth RealTalk), there comes the news that Greek leadership is considering a new policy to ban freshmen from all Greek houses while alcohol is being served or consumed until the Monday after Homecoming. On the one hand, this is something I support. It's a reform of the Greek system that's targeted at reducing the problems associated with Greek life while maintaining the institution itself. Good. It's hardly an attempt to ban the Greek system which so many RealTalk aficionados appear to desperately desire.

It is not inherently a bad idea, but I fear it will have dangerous consequences. Ban freshmen by all means, but then where will they go?

I remember the halcyon days of my freshman fall. We were not lured to the fraternities. Rather, we chose to go because we wanted to. As for the theories that this will limit access to alcohol, I worry that is merely a pipe dream. Everyone on my freshman floor had an upperclassman friend who would buy hard liquor for them within a fortnight. And, unlike the light beer that is consumed in the fraternities, our pre-games always consisted of grain spirits or cheap vodka. Why? It was easier to store, more cost-effective and finally more concealable. By far, mixed drinks were the beverage of choice.

For those of you who no longer imbibe, mixed drinks are far more dangerous than light beer. It’s a lot easier to down six extra shots in thirty minutes than six extra beers. And then, you will be in a lot more trouble. Sadly, I fear that freshmen will merely remain in their dorms or in less monitored spaces, pre-gaming with hard liquor and mixed drinks. That is far more dangerous in terms of drinking behavior than a game or two of beer pong with Keystone Light in a fraternity basement. After all, in a fraternity, there are experienced upperclassmen monitoring the situation to make sure no drunk freshman dies on their couches. In an open basement, there are other individuals who are present in the situation who can instantly spot a stumbling and vomiting individual and then help them. All of these are good safeguards. Some claim that freshmen won’t pre-game if there are no available parties. To these seemingly naive people, I reply that the pre-game will become the party.

As for sexual assault, I believe this policy could reduce the number of sexual assaults significantly. But, I worry there may also be other unintended consequences. For example, wouldn't it be a worse power dynamic if liquor was scarce? If there were only a few parties available to freshmen? If an older student held a party in his dormitory room and invited freshmen, wouldn't that be a far more hostile environment than a fraternity basement which is open to all students? In a fraternity basement filled with older male and female students from across campus, bystander intervention is a far more likely occurrence. At the same time, then freshmen can easily choose to leave a threatening and uncomfortable environment. After all, the next opportunity to get alcohol is just steps away down Webster Avenue. If the supply of liquor is restricted to those few unethical enough to invite over freshmen, why would that reduce sexual assault? It could, conceivably as freshmen would be on guard at such parties as opposed to assuming that fraternity parties are completely safe. But is that the only reason we are supporting this policy?

I desperately hope that banning freshmen does indeed reduce sexual assault, but I also do not believe that we should just march blindly over the cliff of bad policy without a little forethought. So, instead of just blindly passing this policy, the Greek leadership should very clearly state to the administration that as a consequence of this policy’s passage, extensive records must be kept of all relevant statistics for the incoming freshmen class and then publicly shared. For example, we need to know if sexual assaults increased or decreased before and after Homecoming. Did this policy merely delay sexual assaults until fraternities were opened to freshmen? Or did it increase sexual assault by pushing freshmen social scenes and alcohol consumption into unregulated areas of campus? The same goes for binge drinking. Why not conduct anonymous surveys on sexual assault as well as record all reported sexual assaults and freshmen who were sent to DHMC or Dick’s House? Why not record their BACs as well?

The debate on campus is woefully bereft of facts or data. If we’re going to try a new policy, we must also examine its effects. How else can we know if we’ve truly improved the situation? How else can we discover the truth about sexual assault, fraternities and binge drinking? Policy based on theories instead of facts is dangerous and irresponsible. We can and should do better.

-- Thomas J.P. Harrington

Trance Movie Review

2013-05-15T19:13:23Z

Danny Boyle’s Trance is the type of film that gets so muddled in how to say something of merit that it forgets what it’s trying to say in the first place. After all, when you combine Mr. Boyle’s surrealistic directorial style with a story that features more twists than a vase of Red Vines, you would find it nigh on impossible not to leave audiences more befuddled than enlightened.

After taking home the Oscar for Best Director in 2009 for Slumdog Millionaire, Mr. Boyle confined his exuberantly odd style to a very small film in 127 Hours. The film focuses on, surprisingly enough, the 127 hours that mountain climber Aron Ralston spent trapped under a rock before cutting his arm off and stumbling to rescue. For the director of Trainspotting, a highly acclaimed film that features the many daydream and nightmare sequences of heroin addicts, this was certainly a step down.

But, rest assured, Trance is filled with many a camera trick and surreal image. After all, half of it takes place inside one of the main character’s heads. Or at least, that’s what I believe was going on. Let’s start at the beginning. Well, at the first beginning of the film, that is. Yes, it is that confusing and the point is well worth belaboring.

James McAvoy plays Simon, a sharp-dressed, but somewhat effete art auctioneer. Unfortunately, Simon is also a compulsive gambler. As a result, the film opens with Simon describing the auction house’s precautions to the audience and to a ring of criminals in a breathy, but elated voice. Together, Simon and the criminals conspire in order to snatch an artwork by Goya that just happens to be valued at twenty million dollars.

Sadly, the heist goes wrong. After all, does a heist ever go perfectly according to plan? Not because of the Ukrainian ex-special forces security team or the many high tech security systems. No, those happen to be dispatched with some ease thanks to a baseball bat and a very large criminal. Instead, betrayal undermines the genius plan. For some odd reason, Simon steals from his own compatriots. Simon hides the artwork, but is hit on the head by one of the thieves in an unfortunate accident. As a result, he suffers amnesia and is unable to remember where the painting is hidden.

Enter Rosario Dawson as Dr. Lamb, a trained hypnotherapist. And thus begins the central conceit of the film: using hypnotism to locate where the painting is in Simon’s head.

After all, only Simon knows where this treasure is. And only Simon can tell us that secret...if he wishes to. From there, the plot descends into a dark swirl of dream sequences, gory violence and extremely revealing nudity. But is it worth all of the furious editing and crescendos of electronic dance music? Sadly, no.

Trance tries to be far too clever for its own good and ends up falling flat on its face. Like your young and precocious nephew’s favorite joke, it quickly wears out its welcome and soon grows grating. Unfortunately for a movie that screams “plot twist” with every scene, your faithful reviewer quickly guessed the ending of the film in the first twenty minutes after a very poor line delivery by Ms. Dawson. A word of advice, Mr. Boyle: when both of your actors smile revealingly at the camera after what you are attempting to play off as a throwaway line, the jig is up. Even more unfortunately, the plot twist is not that meaningful. It feels strained, uninteresting, and preachy.

After all, Trance is supposed to be an art heist movie that turns into a psychological thriller…and then suddenly after nearly an hour and ten minutes, it transmogrifies yet again into a film about female empowerment. Suddenly, these men are no longer violent criminals, but instead characters in a play about feminism. And not even a very good one at that. The actors do a passable job, but in this film their only real task is to alternate between angry rants and burning holes in the camera with passionate stares. Hardly the most nuanced of performances. Sadly, the impressive cast of McAvoy, Dawson and Cassel are wasted on such shallow characters lost in the topsy-turvy plot.

Despite the script, the direction and cinematography is quite impressive. Although too bright, austere, and sterile for my taste, it fulfills its purpose. The viewer is unnerved as the camera swoops through oddly perfect sets meant to represent the interior of Simon’s mind. The visual clues to the plot are brilliant as symbolic packages melt into piles of bloody gauze and one particular character’s severed head delivers a soliloquy which would make anyone’s heart race.

Unfortunately, all of these images are overwhelmed by a soundtrack that would much better fit a crowded dance hall in the wee hours of Saturday morning than a theater. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that one of the main characters lives over a night club. But, the music appears only when the characters are far away from this apartment. Odd.

To be quite honest, the soundtrack is far from the strangest thing about this movie. That dubious honor falls to the incessant product placement. For some reason, Simon’s subconscious loves iPads. His memories are represented as embedded in iPads…no, I’m not making that up. Last I checked, Steve Jobs did not manage to cure amnesia.

Sadly, there isn’t an App for that. The ending also features an iPad very prominently in an attempt to force the audience to think about memory, choice and even love. It’s even stranger on screen, I promise you. Sadly, you will not have a conversation about the ambiguous conclusion as you walk out of the theater. Most likely, you will discuss the multiple scenes of full frontal nudity and the strange preoccupation of multiple characters on pubic hair. Of course that presumes that you and your companion or companions will be able to get past the intensely difficult nature of a discussion about pubic hair. In case you haven’t realized yet, this is not a family film and should you suggest it at the next holiday get together, you will likely never be invited back.

Yes, pubic hair is a fairly significant plot point. All in all, Trance is a movie that’s far too quirky and queer to really deliver a message or an entertaining plot. But, at least it tries to be creative, which is more than can be said for most films that make it to the screen these days. I’ll give it a six out of ten and call it a day.

-- Thomas J.P. Harrington

Does Dartmouth Have a Problem?

2013-05-14T15:16:04Z

It feels like it happened months ago, but in fact it was just 13 days ago as of this writing that a group of Dartmouth students burst into the Dimensions show claiming that Dartmouth had a problem. While the protesters touched on issues like shoddy racist graffiti popping up biannually around campus, the most memorable shouts within their protest were claims regarding the College’s sexual assault rate. And so, the Monday after their protest, The Dartmouth Review decided to explore this issue in depth.

The Dimensions protesters had three concrete claims regarding sexual assault contained within their chant. First, that Dartmouth has had fifteen reported sexual assaults in the past three years. Second, 95% of sexual assaults are not reported, and so the true number of assaults in the last three years is something on the order of 300. Third, they complained that, in the past decade, only three students have been expelled for sexual assault.

To take on the last bit first, technically speaking, Dartmouth does not “expel” people. In a lovely case of euphemism gone wild, condemned students are “separated” from the College, calling to mind Soviet prisoners who were punished not with execution, but merely being shot in the head. In any case, the protesters were correct that only three students have been “separated” for sexual assault in the past decade. First, in the 2002-03 academic year, two men were separated after being found responsible for repeatedly overriding both physical resistance and verbal non-consent to have sex with a third student. The other case ending in separation involved a student who engaged in repeated “sexual misconduct,” including entering a student’s room while they slept, following explicit denials of consent. This low number of “separations” is consistent with a general unwillingness to “separate” students in Hanover for other crimes. There have been separations for major financial fraud, repeated severe substance abuse, and a handful of other matters, but in most years there are no separations whatsoever at Dartmouth and it remains a punishment applied only in particularly egregious cases.

Counting only separations is a little misleading, however, as in addition to the three completed proceedings, four students voluntarily withdrew from the College prior to the completion of proceedings. Thus, the number of students leaving the college due to sexual assault claims is more than double what activists have claimed, though still probably lower than what they desire.

Besides the three separations and the four withdrawals, there were twenty-six other Dartmouth undergraduates who faced college judicial hearings related to sexual misconduct, according to Committee on Standards’ own summary data. Of those twenty-six, eleven cases ended in the acquittal of the accused student due to insufficient evidence. According to COS, most of these cases dealt with disputes over the level of consent to certain acts and whether a reasonable person would have considered a partially inebriated student able to give consent.

That leaves fifteen cases where students were found responsible for misconduct but punished with something less than expulsion. Three cases ended with only permanent College Probation; unsurprisingly these were somewhat less severe cases. For instance, in one of the cases a pair of students essentially engaged in sexual badgering, repeatedly asking another student for sex despite being told to leave. However, the harassment ended there and did not escalate.

Twelve students faced suspensions. These cases were severe but still clearly fell in a different category than those cases ending in expulsion. Several cases involve students clearly too intoxicated to give consent, while others involve coerced sexual contact that, in the College’s lingo, fell short of intercourse. Despite occasional assumptions that suspensions amount to a “slap on the wrist” or a “six month vacation,” eight of the cases required suspensions of at least one years, and some required six or eight consecutive leave terms. It’s unclear how many students, if any, decided to transfer rather than serve out their lengthy suspensions.

While just over three sex offense cases go before COS each year, this total is well below the overall number of sex offenses that are reported at Dartmouth each year. Safety and Security’s crime logs found fifteen sexual assaults between the years 2009 and 2011 (this presumably is the same source RealTalk cited in their protest). The College’s 2012 Clery Report, a summary of campus crime mandated by federal law, shows even more as it incorporates claims brought to entities besides Safety and Security. According to the Clery Report, Dartmouth had fifteen forcible sex offenses (a category combining rape and forcible fondling) in 2011 alone, preceded by twenty-two in 2010 and ten in 2009 for a total of forty-seven reported forcible sex offenses in the past three years.

If we want to claim that “Dartmouth has a problem,” it’s helpful to compare these statistics with similar colleges. Harvard, with 6,500 undergraduates in Cambridge, had twentysix reported forcible sexual offenses in 2011, very close to Dartmouth’s number when accounting for its larger size. With the rest of the Ivies, however, Dartmouth fared quite poorly. In comparison, Yale had eighteen such offenses in 2011, but that was a significant spike from ten and seven in the previous two years. Brown, on the other hand, had a mere seven reported offenses in 2011, despite having several thousand more students and being located on the relatively mean streets of Providence, Rhode Island. Columbia and Cornell had just four offenses each in 2011 despite being very large.

So Dartmouth looks pretty bad matched with the other Ivies, then (besides Harvard, that is). Surely, however, we must be better than some other class of schools. How about the sexually repressed kids at those Catholic universities? Nope! Notre Dame had just nineteen offenses from 2009-11 for its eight thousand undergrads, and Georgetown had twenty-one with about the same student count. Franciscan University, a small college of 2,000 in the recently infamous town of Steubenville, Ohio, has had only two reported sex offenses in the past three years! Well, what about the unwashed, unprivileged masses crowding large state schools? UNH’s Clery Report lists forty results in the last 3 years, less than Dartmouth’s forty-seven, and UNH has twice as many undergrads! How about Ohio State, with 42,000 undergrads packed into a school with tons of elite athletes? A scant sixty-one forcible sex offenses over three years, just 50% more assaults with ten times the population.

On the plus side, Dartmouth did not finish in dead last in my admittedly non-rigorous search. Amherst College had an identical count of fifteen reported forcible sexual offenses in 2011, but Amherst only has 1,800 undergrads.

Based purely on looking at reports, then, it looks like Dartmouth does indeed have a problem, relative both to other schools and to the population at large as well. If this data can be accepted at face value, Dartmouth is genuinely in need of improvement. However, there’s a major complicating factor that is the source of heavy doubt and disagreement: Report rates. Rape is frequently said to be a heavily underreported crime, if not the most underreported crime. According to the protesters and many others, 95% of sexual assaults at college are not reported to the authorities. This is a major claim and if true drastically alters our understanding of Dartmouth’s sexual assault rate. The fifteen assaults officially recorded in S&S’s crime logs would balloon to 300.

The prime piece of evidence for the 95% claim is a report by the Department of Justice released in 2000, entitled “The Sexual Victimization of College Women.” The report draws upon a survey of over 4,000 women who were attending colleges and universities in the year 1996. Said survey was quite exhaustive in just about every way one could hope. It was randomized to take women from universities all across the country, rather than from just one or a handful. The response rate was over 85%, keeping non-response bias to a minimum. The questions were relatively well-designed, leaving as little as possible to interpretation or vagueness. In a deft touch, they even told survey respondents to limit their responses to the beginning of the 1996 school year and later, thus avoiding the effects of memory decay.

The results of this robust survey were grim. 1.7 percent of college women claimed to have suffered, in the previous school year alone, experiences that the researchers classified as “completed rapes.” Several more were victims of attempted rapes or lesser sexual coercion.

These stats, if true, would be utterly flabbergasting relative to conventional measurements. 2% of college women being raped every year would translate to a rape rate of 1,000 per 100,000 people. Given that there are 20.3 million college students in the United States, that would come out to 203,000 students being raped every single year. According to the FBI’s National Crime Victimization Survey, on the other hand, America had less than 90,000 sexual assaults, total, in 2011, and even RAINN, an independent anti-sexual assault organization, estimates that only 207,774 rapes or sexual assaults occur each year. Clearly, somebody’s numbers are way off.

The reason the DOJ report could estimate a rape rate so much higher than conventional totals is linked with the other bombshell of the report, cited by the RealTalk protesters: According to the study, 95% of “completed rape” victims never report the incident to authorities. This is a dramatic claim; by comparison, the FBI estimates that about half of rapes are reported, and even another DOJ study in 2006 upped the report rate to 12%.

There are other reasons to feel doubtful of the DOJ survey’s numbers. One reason is simply time. The survey itself concerned events in 1996 and 1997, and in the sixteen years since then rape rates have fallen significantly and there has been a great deal of campaigning to encourage the reporting of sexual assault on campus. As a result, the report rate may have risen. That would explain the 2006 study’s increased number. While the increase seems small, it makes a big difference; if Dartmouth’s report rate were 12% then the fifteen assaults reported to S&S from 2009 to 2011 would extrapolate to 125 total assaults instead of 300. Still a tragedy, but fairly different numbers.

Reading closely into the 2000 study finds other interesting data nuggets regarding the low report rate. Women were given a large array of reasons they could offer for why they chose not to make a report. Many women decided not to make reports for very unfortunate reasons, such as a fear of reprisal or a fear of bothering the police.

The most commonly stated reason for not reporting, cited by a full 65% of respondents who were listed as victims of “completed rapes,” was that they “did not think it was serious enough to report.” Nearly half also did not consider what had happened to them to be rape, despite the surveyor’s classification. There are several reasons this could be so. Some of it may stem from an unwillingness to identify a boyfriend, family member, or friend as a rapist, or from a belief that rape is committed by strangers. However, it’s also very possible that many of the incidents were indeed not that severe in some way or another, and the survey overreached in classifying certain acts as rape when the average person does not. Also worthy of consideration is the factor of punishment. Rape is a major crime that leads to years in prison and a slot on the sex offender registries, and it is conceivable that some women may have refused to report because, even if they felt wronged, they did not believe the assault warranted destroying the attacker’s life. In other words, the more seriously we treat rape, the higher people may raise their personal threshold for what rape is. This is all speculation, however, and to make any strong assumptions would be hubristic.

This matter of punishments, though, brings us back to a major complaint of the protesters, the fact that only three students have faced expulsion for sexual assault in recent history. Some, such as the group Dartmouth Change, have advocated mandatory expulsion for all students found guilty of sexual assault. Of course, such mandatory expulsions can be more troubling than they appear at first glance, since college sexual assault hearings are far from the criminal courts that most people associate with rape hearings.

Legal professionals have a minimal role and nobody would mistake the proceedings for constitutional due process. Perhaps most troubling is the evidence standard. A normal criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In collegiate hearings, even the more rigorous proceedings will require a charge only meet the standard of “clear and convincing evidence,” which is supposed to represent about 75% proof (how one assigns a percent value to evidence has never been particularly clear). However, many activists favor the use of a “preponderance of evidence” standard, where a simple majority of evidence is sufficient to declare guilt. This is the standard Dartmouth already uses.

The argument has been made that the preponderance standard is necessary because the use of a stricter standard implies that the accuser’s word is not equal to the word of the accused. Relying on preponderance, so it goes, puts the two sides on equal footing. This may be the case, but what it ignores is that the consequences of a COS hearing are far from equal for the two sides.

We require proof beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal trials because the punishment of citizens by the state is an awesome power that should only be applied in places of relative certainty. Similarly, expulsion from college is a severe, life-altering event with effects comparable to a brief prison stint. If we mix mandatory expulsions with the preponderance standard of evidence, it is inevitable that we will end up expelling more than one innocent student.

This is part of the reason why sexual assault is often punished with suspensions instead. When the threshold for guilt is lower, punishments must be less severe to compensate. Dartmouth can have a higher conviction rate, or it can have expulsions, but to try having both would be destructive.

Dartmouth has a sexual assault problem. How severe, it is hard to tell. A solution must be found, but mass expulsions is not it.

--Blake Neff

[Print] Alumni Organization on Sexual Assault

2013-05-09T02:58:56Z

Recently, The Dartmouth Review had the opportunity to speak with Susy Struble, the organizing member of DartmouthChange. A member of the Class of 1993 and a concerned alumna, she recently cofounded the organization with the goal of understanding the extent of the sexual assault problem on Dartmouth’s campus and working with alumni, administrators, and current students to reduce its severity.

The Dartmouth Review (TDR): Please tell us a bit about yourself, your experience at Dartmouth, and how you came to be involved with Dartmouthchange.

Susy Struble: Well, I’m a 1993 graduate of the College. I grew up in a small town in Ohio, and it was just an enormous deal for me to come from a public school in a tiny, Midwestern farm town and go to Dartmouth College. It meant a lot to my family and it meant a lot to me. While I was there, I had an amazing experience and I deeply love the place. I was involved in the Greek System, and loved that. I definitely got involved in issues surrounding sexual assault [and I] was an early organizer with a group called Greeks Against Rape, which tried to facilitate open discussions in the sororities and fraternities and between sororities and fraternities about the problems of sexual assault and harassment and general relationships between the sexes. That was all during my junior and senior year, so that was about my level of my involvement when I was at the College. Since then, I’ve moved out West. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area right now and I’m a pretty active alumna, and when I became aware of the College’s ongoing problems with sexual assault, it was an obvious place for me to try to make a difference.

TDR: What were the origins of DartmouthChange and what made you decide to wade into the campus debate about sexual assault?

Struble: The genesis for DartmouthChange was certainly my experience on campus, and that of too many of my brothers and sisters as well. [I really ended up] getting involved after 20 years of being away from the campus after reading the Rolling Stone article that came out. Wherever the truth of all that actually lies, it just put a bug in my ear that things maybe haven’t changed so much on campus in the last 20 years. I can think back to the late 80’s early 90s [and] we were Neanderthals back then certainly, and I thought we cannot possibly be the same as we were then. So I started asking around and [trying] to find out what’s actually going on around campus to see if there’s anything we can do. In thinking about it, I don’t know that there’s ever been a real concerted effort to try to get all of the different constituencies of campus – alumni, faculty, students, employees, greater Hanover community members, and parents – together to have a dialogue and work to reduce the divisiveness of this problem.

[Print] Tour Guide Misguidance

2013-05-06T14:06:56Z

The adventure of touring college campuses as a high school student offers a welcome relief from an otherwise hectic, nerve-racking, and impersonal college admissions process. One can pore over a Princeton Review guidebook for hours on end, but for many prospective students, the determining influence in college selection may well be a campus visit.

Few colleges boast campuses as impressive as Dartmouth’s. When I first stepped on to The Green late in my junior year of high school, by then a seasoned veteran of college tours, I came to a tremendous realization: this is what a college should look like. At the conclusion of my tour, I had determined that Dartmouth also felt like a college should. By November of my senior year, I had long since resolved to make Dartmouth my college, and I was fortunate enough to see my aspirations reach fruition.

No single factor was more crucial in my decision making process than that fateful campus visit, and when I had the opportunity to apply for a position as a tour guide last year, I relished the prospect of similarly influencing prospective students. This is why, as a proud Dartmouth student and tour guide, I am profoundly worried by the persistent efforts of the College leadership and Admissions Office to ruin that experience for the next generation of prospective Dartmouth students.

A few weeks ago, I returned from an off term in New York to find that a “mandatory refresher session” from the Admissions Office was required of all guides. At this session, a series of changes to the regular tour route were announced. Most were innocuous (the Hop and surrounding buildings are now to be referred to as the “Arts District,” in case anyone was wondering). However, one change to the route seemed particularly calculated and “mandatory:” tour guides are henceforth NOT to bring their groups to Webster Avenue.

On this new tour, guides will squeeze a discussion of Dartmouth’s Greek Life into the tail end of the tour, in Collis, as part of a larger discussion of campus extra-curricular options. Apparently, our Admissions Office has reshaped its tour route in the hope that prospective students and their families will overlook a certain Rolling Stone article if they don’t see Fraternity Row itself: out of sight, out of mind! Pretending, for a moment, that this thinly veiled attempt to defer attention from Dartmouth’s Greek scene is actually a well-intentioned attempt to design a more appealing tour, if I were a prospective student, I would wonder why my tour guide was off-handedly mentioning the very heart of Dartmouth’s social life between explanations of Collis Miniversity and Thursday Night Salsa.

The fact remains: Greek Life is not just another extracurricular option. This is not to detract from the many extra-curricular activities Dartmouth offers, which are fantastic selling points. Rather, Greek Life is an option that well over half of eligible students choose to partake in; it presents a diverse and multi-faceted group of organizations for students to choose from, and it is the principal source of social life at Dartmouth. In the event prospective students fail to notice their bucolic surroundings, it is worth noting that Dartmouth is not a city school; students cannot choose among bars, comedy clubs, significant music venues, and live theatre on a nightly basis. Naturally, alternative social spaces exist on campus. But for a majority of Dartmouth students, nightlife and Greek Life are synonymous.

The decision to omit a larger discussion of Greek Life from tours will appear to prospective students, at best, a clumsy attempt to divert attention from recent P.R. setbacks. The truly frustrating result of this revision to the campus tour, however, is that it denies guides the opportunity to highlight the truly unique and positive aspects of Dartmouth’s Greek scene.

Critics of Greek Life loudly cite its misogynistic character, its exclusive nature, and a host of other complaints. These problems are not unique to Dartmouth’s fraternities. Rather, Dartmouth’s Greek scene is uncommonly inclusive.

At any other school with a Greek system, a freshman male would be barred from entering a fraternity party unless he knew several brothers, or was accompanied by a number of female friends deemed suitable by the brothers of the fraternity. At Dartmouth, a student ID guarantees entry to any Greek party on campus. My friends at other schools largely rushed fraternities at the onset of freshman fall; they all live in their fraternity houses, eat their meals in their fraternities’ kitchens, and consequently develop a narrow circle of friends. At Dartmouth, these problems are absent.

What is particularly irksome, as a tour guide, is the utter lack of autonomy afforded by the Admissions Office. Memorable tour guides are effective tour guides, and effective tour guides rarely regurgitate carefully tailored scripts.

Apparently, the Admissions Office would rather its guides err on the side of mediocrity than be entrusted with the common sense not to mention binge drinking and Andrew Lohse’s “kiddie pools full of vomit” to their tour groups. When discussing Greek Life, guides are ordered to “stay on script” and not to “prolong the discussion” beyond the 180 words the Admissions Office deems appropriate for a comprehensive discussion of Dartmouth’s Greek system. I have managed in the past to complete my tours without terrifying any parents or mentioning my own affiliation. After Andrew Lohse’s Rolling Stone muckraking article, tour guides were even summoned to an emergency session on how to handle any questions about hazing or drinking at Dartmouth. These new measures by the Admissions Office are wholly unnecessary, contrived, and indicative of a worrying trend in the decisions of Dartmouth’s incompetent leadership.

At risk of beating a dead horse, I would be remiss not to mention the Admission Office’s ludicrous decision to remodel the Dimensions show. In an explanatory email, an Admissions Office representative wrote to all tour guides: “This year, we are designing a welcome program that invites our admitted student visitors to see/hear how Dartmouth students are realizing their passions in significant ways.” What the Admissions Office neglects to realize is that students’ passions are realized at universities across America. A prospective student interested purely in academic prestige, extra-curricular achievement, and impressive student bodies would choose Harvard, Princeton, or Yale over our humble College. Our Dimensions show, our social life, and our quirky traditions are not insignificant afterthoughts for the Admissions Office to conceal from prospective students; they are the life and soul of the school, and the reason Dartmouth commands such fierce loyalty from its students and alumni. Hiding these aspects is incredibly shortsighted. Our system is not broken, yet the Admissions Office and administration seek to fix it. Why? Because it’s easy. It’s easy to sweep something under the rug instead of dealing with it honestly and forthrightly. It’s easy to avoid difficult subjects. But it’s not the right move, it’s just easy.

--Jake Rascoff

[Print] Social Life Far Worse Elsewhere

2013-05-03T15:07:41Z

Dartmouth’s fraternity system hasn’t gotten good publicity lately. Ever since “Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy” was published in Rolling Stone last March, fraternities here have drawn nothing but ire from all quarters.

I wholly understand the anxiousness that such reports may have on your state of mind. I am a freshman here at the College, and, a year ago this weekend, I was here for Dimensions, with offers of admission from Dartmouth and a few other schools in hand. And, perhaps like you, my parents and I alike were thoroughly scared by Andrew Lohse’s tale and all of the other rumors we had encountered. While the reports of extreme hazing were naturally startling, what really worried me was the picture of Dartmouth as an exclusive, cliquey, petty, good-old-boytype place. Such ideas almost kept me from coming here.

I am impossibly thankful that those thoughts did not end up dictating my decision: I’ve loved my time at Dartmouth. And while I could easily speak to my (albeit limited) experience here, the other articles in this issue do a great job of showing how untrue the popular portrait of Greek life here is. I will say this: though you may find some personal reasons not to choose Dartmouth, fear of Greek life should not be one of them. This is not just because Dartmouth’s Greek system is not as bad as advertised, but also because social scenes at comparable schools have their own negative, comparatively unpublicized quirks.

Take Harvard, for instance. I visited a friend there in October, and encountered a particularly bizarre social scene. Instead of fraternities, Harvard has “final clubs” – famously exclusive, all-male societies. Every fall, when “punch season” comes around, the campus alights with controversy over the clubs’ mere presence.

Final clubs have a real impact on the lives of freshmen there. At Dartmouth, students often “pre-game,” and then head out to Webster Ave. Fraternities generally blitz out news of a party to the entire campus, and anyone is welcome to come. At Harvard (as was my experience), the pre-game is the game, as the final clubs are usually closed to freshmen (especially males). The situation there is unfortunately conducive to dangerous levels of drinking, as students congregate around multiple bottles of hard liquor in some bedroom instead of Keystone Light in a fraternity basement. Additionally, freshmen who wish to eventually join a club must assiduously cultivate contacts throughout their first year, desperately trying to secure themselves a spot. The process can induce an awful lot of stress.

I do not mean to insinuate that Dartmouth’s Greek system does not have problems of its own. I do believe, however, that they have been publicized far beyond those of comparable schools. Look at Cornell. Although Dartmouth has become the Ivy League school synonymous with hazing, in Ithaca two fraternities were just suspended for “serious physical hazing.” Two years ago, a student died there after participating in a fraternity drinking ritual.

Even the University of Chicago’s fraternity system has its problems with heavy drinking. I went to the accepted students’ weekend there a week before Dimensions last year, and I remember that one of the frats there was hosting a “Margarita Night.” At Chicago, a “margarita” is a red Solo cup filled about halfway with tequila, with a bit of cheap margarita mix and water added; needless to say, drunk prospies were stumbling all over campus that night.

And as the examples of Harvard and others show, similar social problems are often extant absent a strong Greek Life. After Princeton banned fraternities and other societies in the 19th century (they still exist there, just in a very limited state), a system of “eating clubs” sprang up. Much like Harvard, the system at Princeton encourages a desperate scrum for spots in the more prestigious clubs. Eating clubs, though, have a much more creative way of cordoning access. Some clubs issue “passes” to nonmembers for parties, which people present at the door; certain parties require multiple passes. There is a thriving pass trade at Princeton: when Friday and Saturday come around, the not so well-connected scramble to find some way of getting into an eating club. Often they are unsuccessful, as I was during my visit to the school in December.

As countless other schools demonstrate, the lack of Greek life does not necessarily portend a healthier social life. Georgetown, Williams, and Amherst, which all lack a strong fraternity presence, and have systems where sports teams have individual houses that usually host the most popular parties. There, if you’re not lucky enough to know how to put a ball in a hoop or the back of the net, you’re more likely to find yourself locked out of the fun on a Friday night.

Much of what I say above is based on my personal experience and what I’ve heard from friends that attend all of the above schools, so, please, take what I say with a grain of salt. And seeing as how I’m a freshman, I have no experience whatsoever with pledging or life in a brotherhood. I do, however, know very well what it’s like to be in the position of a prospective student.

And as subjective as my experience has been, it really has made me believe that we have an excellent social setup here in Hanover. Whereas at another school I would not get into a party without a few girls at my side, here I can wander up to a fraternity with a nerdy-looking schmob and still get into pretty much anywhere I like. Whereas at another school I couldn’t even approach a house on a weekday, here fraternities open their doors to freshmen on Monday and Wednesday. Friends from other schools that have visited have marveled at how inclusive the social life is here, how we don’t need to “know a guy” to open the door for us.

--Nick Duva

[Print] Dartmouth Baseball Excelling in 2013

2013-04-30T17:57:34Z

The Dartmouth Review: Obviously you’ve been having a very successful season thus far; how does it feel compared to where you were at this point in the last couple of years?

Ryan Toimil: I think we have a really good chance this year to win the Ivy Championship. We returned most of our starting position players, which helps because we are experienced, and also have a really solid pitching staff that always keeps us in the game. Everyone on the team is very excited and working hard to keep improving as well. Overall we’re feeling great about our chances this year.

TDR: What were your expectations for this team at the beginning of the season and how has the team’s performance compared to them?

Toimil: We knew we would have a good team in all aspects of the game. Our strong start to the season boosted everyone’s confidence, especially as we beat Minnesota, a team that started an incredibly strong pitcher against us. I had high expectations for the team and we have lived up to them so far. We’ve hit a bit of a rough patch in the past couple weeks but we are recovering from it and still have a lot of confidence moving forward in our season. Our 19-4 win over Holy Cross on April 10^th was a big confidence booster because we had been struggling with hitting a little bit until then.

TDR: What is the team doing psychologically to get over the “hump” of losing in the finals last year and move forward?

Toimil: If anything, the loss last year has motivated the team to play harder and better this year. We’ve learned not to underestimate any opposing teams and to give 100 percent in every game, but overall last year’s loss has only served as motivation for us this season. A key thing about this team is the chemistry between us; we’ve become as much a family as a team. This togetherness keeps everyone focused and on the same page as we work to reach our common goal of getting to and winning the championship. Everyone has put in the work and we have gotten really close over the course of the year in preparation for the season.

[Print] Reform Students, Not Fraternities

2013-04-29T19:56:21Z

The Huffington Post recently published an article about Dartmouth written by an ’07 titled “Devil in the Night: Frat Culture at Dartmouth.” Go right ahead and add Ezra Tzfadya’s fairy tale of evil fraternities to the collection of sensationalist, unhelpful, controversial-for-the-sakeof-controversy articles depicting Dartmouth as this hellish place where innocent fun goes to die, and blaming the Greek system for all the social problems at Dartmouth that have been piling up this past year.

Dartmouth College does indeed have some incredibly deep-rooted social problems. A frightening percentage of our students engage in high-risk drinking frequently. Dartmouth is still very much a man’s world. Yes, the fraternity basements can get pretty nasty and unhygienic. Yes, there is sexual assault as there is on every college campus. Many of those assaults are hushed up due to shame or to victims not even being sure about what happened. Some victims would prefer to never know.

I’ve certainly been that freshman girl with fuzzy memories and the grim realization that I wasn’t at all in control of the previous night’s events, and I know all too well that I am not alone. And there is absolutely a disturbing lack of respect for women on this campus. However...