Mindhood Comes to Dartmouth

“When you Google the phrase mindful fraternity, the only result you get is some Buddhist frat at San Diego State.” 

To be perfectly candid — and truly at no fault to her character — Susan Reynolds ’84 is probably amongst the relatively few who have ever actually keyed the term mindful fraternity into a Google search bar. Luckily however, that now-relatively obscure phrase might actually be beginning to gain relevance; thanks to the efforts of her organization Mindhood, the concept of the mindful fraternity is actually coming to fruition, and Dartmouth’s own Webster Avenue has acted as the pilot.

Susan Reynolds co-founded Mindhood in 2017 after spending over a decade as Director of Academic Technology at the Fenn School in Concord, MA. After coming to understand the overblown impact of technology on the next generation’s well-being, she sought out to create a grass-roots movement urging students to reinvestigate the ties between technology and the healthiness of themselves and their social interactions. Her first stop was her own alma mater, and so over the course of Summer 2018, she was able to permeate the College’s social fabric through one of its most prominent social outlets: Greek houses. In an effort to affect a broader cultural change, she worked closely with several fraternities and sororities (of course amongst other forums), giving speeches, meeting with house leaders, and encouraging them to take part in activities where phones are off and kept out of sight. “It’s not a college program or an administration program, it’s a grass-roots movement,” she insists, and so far, the response has been overwhelming.

To most students at the College, mindful is probably the last word that they would associate with Greek Life. After a long week of studying, fraternities are the means by which to escape endless coursework, the place to be irresponsible, and hell, by any measure, what transpires on Friday nights is probably more mindless than anything else. Mindhood’s foremost goal is to make those very social interactions more meaningful, which to Reynolds includes “mindful relationships, mindful partying, and even mindful pong.” Though, the implications go much deeper; stronger face-to-face communication can go a long way in preventing sexual assault, and with Greek houses as most students’ principal support network on campus, to Mindhood, it’s imperative that they comprehend the role of technology in the ongoing mental health crisis. By the end of the summer, Mindhood had worked with students from a wide variety of houses across campus, including Theta Delta Chi, Phi Delt, Sigma Delt, SAE, KDE, Beta, Bonesgate, Chi Heorot, Chi Gam, and Alpha Phi.

Mindhood’s journey to Dartmouth’s campus began when Reynolds was invited to speak to the religion department’s God and Money class, a rare 6B on a Wednesday before house meetings. After receiving a surprising amount of positive feedback, it encouraged her to reach out to some of her own classmates, the ‘84s, a class which is almost oddly over-represented amongst fraternity alumni board presidents. It wasn’t long before she was in the door of many of campus’ fraternities, and Mindhood quickly realized substantial success in organizing talks, social events, and even inciting structural changes in house leadership.

“TDX hosted a Mindhood themed tails during which attendees were highly encouraged to put their phones away and spend time interacting with others face-to-face,” commented one brother. “I thought the Mindhood pilot was a tremendous success” he says, “and I look forward to increasing Mindhood’s presence on Dartmouth’s campus.” Even further, after working with Reynolds and her team, TDX decided to convert one of their executive positions into a mindfulness chair, and so their impact on the house will be undoubtedly long-lasting. 

With sororities, Mindhood was not as lucky in finding initial connections; with a significantly less-organized alumni structures, Reynolds didn’t have the same links that had bolstered her opportunities with the fraternities. This undoubtedly made it much tougher to gain a presence amongst the women of campus, though they were still able to find success in a more limited number of places. After opening a correspondence with Sigma Delt’s wellness chairs, she was given the opportunity to speak before their entire sisterhood, but the same caliber of exposure wasn’t afforded at other houses.

Still, Mindhood found luck with those affiliated elsewhere. “An overbooked, ever stressed student myself, I found Susan’s insights refreshing, especially as she recalled the difficulties of her own Dartmouth experience in order to better understand our community’s overall state of health,” commented one sister at KDE. “Despite the advent of deeply cultural and systemic obstacles, I witnessed even some of the more traditional communities express sincere interest in Mindhood’s desire to make healthy trendy and socially acceptable.”

By the end of the summer, Mindhood found that those who had participated in their pilot were collectively 78% happier by their own rating — not only a testament to the effectiveness of their movement — but also indicative of the negative consequences of technology’s widespread overuse. “It’s not about no phones, it’s just about moderation,” says Reynolds, and to that end, even though the pilot may be gone with the Summer, she’s continuing to stay involved on campus. For instance, Mindhood will be moderating a panel at the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network’s next annual forum, which is attended by their trustees and major funders. They’ll be discussing some of the ways in which the tech industry can better accommodate for user health, the effect on students in specific, and how “digital dependence and distraction” can be damaging both socially and academically.

Mindhood’s efforts are expanding beyond Dartmouth as well; they’re beginning to permeate other college campuses, though one of their most notable recent accomplishments has instead been at Piedmont High School in the Bay Area. There, after Reynolds presented her arguments to the entire 10th grade class, over 40% of them signed up to get involved in Mindhood clubs and promote the National Day of Unplugging. While college students are currently their target demographic — and likely the more relevant one too, as vastly more college students reported getting up in the middle of the night to check their phones — high school provides a necessary baseline that is incredibly telling about the transition to college.

Reynolds’ organization has proved singlehandedly the effectiveness of Greek houses as an avenue for social change, and they have certainly created a model by which other social entrepreneurs can profit. Unfortunately, associating oneself with fraternities also leaves one subject to their criticisms, and Mindhood has already felt some of that backlash. After publicly writing that the overuse of technology could feasibly contribute to sexual assault on campus, Reynolds mentioned that she had received some particularly negative sentiments about her suppositions. Still, she continued on; “I think we planted a seed at Dartmouth for more mindful fraternities,” she comments, and while Reynolds makes it clear that she is most certainly not apologizing for anything in the past, she cites her experiences on campus this summer as extremely positive. In a political environment that is targeting fraternities in particular, she clearly wants to assure that they can be recognized for all of their positive potential.

In a time when mental health on campus is widely suffering, Mindhood is taking a perfectly weighted stance. An all-out crusade against technology would most certainly fail, and a coordinated effort with the College administration would probably be more worthless than the Housing System. Instead, Reynolds is pioneering a student-led movement, one that actually recognizes the potency of Greek Life and doesn’t flee from its flaws. She’s not contending that smartphones are the work of the Devil, and she’s not miring herself in a bureaucracy that’s afraid of its own students’ social spaces. That not only highlights her ingenuity, but also another reason why Greek houses should persist on this campus. They allow students to organize and tackle social issues, to have a voice of their own in campus culture, and to pick organizations like Mindhood to guide them, rather than those chosen by an imposing administration. 

Still, Reynolds’ message is an important one, and one that all students ought to consider more. She suggests reconsidering how much technology is used in everyday life, and then deducing to which degree it becomes unhealthy. An important part of Reynolds’ argument is that personal accountability coupled with cultural change can be extremely effective. These two components are absolutely integral to the movement. Otherwise, the result is an odd form of quasi-conservative Marxism ­­— as seen in Tucker Carlson’s contentions that technological progress ought to be limited to account for the externalities — which is wholly not compatible with American ideals. A more consistent reasoning aligns with Mindhood’s goals: to educate people about the woes of technology and urge them to reconsider how much they use it. Hopefully, this line of thought will lead Reynolds and her organization to great success.