A Cursory Read

A cursory read of Janet Reitman’s latest in Rolling Stone warrants immediate focus on a number of different points. Reitman relies heavily on unqualified sources, undemonstrated facts, and spurious rumors.

Enjoy this brief look at some of the more glaring errors and absurdities.

In response to Lohse’s op-ed, the Dartmouth community let loose a torrent of vitriol against him on The Dartmouth‘s website. Lohse, it was decided, was “disgruntled” and a “criminal.”

Well, Lohse is most certainly disgruntled, a fact few would dispute. He is also a criminal, having pled no contest to both cocaine possession and witness tampering.

“The fraternities here have a tremendous sense of entitlement – a different entitlement than you find at Harvard or other Ivy League schools,” says Michael Bronski, a Dartmouth professor of women’s and gender studies.

Oh, a women & gender studies professor condemning the Greek system. How novel.

“No matter what your actual ‘Dartmouth Experience’ is, everyone usually falls in line and says, ‘Yes, we all love Dartmouth,'” laments English professor Ivy Schweitzer, who has taught at the college for 29 years. “It’s really a very corporate way of thinking.”

Is Professor Schweitzer condemning school spirit? Surely we do not need to comment on the absurdity of connecting passion for one’s alma mater to an undefined “corporate” mindset.

“There are always a few guys in every house who are known to use date-rape drugs,” says Stewart Towle, a member of Sigma Nu, who de-pledged in 2011…

Decidedly unfounded and offensive to fraternity members, not to mention victims of sexual assault.

“I thought I could reform SAE on the inside,” he says. “I never saw it as ‘narcing’ on them.”

The logic is incredible: Lohse wanted to reform SAE internally…by reporting on them to the administration.

While the brother busted with Lohse went on to graduate, Lohse was suspended from Dartmouth for a year. “The hypocrisy in that bothered me,” Lohse says. “We made bad choices, but I was doing drugs – I wasn’t harming other people. There are aspects of Dartmouth’s culture that do harm people, that are just corrupt to the core, and nothing happens.”

Notice the conflation of ideas here. Presumably, the hypocrisy bothering Lohse is that he was suspended while his comrade went on to graduate, unhindered. The hypocrisy he goes on to discuss, however, is the prosecution of a victimless crime in the face of Dartmouth’s “corrupt to the core” culture.

–Adam I. W. Schwartzman