President Wright’s SLI Initiative

“I am saddened to see you give force to the most rampant and ignorant stereotypes about fraternities and fraternity members, with absolutely no empirical basis for your conclusions. I am saddened to see Dartmouth’s future crushed under the weight of your narrow-minded and fanatical leadership.” – Todd J. Zywicki ’88, writing in February 1999

With the implementation of every new executive regime, proposals are made to improve the culture and reputation of Dartmouth College by the incoming president. A particularly hot topic is the prominent status of Greek Life on campus, and whether its existence truly betters its members and those around them. The late President James Wright accomplished many things during his tenure at Dartmouth, but his initiative to abolish Greek Life was not one of those things. He led Dartmouth from 1998 to 2009, and in those eleven years he oversaw advancements in the financial infrastructure of the College, most notably a doubling of the College’s endowment and annual fundraising. Wright was a leader in making higher education accessible to veterans, and during his administration Dartmouth held the highest number of tenured female professors. Despite these accomplishments, Wright never saw the erasure of Greek organizations for which he worked so hard. What then, do his predecessors have to learn from?

On February 9, 1999, an announcement was made that, in the spirit of inclusion, all existing single-sex sororities and fraternities at Dartmouth College would become coeducational by policy. This announcement, issued under the auspices of the Student Life Initiative (SLI), met with a reaction of various forms. President James Wright and his Board of Trustees published a series of letters that critiqued existing social and off-campus spaces. The now-obsolete The Daily Dartmouth conducted an interview with Wright in which he discussed the new administrative policy, to be put in place for the fall of 1999. Mass outrage occurred among students and alumni alike. 

The night after the announcement was made, over a thousand protesters gathered on the lawn of the president’s Webster Avenue residence. Talk about a neighborly dispute. 

The brothers of Psi Upsilon flew their American flag upside down. Bob Marley’s “Get Up/Stand Up (For Your Rights)” could be heard outside Greek houses up and down frat row. 

The houses most at risk were those owned by the College. Alpha Delta and Sigma Alpha Epsilon both owned their houses, providing them with (some) measure of immunity against the actions of the College. Dartmouth, however, owned the houses occupied by Chi Heorot and Alpha Chi Alpha. Following the derecognition of Beta Alpha Omega in 1997, the College shuffled the sorority Alpha Xi Delta into the house that the Beta brothers were forced to vacate. At one point, fear spread that frat row would be decimated to make room for more dorms. 

The New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union commented on the situation, going so far as to call it illegal. “Dartmouth College cannot forbid students from joining the Unitarian Universalist Church, they cannot forbid students from joining Amnesty International, and they cannot forbid students from joining same-sex Greek organizations,” said Claire Ebel, Executive Director of the NHCLU. Curiously, if one searches online for “Student Life Initiative Dartmouth,” nothing of note appears. For an event that caused such outrage among students and alumni, the SLI is poorly recorded.

The Dartmouth Review published a special issue combining the details of Wright’s conciliatory administrative announcement with the unfiltered campus response while the news was fresh. That issue is one of the only surviving works which documented the actions of the Wright administration and the Board of Trustees in the Winter term of 1999. 

President Wright passed away 23 years after the announcement of the Student Life Initiative, which he never saw come to fruition. There is, however, still talk today surrounding the existence of Greek Life on campus and the effects of such organizations on the College as a whole. There are reasons as to why Wright’s initiative failed, despite a strong administrative push for the SLI. For as long as Dartmouth alumni support their alma mater, Dartmouth College is in no position to overturn Greek Life.