Risk Management: Greek Life is the Solution, Not the Problem

In the long history of Dartmouth, the illustrious institution has seen more than its fair share of malcontents, and yet with each passing year the number seems to grow larger, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of the student body. With each turn of the season, there is some new issue, or old issue given new, wicked life, for the chronically-dissatisfied masses to bellyache about. 

These past few years there have been two issues of primary concern, one international and one close to home. The reactions to the first, Israel’s war against Hamas, have been well-reported in this paper, and reported elsewhere as well. Readers will surely not need yet another reminder of the shrill cries of “Free Palestine” from Dartmouth’s finest oat milk-slurping agitators. 

Closer to home, however, the same rabble turned their important rage on Dartmouth’s civilizational pillars. Greek life, too, is apparently a stain upon this Earth, and one that has attracted a more persistent fury than even that directed at larger, but more distant, “oppressive forces.” Into their rhetorical gun, these disaffected deplorables have unceremoniously loaded a tragic death of a student this past summer, seeing in the tragedy another weapon with which to attack a system in which they have invested so much hatred. Earlier this week, Dartmouth awoke to see its sidewalks chalked with anti-Greek life slogans explicitly referencing last year’s tragedy, attempting to scare the prospective students visiting campus away from our school. While we are almost certain that their perfidy did nothing to deter enrollments, we are concerned about the implications for the state of our school’s culture. 

Dartmouth is, perhaps singularly so, dependent upon the strength and cohesion of its community, isolated as it is in the deep, dark woods of New Hampshire. And yet, the central pillar of that community, its Greek system, has faced decades of erosion from an administrative body wanting to sanitize and subordinate it. Now, though, it comes under attack from the very students it serves. Elements within Dartmouth’s undergraduate system really do seem to desire a constricted social environment, entirely controlled and limited. Of course, they profess to only be concerned with student safety, and in that argument they distort any loss associated with the Greek system into a direct consequence of that system. 

Last summer’s death is the prime example of this rhetorical dishonesty. While occurring at a Greek event, the death was not a result of “hazing” or any practice unique to the Greek system (although it was certainly avoidable and those responsible deserve to be held accountable). Rather, it was produced by the same disorder and irresponsibility that good Greek houses strive to prevent. Indeed, in deconstructing Greek life, its opponents would eliminate the chain of authority and responsibility that works to promote safety, offering no viable system to replace it. 

More fundamentally, however, the quest to eliminate any risk or danger from the Dartmouth experience is not only hopeless, but horribly destructive to the school community and its members. The opponents of Greek life argue that it facilitates dangerous activities and reckless behavior, apparently arguing that its members are simply incapable of either exercising judgement in choosing to participate in the system or in the choices they make when within it. When they say they want to control Greek life, they really mean that they want to restrict our ability to freely associate as well as to determine our own actions. Inherently, in seeking to prevent us from endangering ourselves, these petty tyrants would restrict our capacity for free choice. While yes, if we are unable to make risky choices we may be safer, but we will at the same time have lost out on the basic objective of the college experience, that being to develop into adults capable of existing as free-thinking and free-acting human beings.

This restriction of risk is not new. Indeed, the story of post-WWII American society can be told in terms of attempts to eliminate all potential for danger from the lives of its members. And yet, in attempting to sanitize every aspect of human existence, the champions of boredom and mediocrity have only created generations successively lacking, to a greater and greater extent, any purpose or meaning. We see this in increasing rates of self-reported alienation or isolation. While claiming to promote inclusion and acceptance, champions of a placid America have only prevented people from forming coherent identities through the process of trial and error that is a necessary part of becoming an adult. Greek houses are, at their core, places where teenagers develop into true adults as part of a community forged by shared experience and camaraderie. The enemies of Greek life are thus yet more enemies of healthy society. 

To those who tirelessly berate our traditions, we ask: Why, if you hate this place so much, did you choose to enroll here? If for some reason your perception of the school has changed since matriculating, what is keeping you here? We understand that Dartmouth and Greek life in general are not for everyone, and it is entirely within your prerogative to distance yourself from both. Yet, there are those who love them! We do and so do many others. It is unequivocally out of line to intentionally misrepresent the College in front of prospective students. Dartmouth is not unsafe; neither is its fraternity system. Painting fake blood on the sidewalk reveals more about your misguided rage than it does about the Dartmouth experience.

Won Jang’s death was a tragedy, and we must not – and cannot – normalize it. But those who profit from the publicity of his death tackle the wrong problem for personal political reasons. We ought to champion fraternities and sororities as safe places for college students to explore their youthful fearlessness. Without them and their risk management protocols, this campus would be less safe. The Greek leaders we know at Dartmouth cultivate strong brother and sisterhoods; attacking them fails to solve the current problem and engenders a list of entirely new ones.