Here I Go Again On My Own...

by Alexander Wilson

With last term's announcement by the Board of Trustees of a new set of residential and social life “principles, ” attention has naturally focused on the actions Greek houses might take to avoid such an action. One option is “going independent,” or more precisely, houses ending their affiliation with the College and becoming completely private organizations.

With the possibility of such a decision by one or more houses likely to increase as the Trustees and the administration make more concrete statements, a look back at the recent history of independent Greek houses and Dartmouth and elsewhere is of great value. More to the point, of course, is how that independence was destroyed.

Dartmouth has had independent fraternities as recently as 1992, following a series of restrictive College regulations in the late 80's and early 90's. The most significant of these were moving rush to sophomore winter in 1989, and banning “common sources” such as kegs and punch bowls in 1990. Dissatisfaction among Greeks was compounded by a Minimum Standards policy that was widely felt to be unfair.

The first fraternity to go independent was Alpha Delta, on January 9, 1991. AD did so mainly in order to avoid a year of derecognition and five terms of social probation for violating College hazing regulations.

Other houses soon followed AD's example. Sigma Alpha Epsilon became independent on April 1 and Sigma Phi Epsilon quickly followed suit. In early 1992 Sigma Nu and Bones Gate also severed their association with the College.

While independence provided those houses with a respite from intrusive College supervision and regulation, there were numerous disadvantages. Independent fraternities could no longer use College billing in order to collect rent from their members. This proved a significant inconvenience to most of the houses as collection became substantially more difficult and time-consuming.

The newly independent fraternities also faced the issue of insurance. As private apartment complexes and not college residences, the independent houses are no longer covered by the College's policy. Naturally they also lost the subsidies for structural maintenance dispensed to recognized houses by the College.

A greater problem was the shift in criminal jurisdiction from Safety & Security to the Hanover Police Department. Instead of merely facing College disciplinary action for alcohol violations, the independent houses, and, in theory, their presidents and social chairs, could be held criminally liable for providing alcohol to minors.

In one incident, SAE was fined $1600 for providing beer to four underage students. Moreover, the prosecutor in the case had pushed for a fine of $125, 000, a sum slightly beyond SAE's financial resources.

All these obstacles would be similarly present for any fraternity that went independent in the future. None of the sororities (except Alpha Xi Delta,) nor Chi Heorot and Alpha Chi Alpha fraternities, can go independent without losing their College-owned houses. Alpha Xi's ability to go independent is almost as limited, depending upon the acquiescence of its house's owner, the Beta Theta Phi national fraternity.

Despite the natural obstacles to independence, however, the five independent fraternities of the early 90's prospered, and for a time it appeared that many of the remaining fraternities might join them in independence. It was at this point that Dartmouth's administration stepped in with a vengeance, forcing the independents to reaffiliate.

On July 1, 1992, taking advantage of the absence of upperclassmen during the summer term, Dean of the College Lee Pelton announced two College new policies for the Greek system. The first was that Dartmouth students would be forbidden to live in non-recognized houses. The second was that freshmen taking part in rush would be subject to disciplinary action personally, whereas it had previously been only the Greek house being rushed that was held responsible.

The first policy made it impossible, on a practical level, for independent houses to continue to operate. For each space in the house that could not be rented to a non-Dartmouth student, essentially all of them, the house would be losing roughly $1350 dollars.

No fraternity, no matter how financially sound, can absorb those losses indefinitely. If the College was capable of doing it then, it is certainly capable of doing it now or in the future.

The second policy, while irrelevant today since sophomore rush is firmly established, conveys a disturbing power on behalf of the administration. If the College can discipline a student for joining a Greek house as a freshman, then it can discipline a student for joining a Greek house. Period. There is no fundamental difference between the two, merely a matter of degrees. That should be a frightening thought in light of the recent announcements by the current administration.

In relatively short order the independent houses returned to the College. There was some discussion, most notably in SAE, of fighting the policies in the courtroom, but it was decided that the value of staying independent did not justify a lengthy and expensive lawsuit. Whether that would still be the case if the Trustees tried to force coeducation is very much open to question.

While no lawsuit has been filed by a Greek organization over a question similar to second half of the 1992 policy, the issue of student freedom to live in fraternity houses was the subject of a recent case at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. This lawsuit provides an instructive, and possibly optimistic, assessment of the prospects of a legal battle with the College.

Hamilton instituted a new residential policy in 1995 which forbade students from living in fraternity houses or using them for social functions. The vast majority of the fraternity houses were privately-owned.

A group of fraternities led by Alpha Delta Phi, the founding chapter of the national fraternity, sued the college for violating anti-trust laws by attempting to monopolize the housing available to Hamilton students. A long lawsuit followed and ended in a judgment in favor of the fraternities. Unfortunately, by this time most of the fraternities were financially insolvent, and unable to continue to fight when Hamilton appealed the court's decision.

All but one settled and sold their houses to the college. The lone holdout is currently negotiating over settlement terms. The lesson to be drawn, however, is that with sufficient resources a legal victory is possible.

The 1992 report put forward by Dean Pelton included in its rationale that “Dartmouth's CFS system cannot continue to survive in the long run if disaffiliated groups are allowed to continue to operate outside the CFS system and the College.”

It is bitterly ironic that only seven years later the survival of the CFS system may be preserved from the College only by the existence of “disaffiliated groups.”

Should that be the case, however, the experiences of the fraternities at Dartmouth and Hamilton must not be forgotten. There remains a legal precedent affirming the right of college students, even at private institutions, to determine their own housing arrangements free of administrative dictates.