College Enacts New Greek Policies 

by Emmett Hogan

Another term begins on the Hanover plain, and another set of poor decisions (designed - as they invariably are - to “improve” the quality of student life at Dartmouth) comes down from the Administration. This time around, the College decided to pull a one-two punch, issuing two fiats simultaneously. The first of these decisions prohibits the consumption of alcohol outdoors on Greek property unless it is part of a registered event. The second decision allows Safety and Security to conduct “safety visits” of all Greek houses at any time.

These decisions were announced to the leaders of Dartmouth’s Greek houses via a letter from the Office of Residential life on Friday, June 22. The motivating force behind both decisions is the infamous Student Life Initiative. Both policies are aimed at equalizing the standards between Greek and non-Greek students. Since Safety and Security conduct daily walk-throughs in the common areas of dorms, the College argues, they should also conduct similar walk-throughs in Greek houses. And, with regards to the new alcohol policy, Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman stated in the pages of the Daily Dartmouth that “you can’t stand in front of Mass Row with a beer, why should you be allowed to stand outside anywhere else on campus with a beer?”

Needless to say, Dartmouth’s Greek leaders were not enthusiastic. Greek leaders protested to the Office of Residential Life the following Monday, requesting a moratorium on the decisions. One of their chief complaints, as always, was that the decisions were made in secret, with no communication or input whatsoever from students. Dean Redman and Acting Assistant Dean Cassie Barnhardt seem to have been taken aback by the strongly negative reaction, and on Tuesday, June 26, the Office of Residential Life announced “a three-week transition period before [undergoing] full implementation of these policies.” The purpose of this transition period was to “seek feedback from students, CFS advisors, and Dartmouth community members as how to best [sic] implement these policies.” Greek leaders no doubt viewed this as a minor triumph.

This “grace period” should be taken for the chimera it is. The College announced it because the degree of negative reaction was unexpected. Realizing that their closed-door decision-making practices have once again angered Dartmouth students, ORL is now feigning interest in what students have to say. In an effort at damage control, Redman and Barnhardt claimed in the Daily Dartmouth that the decisions had, in fact, been partly based on student opinion. They claimed that the decisions incorporated “informal” conversations with students over the past few years (which raises the question: which students are these?). Redman attempted to bolster the new alcohol policy by claiming that a similar provision would be found in the forthcoming Greek Life Steering Committee Report, on which twelve students - many of them Greeks - worked for months. Some of these students, however, wrote a stinging rebuttal in the Dartmouth, citing their objections to the document (to which their names were attached without their consent) and Cassie Barnhardt’s monopolization of the writing process. ORL was in spin mode, seeking to use these arguments and the grace period to show a non-existent commitment to the cultivation of student opinion.

Will the grace period make any difference? As the June 26 letter declared, the grace period is merely an interregnum before the policies are enacted - so the College has no intention whatsoever of questioning the wisdom of the policies themselves. Furthermore, the grace period isn’t really a grace period. The new open container policy remains in effect throughout the three-week period - so there is no grace period on this matter at all. As for the Safety and Security visits, they are suspended. But the June 26 letter states that “the safety visits will resume on July 17 … with a full implementation plan in place.” As usual, ORL is ignoring the fact that many students oppose the decisions themselves, not simply the process by which they were adopted. The grace period was announced to promote discussion on a peripheral, and moot, question, and permits no discussion at all on the very central question of the fairness of the decisions themselves.

Why are these new policies bad policies? What is wrong with standardizing alcohol regulations between Greek and non-Greek students? And what is wrong with allowing Safety and Security officers to conduct frequent walk-throughs of Greek houses?

Firstly, the policies are dangerously vague, and may hold many more pitfalls than Greek leaders may suspect. One question with the alcohol policy is that appropriate levels are not defined. What happens to a brother if he is drinking beer on his own front porch? What happens to the house? ORL is conspicuously silent on these points. The walk-through policy is even more confusing. The putative justification for this policy is to check the safety of the physical plant. Currently, the physical plant of a Greek house is formally inspected by the College only once a year, during the Minimum Standards reviews. Does the new policy amount to the implementation of frequent and unannounced safety reviews? Can the results of a walk-through that finds safety problems in a house constitute a violation of Minimum Standards? Can a house face derecognition as a consequence of one of these walk-throughs? These are serious questions that need to be asked.

Unfortunately, the ambiguity is probably intentional. Conceivably, the College could readily consider violations of either of these new policies as violations of Minimum Standards, and Greek houses could face summary punishment or even derecognition as a consequence.

More significantly, however, the new policies are bad policies because they do not recognize the unique legal status of Greek physical plants. Unlike dorms, which are directly owned by the College, Greek houses are either privately owned or leased from the College (most fraternities are privately owned; most sororities are leased). Implicit in this status is some right to self-regulate. That right has been steadily eroded over the past decade, via recognition requirements, Minimum Standards, etc. But the College continues to pile regulation on regulation, with the ultimate goal of rendering the Greek houses indistinguishable from dorms. This justification has been, and will continue to be, a very slippery slope. The argument being made by Redman and Barnhardt to justify these policies can conceivably be made to justify the eradication of house parties or formals - if you can’t have them in a dorm, why should you be allowed to have them in a Greek house? If there is no differentiation between Greek houses and dorms - i.e., between privately owned or leased property and College-owned property - then what is the logic of having a Greek system at all? Rest assured, this is the College’s ideal endgame. And regulations like these are designed to bring this very question to head.

Greek leaders should take a page from the playbook of Sigma Nu fraternity. On Saturday, June 23, Safety and Security officers - wasting no time in enforcing these new policies - attempted to enter the house, despite the fact that the house was holding no parties that night. Several brothers met the officers at the door and refused to allow them in the house. As was the case when they seceded from the inept CFSC, the brothers of Sigma Nu again displayed an impressive amount of courage in standing up to the increasingly authoritarian Administration. Greek leaders need to recognize the simple and obvious fact that the Administration is seeking to eradicate them from campus; the latest two decisions are little more than two new tripwires set up to catch a ‘faltering’ Greek house.

Richard Petty ’97, Sigma Nu’s alumni corporation president and, in that capacity, the holder of the deed to Sigma Nu property, has questioned the legality of the new policies (indeed, it was at his instruction that the brothers of the house denied Safety and Security entrance to the house). Sadly, Dartmouth’s Greeks are unlikely to find a promising strategy in questioning the legality of these decisions. Although in the past, the College has not been above breaking the law in its jihad against the Greeks, in this case they seem to have the law on their side. As a condition for recognition, Greek organizations are required to abide by whatever policies the College implements. If a Greek house makes a serious effort to ignore the College’s policies, the College will derecognize that house. Students who continue to belong to that house will face expulsion. The only conceivable way to ensure that Dartmouth’s Greek organizations will not be subject to these new policies is to challenge the expulsion policy in court. Unfortunately, no Greek house has shown a willingness to consider this - not even Zeta Psi, which, at this point, has nothing to lose.

If anything positive has come from the events of the past two weeks, it is that Greek leaders have rapidly united to present something of a unified front against the College. Greek leaders have created an ad hoc “Greek Leaders Council” to speak for and defend the interests of Greeks; hopefully, this organization will be both effective and permanent.

But, as always, the Greek system seems poised to accept the College’s new policies without much of a whimper. No Greek house save Sigma Nu has seriously questioned the policies themselves; rather, they have focused entirely on the flawed decision-making process. Furthermore, Greek leaders seem far too ready to accept the College as a good-faith negotiator; indeed, the summer president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Jonathan Kartt ’03, called the hollow grace period a “sign of good faith”. Greek leaders, especially those in the now-defunct CFSC, have displayed this Pollyannish attitude far too many times, and Greeks should have learned their lesson by now. The College will never treat the Greek system with good faith, and it is foolish to think that they will. As this publication has argued countless times before, Greeks need to advocate for themselves, with no shame or fear. An adversarial posture is necessary only because the College adopts an adversarial policy with the Greek system. Greeks must steel themselves for a harsh battle, not just over these new policies, but over all future attempts by the College to restrict and regulate the Greek system out of existence.