Saturday Night: Revel in Structured Options

by Matthew J. Tokson

As many of Dartmouth’s prospective and incoming students already know, Dartmouth has been undergoing something known as the "Student Life Initiative" (or SLI) for the past few years. The initiative, launched on February 9, 1999, is designed to promote new social/residential options and to discourage use of Dartmouth’s dominant social option, its fraternity and sorority system. The College has invested a great deal of time and effort towards changing these student lives, towards shaping students’ social behaviors into different forms than they had previously taken.

Until now, most student attention has understandably been focused on the College’s efforts to curtail the current system; the removal of all beer taps and permanent bars, the prohibition of the formation of new fraternities or sororities, the reduction of house income and membership by altering new-member policies, and, most recently, mandatory weekly house inspections by Safety and Security officers. As a member of a fraternity, these SLI measures have certainly had an impact on my social life, as they have on nearly all students, whether "affiliated" or "independent".

But for incoming students, the most relevant part of the SLI will be the social options built to replace the current system. After all, as incoming Dartmouth students, you probably value life outside of the classroom a great deal. A vital social life and the overall quality of student life are two of Dartmouth’s biggest selling points, complementing its well-known academic excellence. Indeed, when you were looking at colleges last year, the Princeton Review’s popular college guidebook The Best 331 Colleges ranked Dartmouth first in the nation in its "quality of life" category.

The Class of 2005 will be faced with an unprecedented degree of both social choice and uncertainty, as Dartmouth’s fraternity and sorority culture is increasingly hobbled. So let’s consider your 150 or so future weekends at Dartmouth and ask ourselves, what now?

Surprisingly, not much. That there have been fewer open fraternity and sorority parties in recent terms doesn’t help, but the problem is still broader.

Dartmouth has always had a vibrant weekend culture in and out of its Greek houses. Dorm parties are generally the most popular option for freshmen, at least until the spring when many start to feel more comfortable in Greek houses. Off-campus social life is generally a popular option for College seniors, especially in the last few years as fraternities have been increasingly restricted.

But the College is taking steps to curtail these unregulated options just as it has the Greek system. Off-campus housing especially has been targeted by the administration. President Wright said in a February 1999 interview about the SLI, "I'd love to get back on campus what we think to be around two hundred students who live currently off campus," and recently the College has taken steps to do just that. Several popular houses that once rented to students have been purchased by the College, which also built a luxury housing complex for faculty on what had been privately-owned land adjacent to the Kresge Fitness Center. Indeed, the house where my friends and I had planned to live during our senior year was purchased by the College, and we have been forced out by a planned renovation--or demolition, communication hasn’t been clear which—to take place in the winter.

The town of Hanover has also begun taking steps to limit off-campus student housing, threatening some owners who rent to students with punishment for violating zoning laws that limit the number of unrelated residents per house. The result is that off-campus housing is increasingly expensive and hard to find (especially considering this year’s on-campus housing crunch), and will probably become less of a social option as the College purchases more houses. If a fraternity or sorority tries to operate independently of the College, the College may respond by requiring its members to live in approved housing. Slowly but surely, the College is working to eliminate off-campus housing altogether.

Dorm parties, already a fairly limited option, are also likely to be further restricted. No alcohol is allowed in the common areas of student housing, limiting the party to the confines of a single room or two. This especially affects freshmen, who tend to live in dorms with tiny rooms, like in the Choate and River clusters. Multi-room parties are likely to generate a great deal of attention from the Safety and Security officers who patrol the dorms at night. As upperclassmen generally realize, room parties are seldom worth the expense, the mess, and the risk of College discipline. The College is also considering a recommendation in the SLI report calling for mandatory registration of gatherings of 7 people or more; hosts would be required to employ a specially-licensed bartender to dispense drinks.

By reducing on- and near-campus options, the College seeks to exercise greater control over Dartmouth’s students’ social life, which is generally perceived as beer-and-party-intensive. Thanks in large part to the popular movie "Animal House", Dartmouth’s party scene, especially its fraternity scene, often gets more attention than its excellent academics, to the perpetual chagrin of professors and administrators. President Wright has justified the SLI by arguing that "part of education is to provide an appropriate environment."

If Dartmouth’s students are to behave more appropriately, to imbibe less alcohol and spend their free time more productively, they need other options. Some students spend their weekends hiking, biking or mountain climbing, often under the oversight of the excellent student-run Dartmouth Outing Club. Others avoid the party scene by spending their weekend evenings watching movies, pursuing hobbies or just hanging out in their dorms; these would be the once-ballyhooed "creative loners," the former administration’s poster students. But under the SLI the current administration has moved beyond promoting solo activities to providing social options for the majority of students looking for a party, or at least be social, on their Friday and Saturday nights.

The plans for a new student-run social space like the old Webster Hall (now Rauner Library), where students threw unregulated parties, have now been shelved indefinitely. Potential legal liability for alcohol-related injuries (another of the College’s reasons for cracking down on Greek houses) would be exponentially greater in a College building, making the realization of such a space far-off at best.

Similarly, plans for new residential halls or social spaces have been forgotten or delayed by funding and space problems. Dartmouth is extremely unlikely to construct any significant new social spaces in the foreseeable future; it struggles now just to house its students. Providing students with dance floors, cafes and lounges has become a secondary concern.

What Dartmouth does plan to provide for incoming classes is a great deal of what it calls social programming. The salaries of Undergraduate Advisors (UGAs) have been tripled, and the UGA training process has intensified considerably in an effort to generate more dorm-specific programming events. The "First Year" orientation program has been greatly expanded to introduce incoming students to new programming social options on campus. And, most directly, funding for the Office of Student Life, the Programming Board, and the "Bigger, Better, and Later" social programming initiative has been increased and a permanent head for the latter hired. Dartmouth is planning even more support for its programming initiatives and for Collis Student Center this year.

Unfortunately, perhaps inevitably, Dartmouth’s programmed events have fared as well as one would expect a "programmed" social event to fare. As one of Collis’s student managers, I’ve seen a tremendous increase in programmed events over the past year and a tremendous drop in student satisfaction. Collis is generally used for non-social campus events (like meetings and lectures in the Commonground room), for studying, for playing pool, and for snacking at the cafe or the Lone Pine Tavern. Sadly, in the last year Collis removed its billiards room, the most popular social space in the building, and replaced it with Poison Ivy, the Dartmouth version of a dance club, complete with a very expensive lighting system and thumping speakers.

In the year since Poison Ivy’s opening, hundreds of events (most straight out of summer camp nightmares) have taken place in the refurbished room. The events were nearly always failures, with attendance below expected levels and, fortunately for me and other Collis staff, piles of free food and other goodies left over at the end of the night. It has become a joke among managers at our weekly meetings to second-guess proposed events to be held in Poison Ivy: "Um, are you sure you want to have it there?" Meanwhile, the pool tables were scattered between a smaller room in Collis and a room in the basement of Food Court, cutting their accessibility considerably, and bass from Poison Ivy regularly disturbs students from studying, eating, talking, or really doing anything at all on the second floor.

Poison Ivy is not Dartmouth’s only recent programming failure. Collis’s Commonground has hosted a great number of social events over the past year, again promoted by "Bigger, Better, and Later." The events are uniformly amateurish and attendance tends to be dismally low, especially on weekends (with the single exception of Sheba’s hip-hop dance concerts).

Yes, there’s a pattern here. Social events for Dartmouth students, whether in a basement dungeon or a brochure-friendly "student activities space," tend to be more popular and successful when students themselves conceive, organize, and control them.

Go down this route, though, and a familiar problem presents itself: letting students control their own social lives means that not everything students do will be to Dartmouth’s liking. From the outside campus, some student events may appear beer-soaked, offensive, or worse. So the administration steps in, disables student events, and creates its own bland alternative.

Tubestock, the summer’s biggest party, really the only school-wide party not recognized by the College, is the perfect example. The mid-day event consists of students and some locals drinking and carousing on inner tubes and student-built rafts that float along the Connecticut River while bands play from the Vermont shore.

The combination of intoxication and water can be dangerous. Some may consider the party—with its floating kegs, rampant nudity, and chaotic atmosphere—loud, obnoxious, and inappropriate. But it is also the kind of party that students love; they flock to it, and many remember Tubestock as the most thrilling, strange, enjoyable party they have attended.

Last year, Dartmouth tried to foist on students a less-rowdy alternative to Tubestock. Summer Carnival offered students free grilled foods, carnival rides, a "foam party" enclosure, and a DJ blasting tunes across the Green. The event was very popular among Hanover’s families, especially those with younger children, who mobbed the rides. For college students, though, Summer Carnival just wasn’t exciting.

Dartmouth’s administration promises to provide yours and future incoming classes with bigger and better social programming events, as they reduce independent social options, in an effort to improve Dartmouth’s image and students’ social lives. Indications are that their efforts are backfiring. The newest edition of The Best 331 Colleges, released just weeks ago, reports that despite much higher per-student funding for programmed social activities, Dartmouth’s quality of life ranking has fallen from first to fourth.

I’ll see you at Poison Ivy to celebrate.