<p>I live three blocks from the frat/sorority area of our state flagship. I like to walk. It would be really, really hard to count the number of go cups, empty beer cans, and empty liquor bottles around many of the frat houses. One also has to be careful of the piles of vomit. Sundays and Mondays it isn’t uncommon to see a pickup or SUV leaving a frat parking area with five-eight (presumably empty) kegs in the back to take back for the deposits. I’m willing to believe that there are dry and sober fraternities. I just don’t think that the evidence I see while walking supports the notion that very many of them are like that. </p>
<p>This is much like my take on our county’s Youth Behavioral Risk Survey – when 70+ percent of the high school senior boys self-report that they engaged in binge drinking - 5 or more drinks in a short period of time - we’re not talking about a minor problem amongst “those” kids. We’re talking about a much more systematic and pervasive problem. My friend who is a nurse in the local ER similarly notes a sadly large number of fraternity and sorority members brought in suffering from alcohol poisoning. Or, in a recent case, major injuries from falling out of the (dry!) sorority’s third floor window in the midst of an alcoholic stupor.</p>
<p>I can’t speak to the drug scene – except for medical marijuana, for which several thousand students at the flagship have cards certifying their status as medical marijuana patients – but I don’t expect that it is a lot better than the alcohol scene. 100 licensed pot dispensaries in our little town!</p>
<p>And having said all this, I should still say that the fraternity guys I encounter when I’m out walking are rather invariably nice and polite, and since I tend to walk around in the morning in bright light, sober, at least at the moment. I don’t delude myself that this is what they’re like on a Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday night, however.</p>
<p>No, they were ruining their lives all by themselves. The problem here is not the cops or turning the dopers in to the cops. The problem is the cocaine and the guys who were bringing it on campus and using it.</p>
<p>The guy that did both has an extensive internet trail.</p>
<p>He’s talented in the arts and in writing (easy to see why Dartmouth selected him) but his trail also indicates a privileged life. I was a bit surprised by his political persuasion and those of his parents. At any rate, records can be erased in New Hampshire and it’s done quite a bit. There were almost 4,000 annulments in 2009. The law makes it a crime to even discuss the crime. The law was enacted around 30 years ago and there are some obvious problems with it. Newspapers have a problem with the law as they have to strike archive records of crimes that are annulled. The internet is obviously a much bigger problem.</p>
<p>This kid has a pretty uncommon name so security by obscurity isn’t an option. I imagine that the parents will work quite hard on fixing the record.</p>
<p>As is usually the case, the cover up is worse than the crime–and cocaine use is pretty bad. The college can find a way to deal with the drug use. The intimidation is now the larger problem. That cannot be winked at. What will Dr. Kim do? The clock is ticking. Graduation looms. The two seniors will be gone one way or the other, but 4000+ undergrads will have to live with whatever the administration decides.</p>
<p>Obama admitted to using cocaine in college. Did it ruin his life? Obviously not. If someone had turned Obama into the cops and he was subsequently prosecuted, you probably would not know who he is now. Because he was not punished for his indiscretion, Obama was able to become the most powerful man in the world. Did you vote for him, knowing that he had used cocaine in college?</p>
<p>Bay, all of that is completely irrelevant. Cocaine is a victimless crime? Explain that to the scores of dead in the most recent Mexican drug wars. </p>
<p>The incident at hand is that a group was using cocaine today (not 20 years ago) and apparently it annoyed another frat brother enough that he reported it to campus security. In return, he was harassed to the point that he had to move out of the house.</p>
<p>I give him a world of credit. It couldn’t have been an easy decision to make, deciding to turn his frat brothers in, and he certainly didn’t gain anything from it. He must have had reasons, I suspect good reasons. I do NOT understanding him suddenly being turned into the bad guy.</p>
<p>My S is in a frat, and he can’t stand this kind of stuff. It gives all the frats a bad name. Yes, many of them are excuses for alcohol, parties, and boorish behavior - but many are good organizations. S’s frat does way more community service than their campus or their national organization require. They have a higher GPA than non-greek males on campus. When other frats do stupid stuff like this, his frat’s reputation suffers - even though they’ve done nothing wrong.</p>
<p>All I am saying is that the fact that these men used cocaine makes them no worse than Obama. Whether other things went on between them and Phil Aubart that led to his turning them in, I have no idea and do not speculate.</p>
I certainly agree with this. Whatever you think of Aubart’s decision to turn them in–and really, without knowing the whole context it’s impossible to know what to think–their behavior afterward was completely wrong, and makes them retroactively deserve the trouble they got into even if they didn’t deserve it in the first place.</p>
<p>Are you suggesting that dopers should not be arrested because they <em>might</em> become president someday and arresting them would screw up their chances? Using that logic no college kid should ever be arrested for anything, because any one of them might become president.</p>
<p>A better way to think of it is college kids should not buy and use cocaine because they might get arrested and/or ruin their health, either one of which will screw up their chances of becoming president some day.</p>
<p>I don’t see any heroes here. The guy who dimed his housemates had every right to do so, but I sure hope my kids can stay away from “friends” like that. I hope he has a wonderful career in the JAG Corps, smug prick.</p>
<p>(I agree completely with the end-point-on-the-supply-chain argument, by the way. That’s what convinced me to stop “harmless” illegal drug use. But it took a few years and some experience to appreciate it. Prosecuting me in the interim would not have helped. I’m glad I didn’t have “friends” like this guy, too.)</p>
<p>But there is absolutely no forgiving the retaliation and intimidation after he did what he did. What a bunch of losers, all of them. Dartmouth can tolerate the drug use, but not ****ing on someone’s door or physical intimidation. The one guy DESERVES to have his law school acceptance rescinded over that, and he’s going to have a heck of a time getting admitted to the bar anywhere.</p>
<p>If the guy who turned in his brothers hadn’t turned them in , and someone else had, he might have been implicated in their crime. It wouldn’t be the first time someone who wasn’t using drugs got caught up in a drug arrest in his house. He warned them. They kept doing it. I have no sympathy for them, and whatever amount of sympathy I might have otherwise had evaporated when I learned that his “brothers” urinated on his stuff. Bunch of entitled jerks.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t think that there was any intimidation. Especially after looking at the
picture of the guy that got upset at him. The guy that turned them in is trained
to KILL people. He does seem to know a thing or two about the law though. I’m
sure that he would have no problem lodging a complaint for assault had they touched
him.</p>
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<p>They should have immediately called their parents to get lawyers over there to
manage the damage.</p>
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<p>I think that he’s exactly the kind of lawyer that we need in this country.</p>
Assuming that the Dartmouth Greek system is more open than others, it is still out of date in this time and age. It is discriminatory, segregates people into groups through a system, and apparently brew unseemly behavior. Dartmouth should look at other Ivies to reform the Greek system. It is true that a lot alumni support the system, but a lot of alumni were against admitting women in the 1970’s too. It is a hard task to reform the Greek system in Dartmouth and it will require great leadership and political skills.</p>
<p>And no one has defended them. Everyone, including those who think he did not do the right thing to snitch, agrees that that behavior was wholly unacceptable.</p>
<p>My son is a member of a different fraternity at D, and so far it seems to have been only a positive influence in his life. He would never have joined a fraternity at the vast majority of schools.</p>
<p>I BITTERLY resent the sweeping generalizations made by some people here.</p>
<p>I completely agree with JHS in post #70.</p>
<p>I also find it hard to believe that a charge of witness tampering will hold up because some stupid adolescent peed on the big, bad ROTC hero’s door. Unless there were actually threats involved.</p>
<p>BTW, a survey of bulletin boards of various types seems to reveal that the consensus at D seems to be that the guy accused of possession and tampering is a jerk–as is the snitch–and the guy accused only of possession is a nice guy. Apparently they are running true to type</p>
<p>I don’t see how the fact that this incident occurred in a fraternity house is relevant at all, or that it is indicative of a need to eliminate the fraternities on campus.</p>
<p>The drug-related murder at Harvard last year occurred in a dorm. Does that mean the dorms at Harvard need to be abolished?</p>
<p>Again, I reinforce Bay’s point. If you want to come down hard on every person in the past 50 years who has tried/used cocaine,fine, but you’re gonna have to get a really, really big holding cell. And you don’t get to cherry-pick who the horrible criminals in there are, and who are the good kids just dabbling (a la Obama). You’re either in that group or you’re not, and many tens of thousands of kids/young adults who have turned out to be fine upstanding citizens have that page or chapter in their book. It is disingenuous and hypocritical to pretend otherwise. Again, I am not condoning drug use. I am simply saying many, many, many young people tried it in recent decades and to pretend otherwise is ridiculous.</p>
<p>I don’t completely agree with JHS post, though I certainly <em>do</em> utterly agree with the sentiments expressed.</p>
<p>Adults must stop expecting kids to rat out each other. If the ROTC kid was afraid he would be kicked out of ROTC if he didn’t report this and it became known he is walking a tightrope too.</p>
<p>Many honor codes (don’t know about Dart) require this too. Kids have been kicked out of UVA for less.</p>
<p>Of course, ratting on friends to protect one’s own ass is not heroic, but it is understandable.</p>
<p>I don’t think honor codes should include this stipulation, but they do.</p>
<p>Kids at service academies are required to do this too.</p>
<p>IMO no one should be required to rat out friends and neighbors.</p>
<p>So, although I don’t like the actions of the whistle blower at all, I do wonder if he felt compelled by external pressure since warnings were given.</p>
<p>My own personal feelings are similar to post #70.</p>
<p>Where do you draw the line, and how do you know his intentions? A bro that is falling down drunk and throwing up has potential of alcohol poisoning and may require medical attention; should a ~20-year old have the expertise to make that ‘medical’ call? Does he wait until bro passes out and won’t wake up? When does concern for health of a bro become ‘whistle-blowing’? When does concern for your own possible jail time – being in a house with kids doing coke – become whistle-blowing? (I’m sure that there are plenty of legal parents on this thread that will say, ‘Never happen’, but how does a 20 year-old to know?) When does “encouraged” use of controlled substances during pledging become “acceptable” college behavior?</p>
<p>btw: in the case of Dartmouth, that phone call to report alcohol poisoning is to the same number used to report the coke incident: campus Safety & Security. Dartmouth does not have a ‘police force’ per se.</p>
<p>Okay, good points. I do not know the specifics of this case. Many of us are speaking in abstractions to represent philosophical positions.</p>
<p>It’s unusual for cocaine to have immediate health threatening side effects. Alcohol poisoning is more common, and there is certainly a double standard here. I’m sure under aged drinking is not reported.</p>
<p>My meaning was that since coke use is a victimless crime I don’t favor reporting on others, although if you read my post correctly I don’t condemn the young man involved for the reasons I gave.</p>
<p>Those of you who argue that it’s not a victimless crime: would you report all young women wearing diamond engagement rings? There really are no “blood-free” diamonds, whatever the diamond industry would have you believe.</p>
<p>My D (well all of us really) would refuse to wear a diamond, however when she condemns her friends for accepting one I think she is going too far.</p>
<p>I certainly think the cocaine users were rude. Certainly their own rooms would be a better venue if they had to use cocaine. </p>
<p>And yes, the usage was reported to security, not the police, which is why earlier I questioned why security had not handled this themselves.</p>