Impact of Greek life on Dartmouth

Colleges and Universities A-Z Dartmouth College
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<p>Oh, my heavens.</p>

<p>At first I thought this was a bad joke, but it’s true: Malkin is real.</p>

<p>And I read his valedictory. There was not a single idea expressed in it. </p>

<p>Just a bunch of “thank you’s” and Dartmouth PR boilerplate.</p>

<p>Guys like Malkin prove the point I was trying to make: Dartmouth students have high I.Q.'s, and most of them work hard, but there’s no intellectual adventurousness, no ability to formulate new and compelling thoughts.</p>

<p>This is another depressing data point . . .</p>

<p>P.S. Above I had meant to write “thought leader.” Sorry.
P.P.S. “Stakeholders”? That just means people from various constituencies who have a stake in Dartmouth. Yes, I have conversed with several people who thought the “Dimensions protest” was wrong.</p>

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<p>Dartmouth is sick and you guys are letting your love of the school get in the way of your seeing that and doing something about it. It’s too bad.</p>

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<p>Philovitist:</p>

<p>In what sense is Dartmouth “sick”?</p>

<p>I’d love to hear your perspective.</p>

<p>As for making Dartmouth healthier place, I’ve been trying to my best. And one route to that goal is informing people of the truth of the place.</p>

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<p>DartmouthAlum</p>

<p>I was not praising Lt. Malkin for his speech (although I thought it better than many of the others that day) but for his choice about what to do with his life. You are so quick to criticize everything Dartmouth. Every Dartmouth student is a drunken fool: at least, that’s what I glean from your posts. So, is Lt. Malkin a drunken fool?</p>

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<p>Given Malkin’s GPA, he’s probably not drunken.</p>

<p>But if I were a high school kid looking at Dartmouth and saw its valedictorian wearing a military uniform at commencement and ending his talk by saying, “Semper Fidelis, and God Bless America,” I would drop consideration of the College in a nanosecond.</p>

<p>I already get more than a satisfactory dose of jingoism at professional sporting events.</p>

<p>Moreover, if we taxpayers are now in the business of paying to send kids to Ivy League schools, no wonder there’s no more money to feed hungry kids and build highways.</p>

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<p>No school is a fit for all students. Dartmouth was not a fit for DartmouthAlum. The vast majority of alums were quite happy as indicated by Dartmouth consistently being very high in the % of grads giving to the college.</p>

<p>The message for the next generation of students is do your diligence. If after your first year you are not happy, you are far better off finding another institution that will be a better fit. A year in college provides much better information about what works for you than you had in high school. Institutions are not bimodal good or bad, they just fit some people better than others. As DartmouthAlum’s posts suggest, in the long term, you would be far better off transferring after one year rather than worrying about what people will acutely think about your transferring. I suspect that, absent being able to change what Dartmouth or any other institution is, DartmouthAlum would wholeheartedly agree.</p>

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<p>Well, ddpr03, what you say on the surface sounds reasonable, except that matters are more complex than that.</p>

<p>In any case, an institution of higher learning that decade after decade permits a critical mass of its boys to hive off into gangs known as fraternities where they conduct alcoholic rituals, hold routine vomit fests, and denigrate women is in the wrong, no matter how you slice it.</p>

<p>It might be a little less reprehensible if Dartmouth’s administrators put all that information up front in the admissions info they publish for high schoolers, but of course they don’t. They let everyone get to campus, matriculate, and then confront the moral and medical squalor.</p>

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<p>DartmouthAlum - I happen to agree with you that frats are a negative influence on the Dartmouth campus and probably are a negative influence on pretty much every campus where they constitute a large piece of the social scene. But why the need to totally trash everything and everybody connected with the school? </p>

<p>Despite it’s problems, Dartmouth overall is an excellent college and a great place to go to school. Why destroy the good to reform the bad? Your approach to reform is like carpet bombing a town with napalm to get rid of the mice.</p>

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<p>Because, Coureur, the older I get, the more disgusted I am by what went on at Dartmouth in the 1980’s, and alarmed I am by learning how little has changed today.</p>

<p>I was too young and disenfranchised to articulate my objections very well at the time, but now – now I can say something. And the Internet allows it to be potentially widely seen.</p>

<p>For generations a critical mass of students at Dartmouth have gathered together under the guise of “fraternity brotherhood” to engage in crude alcoholic rituals that involve as an objective getting so inebriated that they vomit. That’s just a plain fact. </p>

<p>The College and the “Dartmouth family” need to be forthright about it, so that high schoolers considering putting an application in understand what they will be invited to do, and what many of their classmates will be doing.</p>

<p>Now, if some 16-18 year olds want to study their rumps off and take AP courses and write thoughtful application essays in order to have the “privilege” of becoming associated - directly or indirectly - with a drunken, misogynistic vomit-fest, I guess that’s their choice.</p>

<p>But it should be an informed one.</p>

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<p>Well, crude behavior by alcohol-fueled frat boys is a problem that is hardly unique to Dartmouth. That many of other schools share this problem doesn’t excuse Dartmouth, but at the same time it suggests that if you are waiting/hoping for frats to stop behaving like, well, frats, then you are going to have a long, long wait on your hands.</p>

<p>In the meantime, your one-man scorched earth campaign to destroy everything to do with Dartmouth and denigrate all its alumni accomplishes nothing good. Hijacking nearly every Dartmouth thread on CC and turning them into yet another Dartmouth hate-fest certainly isn’t going to help.</p>

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<p>DartmouthAlum is telling it like it is. Why must people on this BB denigrate anyone they disagree with? The frats are the social focus at Dartmouth and create a negative environment for those not interested in rowdy beer drinking. Students and faculty are protesting but no changes are being made by the inept administration.</p>

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<p>In my book, DartmouthAlum is the denigrator rather than the denigratee. (If Shakespeare can invent words, so can I.) Lt. Malkin’s comments were not “jingoism” (I think DartmouthAlum should look up the definition of the word before he starts slinging it about), but I have no interest in an argument collateral to the main point of this thread. While I would agree the administration has been inept in many ways for many years, I think you ought to give Hanlon a chance rather than condemning the college for everything that has happened from the 19th century onward.</p>

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<p>Okay, I could not resist posting this: [Robert</a> Frost - Google Books](<a href=“Robert Frost - Bruce Fish, Becky Fish, Sterling Professor of Humanities Harold Bloom - Google Books”>Robert Frost - Bruce Fish, Becky Fish, Sterling Professor of Humanities Harold Bloom - Google Books) Victim or perp?</p>

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<p>“Well, crude behavior by alcohol-fueled frat boys is a problem that is hardly unique to Dartmouth.”</p>

<p>No, I guess it’s not. But the OP asked what the impact of “Greek life” is at Dartmouth.</p>

<p>And Dartmouth is an institution that puts on airs of being a “world class institution” and producing graduates who will “change the world.”</p>

<p>Well, I’m not sure under whose definition joining alcoholism-centred, misogynistic gangs and staging vomit fests qualifies as “world class,” and perhaps some Dartmouth grads will “change the world,” but it will have to wait until they’ve slept off their hangover.</p>

<p>As for giving Hanlon a chance, I don’t think he has any choice: Either do what McLaughlin/Freedman/Wright knew needed to be done and get rid of the fraternities, or resign the institution to becoming a small University of Alabama of the North fortunate enough by virtue of a historical fluke to play its sporting events under the imprimatur of the Ivy League.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, it would be my personal advice to serious, mature high schoolers with enough self-confidence to be able to avoid joining a gang to make “friends” to consider colleges like Amherst, Harvard, Haverford, Middlebury, Swarthmore and Williams for their undergraduate years.</p>

<p>Dartmouth features a lot of resources and it has great potential, but first it has to sheer off the anachronism of “Greek life” like one would a hobbling wart. As long as Dartmouth’s own “peculiar institution” remains intact, the College will continue to lose ground to reality-based institutions that live fully in the 21st century.</p>

<p>I’ve also been thinking about Dartmouth’s achievements on the faculty front; when I applied to the College, it was boasting about BASIC and Rassias, but I’m not sure there’ve been many unique achievements to boast about since then. I’d be happy for someone to disabuse me, though. I know the professors are still excellent, but I’m just wondering what truly sets the College apart nowadays. </p>

<p>P.S. I wasn’t fair to Dartmouth on the Nobel Prize front. The College has been around for 244 years, but the Prizes have existed for only a century or so.</p>

<p>P.P.S. The definition of jingoism is “bellicose chauvinism”; it would be hard to think of a more concise example of jingoism than crying out, “Semper Fidelis, and God Bless America,” wouldn’t it?</p>

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<p>Thanks, AboutTheSame. Things are rarely as black and white as some would have us believe. ;)</p>

<p>BTW, Dalum, according to a friend of S’s who just graduated from Williams, the situation there is much worse than at D. He says that when Williams abolished frats, their houses were gradually taken over by athletic teams, and that these houses now totally dominate the Williams social/party scene. But do not have the openness that distinguishes D’s frats. Maybe that’s why Williams has such a high rate of sexual assault and such a reputation for drinking. Better avoid them, too. And of course, Swarthmore is now the subject of a TitleIX lawsuit brought by its own students. So better cross them off the list. And we all know about the sexual assault scandal at Amherst, and the fraternity pig roast thing. Cross them off. Don’t know about Middlebury, except that someone I know whose D went for an overnight had a hostess who got extremely drunk and came back and vomited all over her room. Harvard, of course, has the Final Clubs, although they don’t seem to be as pernicious, except perhaps to potential assaultees, AKA freshman girls. Dear Harvard. Oh, to have a college newspaper that runs a “16 Hottest Freshmen” feature every year. Haverford, I have not heard a single bad thing about. Guess they would be safe there.</p>

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<p>DartmouthAlum, if “always faithful” and “God Bless America” mean jingoism to you, I feel very sorry for you. I’ve said my piece.</p>

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<p>UCLA. That’s a good school, too. I think UCLA is great.</p>

<p>ATS: Again: Crying out, “‘Semper Fidelis’, and God Bless America” - especially while wearing a military uniform! - is the very definition of jingoism. It was highly inappropriate for a graduation at a civilian institution that purports to have international standing.</p>

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<p>DA: Disagree. He did not “cry out”; he said the words very calmly and in the same tone of voice as the rest of his comments. Don’t distort the facts. And, there was absolutely nothing inappropriate in him wearing his uniform. Consult your Emily Post, please. It’s formal wear. I was glad to see him wear his dress blues. There was nothing “bellicose” or “chauvinistic” about his attire or his comments. You appear to hate the military. Fine, you are entitled to your opinion. Insults add nothing to your arguments. </p>

<p>For those who want to play along at home, here’s the video of Lt. Malkin’s comments. Make your own judgments. [Valedictory</a> to the College: Joel Malkin - YouTube](<a href=“Valedictory to the College: Joel Malkin - YouTube”>Valedictory to the College: Joel Malkin - YouTube)</p>

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<p>Any person who serves in our military is A++ in my book. They should always be proud to wear their uniform, and as Americans, we owe them much gratitude. I honestly can’t believe the words I’m reading in this thread. Consolation, very good post. To all of you reading this, all of us posting in support of Dartmouth have kids there now (or recent graduates). Some of our kids are greek, some are not. Each one of them LOVES their Dartmouth experience. Personally, I take great offense at DA’s characterization of the Greeks at DM. You could not find a better young adult than my daughter. She is smart, caring, kind and gives back to the community selflessly. She is not unique…most of the Greeks at DM are wonderful kids that you would be proud of. They raise tons of money for charitable causes, and they give their time to improve the DM community. Yes, they like to have fun. But most college kids do. Any problems Dartmouth has are not unique to the school. You can find negatives on any institution with a quick google search. I can tell you that my D feels Dartmouth is the best school in the world. She has loved her time there. There are so many positives about the school. The strong education with professors who truly care, the safe environment of Hanover, the inclusiveness of the social scene, the lifelong friendships she has formed…I could go on and on.</p>

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<p>“The strong education with professors who truly care” – and therefore regularly urge the administration to terminate the “Greek system.”</p>

<p>Also, it’s really quite a surprise to see that the child of every single parent posting here is just the most wonderful person you’d ever want to meet.</p>

<p>Dartmouth is truly lucky to have an agglomeration of such terrific young individuals, whose very own parents - imagine! - have no qualms about vouching for them.</p>

<p>I think not only we here on this board but society in general have no choice but take the parents’ word for it and recognize how stellar in every way these kids really are!</p>