I noticed the four of the five who issued the initial boycott message are members of local sororities. Do you think this stems from a cultural conflict between the locals and the NPC groups? For example, the "exorbitant cost of participating in the Greek system" is very subjective. If the locals had to jack up their dues to compete with the programming the NPC chapters offered, that may be why they consider those dues exhorbitant.

There's one thing that really make my frown lines deepen, though. They don't say a word about reducing programming or other activities to reduce the cost of dues. Instead, they have several suggestions about someone else picking up the cost of that programming. If they can find a rich (foolish) person who donates a ton of money to set up an endowment so these women don't have to pay their sorority dues, more power to 'em.

And this part... I don't know what to think about this. If they were found guilty of rape by a court of law, they would be in jail. I can only assume the "Committee on Standards" has a different definition of guilty, but still!...

The dues thing sounds like a thinly veiled attempt to get rid of national affiliations (and the sometimes patriarchal rules that go with them - in other words, they don't object to alcohol, they object to having to rely on men for it). There's no way that any NPC would agree to such a thing and these girls are well aware of it. If you want to dump your national, just effing do it. This is one place where it probably would work, as it has before.

Interesting points by GCers. Re dues: if one looks at the dues link in this thread, both local and NPC group aggregate dues fall pretty much within the same range. There is not a meaningful disparity. Reading the article, one could surmise that the protesters want the dues to be zero (underwritten, part of the general student fee, etc.). Re programming: Not only is a discussion of reduced programming not present, neither is a discussion about different programming (not alcohol-related, more service activities, etc).

It's well known that the formal legal system repeatedly fails victims of rape. What's more, many universities 1) Pressure victims not to report to LE, and 2) Mishandle their internal investigations of rape.

Here's a nice read on Dartmouth:

http://jezebel.com/dartmouth-quick-t...f-ac-510282870

Sorority recruitment will take place, apparently all eight sororities will participate. A couple more stories from the student paper:

http://thedartmouth.com/2014/01/14/n...lds-discussion

http://thedartmouth.com/2014/01/10/n...xec-abstention

COMMENT: Am I the only one who finds it interesting that a group of Panhellenic officers have chosen this timing to come thisclose to telling the world, “sorority life at Dartmouth is terrible” ? Well, maybe this is vaguely like the Alabama situation last fall.

Certainly Dartmouth has had more than a few troublesome experiences with sororities, as a glance at irishpipes’ list will indicate.

Dartmouth Greek life is kind of an odd duck. Many former chapters of national sororities broke away and became some of the locals on campus now because of disagreements with their HQs.