Dartmouth sororities announce new policy
 

http://thedartmouth.com/2011/05/12/news/sororities

Sorority presidents agreed to boycott fraternity house if a member assaults a female student and no internal adjudication is taken.

I read the article; more importantly, I read the comments below the article. Just as I suspected, there's way more to this story than meets the eye.

I'm thinking the same thing.

I wonder if there was inspiration from The Trojan Women.

I like that these women are organizing about something that is important, but I'm not comfortable with dictating how another organization handles their business by not socializing with them.

Why is it only assault against women? Why not assaults against anyone? I wouldn't want to hang out with people who are violent and throwing bottles regardless of the gender of the target or victim.

I like the idea behind it/unified NPC community it attempts to create

Yeah, Hitler created a unified community too. (I know I just Godwined the thread. I'm tired and don't care.) If the fraternity is that bad overall, women will stop going there without a Panhel mandate. Unless I knew the parties involved and/or had personally witnessed the incident...sorry, but bull shit. I'll hang out with whomever I want.

And I don't know why anyone is mentioning "sexual assault" unless there's some kind of kinky new water sport where you throw drinks in people's faces.

Not only that...if this guy's a member of the Class of 2011 isn't he graduating like, um, now?

You nailed it!!

LOL.

I agree with VandalSquirrel and 33girl.

From the article (emphasis added): "The sorority presidents’ Wednesday decision was influenced by the public act of violence that occurred at the fraternity in question on Saturday, Levin said. The fraternity had not informed the sorority presidents of any actions taken against the male student since the incident, according to Levin."

I appreciate the symbolic nature of sororities uniting together; however, this bolded part really bothers me. A GLO should never "inform" sorority [or fraternity] presidents of internal investigations or sanctions. This is a slippery slope with which I am not comfortable, not only from a PR and internal governance perspective, but potentially from a legal one as well. And, what are the sororities going to do if they don't agree with the results or sanctions (or lack thereof) of the internal investigation? It turns it from an internal investigation into a Greek community one...

Well, while it leaves much to be desired, I think it's definitely a good thing that the Greeks are taking active and public steps to combat sexual assault within their community. That goes for both fraternities and sororities as it's fairly obvious that educating only one side gets us nowhere.

Update on story:
Fraternities to review bylaws and include a clause about assaults.

"Panhellenic does not intend to dictate exactly what the fraternities' bylaws include, but rather ensure that they are 'proportional to the crime,' Levin said"

http://thedartmouth.com/2011/05/13/news/policy

From the article

Quote:

The organizations also agreed to review and possibly revise bylaws of each individual Greek organization to ensure that internal adjudication procedures are in place to address incidents of assault, Sandmeyer said.

I'll be damned if a council tries to change my particular GLO's bylaws. How our business is handled isn't a concern of other GLOs.

I applaud everyone for trying to take a stand, but this is getting too Big Brother-esque.

Exactly, k_s. Discipline is internal. We do not have all the facts in this situation, and I will say this: stay the **** out of my chapter's bylaws. It is no one's business but our own. Finished.

But it's not like they're holding them at gunpoint. Sororities can socialize with whomever they choose to socialize with. If they all agree that they don't want to socialize with a certain fraternity because of the way the fraternity operates, then that's their prerogative. The fraternity doesn't HAVE to change, they just have to change if they want to continue having socials.

It's not like they're working with the school and saying "you'll be kicked off campus if you don't change your bylaws."

I agree, for two reasons:

1) A single sorority deciding not to hang out with a fraternity may not have enough of an impact. It's very panhellenic for them to band together and agree that messing with one of them is the same as messing with all of them.

2) The sororities are asking the men to self-police, before it becomes such an issue that the U has to get involved.

Back at good ol' U of I, we used to have something called Bid Night, which was like a week after formal rush, and houses paired up to throw really big events. It went away after my freshman year, because there were date rape incidents two years in a row. Never mind that both years involved men from the same fraternity, everyone received the consequences.

Well and the biggest flaw I see in it is that the end expectation isn't clear. It's "to their satisfaction" but there aren't clear thresholds, yet, on what "satisfaction" means.

But, on the other end, there's the benefit of instead of the fraternity not addressing the reasons behind why women avoid their house (is it cause they're nerds? is it cause they've got the rapist reputation) when it happens "naturally" - they know outright "THIS is why. Address it." Which I think could be beneficial toward actually taking steps toward limiting this type of behavior. It'd be awesome if it was all assault in general but I think since the sorority women are particularly worried about sexual assault then it's appropriate for them to target sexual assault at this juncture.

Of course, it seems like the fraternities are already doing things to address rape culture (if the statements from the IFC president are factual and taken seriously on a chapter level) and yes, grassroots does tend to work better, but I see nothing wrong with sororities trying to leverage the power they do have in a way to support that goal.

I do like the idea of presidents mediating with one another, as well.

I get what you're saying, but the only folks whose satisfactioin I'm concerned about is my HQ. HQ has people on staff who have made these bylaws for a reason, and I'm more inclined to follow them as opposed to those of Susie Sorority, Class of 2011.

If the sororities want to avoid a certain house because of its members, more power to them. Policing fraternity members isn't their concern, though.

Right but it seems like what they're doing is suspending formal social functions (planned on a chapter level) between their chapters and the one they're banning - they're not saying that chapter can't have parties until they fix it, they're not saying their individual members can't continue to socialize - just that they won't be having parties until it's fixed.

I fail to see how that's such an issue for people. It's not even social probation like IFC probably hands out. It's mixer probation, basically. They're not really actively policing fraternities - they're encouraging fraternities to police themselves by making an active choice about their standards for officially mixing with a group.

They're encouraging fraternities to police themselves as the sororities see fit, though.

Yes, but the only real consequence is that they won't have mixers with the sororities anymore.

Right. I think this is "much ado about nothing."

We knew that we couldn't have mixers with fraternities who weren't recognized by the University, or those whose events took place primarily off-campus. For us, it was more of an insurance thing--if something happened, our sorority and the University were off the hook in terms of liability. Our advisor at the time said it best: "if the chapter gets sued and the sorority and the University washes their hands of it, who are they going to go after?"

Also, I really really really like the fact that I belong to a large national organization that's overseen by a large national body.

So basically: Brother is at bar, yells something incredibly hurtful and offensive at girl talking to another brother. Girl throws her drink on him. He throws a blender (or bottle, accounts differ) at her head, then shoves her up against a wall, at which point his brothers have to drag him off. Should she have thrown her drink? no. Was what he said bad? yeah, it was.

Knight_Shadow, I get what you're saying about bylaws, but keep in mind the strong local culture at Dartmouth....very few of the fraternities in question are national, and the ones that are still answer to chapter alumni boards to a far greater degree than national orgs.

It's not about fraternities policing themselves as sororities see fit, its about them policing themselves. period. Holding your members accountable for their actions is not an unreasonable request. No one is asking their members not to go to the fraternity in question; its actually a house that generally has a reputation for being nice guys, in general. But what happened wasn't okay, and a lot of things that happen on this campus aren't okay. And when we as houses schedule events despite really not okay things getting shoved under the rug, we're kinda complicit in their continuing to happen. So when something isn't okay, we're going to let the organization know that, by canceling social events until it is addressed.

There are potential downsides to this sort of "self-policing" though - in the example used as catalyst here, for instance, if the events unfolded in such a way that it became a criminal matter, police should have been involved instead of Panhel. There exists the potential for Panhel Policing to take precedence in the minds of some over good old fashioned police, which is a dangerous place to exist. If a violent event doesn't rise to a criminal level, now you've allowed a sort of pseudo-law to intervene - one that is poorly framed, and potentially administered by the victims themselves. That's a week's worth of red flags, isn't it?

Second, saying "if sororities want to mix with XYZ, they still can" is a bit short-sighted - this creates an official (and hard to fight) method to put pressure on other sororities to NOT mix with the fraternity, and it will be VERY hard for one chapter to fight the rest.

Third, the policy has no teeth, and does nothing to address the fundamental (or underlying) problem of gender violence.

I guess this just seems like a poor way to fight the real problem - if we're promoting accountability, then promote accountability, because enforcing accountability is a contradiction in terms.

I definitely agree with this.

Ditto, however I disagree with his point that 'peer pressure' shouldn't also be used here. If the chapters aren't taking accountability, then yeah pushing them to is a GOOD thing. If there comes a point where the fraternities are doing everything or even are all putting in a good faith effort, and feel like they're being punished unfairly they can make their case.

If the options are 'encouraging accountability' resulting in none, and quasi-enforcing it with social and public pressure... then yeah I'll take the latter. And that goes for any situation, not just this one. Our orgs have certainly made stands against changes in the past, and are capable of doing so again if the bridge is worth dying on. But this isn't that bridge.


Re: Chapter Bylaws - aren't chapter bylaws usually varied by campus anyway? If only for minimum campus GPAs, but I'd think for an assortment of other things. Whether or not adding something like this into their bylaws would be an option or not depends on the org, but it's not necessarily a strange concept.

Local or not, they answer to their own boards, not to Panhellenic.

Again, this is true, but I read this as Panhellic saying "Please do a better job of holding your members accountable. If we don't like the way you're holding them accountable, we're not going to mix with you. Change your bylaws until we like them." That's none of their business. If my organization feels that the proper steps are A, B, and C, Panhellenic (or MGC or whatever) shouldn't be able to tell us to do D, E, and F instead.

Although, as agzg said, at the end of the day it's only "mixer probation," but that may be OMG THE WORST to 18-21 year old fraternity guys.

Agreed x100

Friday May 13, 2011 editorial in the College's student paper addresses the issue(s), or at least some of the issues:

http://thedartmouth.com/2011/05/13/opinion/verbum

Excerpt:

. . . It has been exciting and empowering to see female leaders finally coming together to take decisive action in hopes of protecting other female students. Sorority leaders have taken the grave matter of assault into their own hands, rather than relegating their complaints to discussion forums and demanding that the administration create and police anti-assault initiatives. Their policy is a much-needed, meaningful attempt to exert female agency over the Greek system and acknowledge that female students can combat the abuses that go on within campus social spaces.

While we applaud the courage and conviction of the women who are finally demanding accountability from fraternity members, we have serious reservations about the policy’s implementation.

Using a specific event as the catalyst for the policy has forced Panhellenic presidents to act hastily, leaving many logistical questions unanswered and many students confused about the decision’s broader implications. Perhaps most troublesome is the lack of clarity about what standard of proof will be used to determine when a house should be sanctioned. So far, no guidelines have been finalized or released to explain how sororities will deal with he-said she-said accusations that often cannot be corroborated by eyewitnesses. We are also concerned that an internal adjudication board composed of fraternity members does not have the resources and training to deal with an assault committed by one of the fraternity’s own. Finally, it is important to establish how internal fraternity disciplinary action will interact with College or police action. . . . .

Please note the paper's disclosure: "Opinion editor and Inter-Fraternity Council president Kevin Niparko recused himself from participating in the composition of this Verbum Ultimum. The remaining five members of The Dartmouth Editorial Board are members of sororities."

I think it would be funny if fraternities didn't like the way that girls were running rush - specifically, they were upset that XYZ Chapter President's baby sister got cut from the group she wanted - and they decided to stop having mixers with the sororities until they got their heads straight.

:)

Hitler analogies-- worst analogies you can make. Extreme, isolated, overdone.

*thumbs up*

That's why I think this is too much of a slippery slope.

I don't disagree with the concept, I was simply noting that group pressure used for good also comes with concomitant downsides.

If this dilemma were true, I'd agree. I'm certain it's false, though - I applaud the sororities for taking action, which is generally better than inaction, and I hope it has the desired effect. I just think there is an unfortunate non-zero chance it will have unintended effects.

Probably so, but it's far better than nothing. And while it's not a true dichotomy, there are other options, I don't know a better solution when the schools themselves are not exactly champions of the victims' rights. Also it came from the women themselves, which says a lot. It wasn't imposed from above and won't be pressure from the institution, but will be peer pressure.

And if this pressures the fraternity guys to pressure those among them NOT to be rapists... and to deal with the ones who do it anyway.. well good.

The benefits could be far greater than any negative side effects. Putting it into practice will make the difference.

Agreed, and it's pretty cool in that way.

Also agreed - I hope there is some follow-up in that regard.

I'll be wittier once I have a nap.

You mean one of these??

http://haedwardsinc.files.wordpress....01/blender.jpg

Shit, if I was the fraternity, I'd toss him out just for destruction of property. HULK SMASH!!

I think this absolutely happens. The difference is that you wouldn't see all of the other fraternities jump on board. I have definitely seen relations between one sorority and one fraternity sour over less.

I've also heard of this happening (on a less scale) Literally, XYZ Fraternity President's little sister was cut from BBB sorority, and XYZ and BBB were super close. No boycott, but sour feelings.

I wonder if the fraternities will take a similar stance on incidents involving beligerent or aggressive sorority women.

NAAAAWWWW!

My chapter has banned certain hot messes from coming to our house/events but I couldn't imagine us saying, "either fix your one girl or forget about your entire sorority having any parties, mixers, or events with us".

One thing I'm confused about, do all of the sorority presidents have to unanimously agree that the "punishment" or whatever is appropriate enough? Good luck with that. Hopefully there isn't any bitter Bettys looking to get revenge on an ex's fraternity.

You're right, "beligerent" women is EXACTLY THE SAME as
Women are totally irrational and really likely to all gang up on a fraternity because they're on their periods or something too. GEEZ.

Nice bullshit "what about the MENZ" response.

Are you on your period or are you just off your meds tonight?