[DGMarie]

Apparently the staff writer is just really upset by all of this discovery. I highlighted the worst in bold.

Fraternity policy aside, it does sound like a nice liberal arts school, if pricey (about $33,000 per year).

No amnesty for fraternities
Aidan Finley - STAFF WRITER

To matriculate as Williams College students, we signed two documents: the honor code and the fraternity pledge. Both are helpfully printed in the student handbook and can be found on the Registrar’s webpage. As befits a binding document, the fraternity pledge is simple and unambiguous: “Williams students may neither join nor participate in fraternities during their time at the College.” Furthermore, “penalties [for violation of the fraternity ban] may include suspension or expulsion from the College.”

And yet, this past week finds confirmation not only that the agreement has been willfully violated but also that the administration has failed to take appropriate action. A fraternity has been uncovered at the College (“Internal tensions expose frat; College offers amnesty,” Nov. 18, 2003) but the administration is not moving to suspend or expel anyone. Instead they have offered “amnesty,” something that doesn’t appear in the statement concerning fraternities, or under the list of “appropriate penalties.”

Seeing as the fraternity pledge states it explicitly, the College presumably believes that: “in making…important decisions over…three decades, the College has had as its central goal the sustenance of a community characterized by openness, academic vitality and equality of opportunity.” This is not a “minor goal,” or an “easily dispensable goal;” this is a “central goal.” The College, as a vibrant community, depends upon “openness, academic vitality and equality of opportunity,” three important values impugned by the presence of fraternities.

But the administration is apparently willing to compromise, even abnegate, these allegedly “central” principles. Dean Roseman did not even bat an eye in offering the fraternity complete amnesty: “If this group would like to enter the fold of Williams College, we would be delighted to have them and would not discipline any current or former members.” This collective shrug, this appeasement, this pandering response to very serious allegations does this College a grave disservice. Moreover, this willful deception on the part of my ostensibly fellow collegians makes me quite angry. But, what makes me angrier still is the intentional ignorance or deliberate blindness of the administration, leading to their abject failure in detecting and eliminating this pervasive (and repeated) circumvention of our “central goal.”

The Record reports that the former national chairman of the St. Anthony’s Hall fraternity (a Williams alumnus) has made repeated entreaties to the Provost’s office to purchase or otherwise exclusively secure the Center for Development Economics (CDE) goat room. Somehow, this strange request did not raise any flags, and as the Record notes, “administrators opposed the alums’ proposal because of the College’s general policy against granting exclusive use of campus spaces to specific student organizations.” What is more damning is the recent revelation that there has been a secret “Lambda” chapter of this fraternity on campus since 1973! Williams has sold us a fraudulent bill of goods: the supposedly “fraternity-free” College we’ve paid for has not been fraternity-free at all.

One of the reasons I applied to Williams, and one of the reasons I wanted to come to Williams was precisely because this place was fraternity free. I didn’t want my social life intertwined with pledging, hazing, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and the rest of the “community values” fraternities’ offer.

I embraced the College’s elimination of these pernicious organizations from campus. I am not happy to discover that I have been duped, that the College has tacitly allowed an “underground” fraternity for thirty years, negotiating with its national board over purchasing the goat room, looking happily the other way as class after class of Williams students graduated with “secret” fraternity members, making a yearly lie of our paper pledge.

Why is there only bemusement when we hear of this? Why do we blithely smile to learn our fundamental community value, the College’s “central goal” has been contravened and that there is to be no penalty? A couple of years ago, the University of Virginia discovered a widespread cheating ring that had penetrated and made a mockery of their honor code, the nation’s oldest, and most severe, with the only penalty being expulsion (“UVA dismisses 48 in cheating scandal,” AP Nov. 25, 2002). After a long investigation, UVA expelled 48 students, demonstrating that their honor code is binding and cannot be taken lightly.

Williams finds itself in an analogous situation in which a deliberate, intentional and consistent violation of our community has occurred. The appropriate response is not amnesty but discipline. Amnesty merely condones the now consequence-free act of founding or joining a fraternity. The honor code comparison is instructive. Academic honesty, so essential, is enforced by a committee of students and faculty. When students violate it they are not offered “amnesty,” and even those who come forward and confess are punished severely. The fraternity ban, allegedly essential, has been left to an administration where the will to enforce such standards is lacking.

This is my challenge to the College: stop being hypocritical. Eliminate the fraternity pledge, which is a document you obviously have no interest in enforcing, or else enforce it as we agreed it would be enforced. Expel or seriously punish the students (and alumni) involved in this admitted fraternity and make abundantly clear, again, that these organizations are wrong for this community.