The Censorship Goes On

The D still has no story about the faculty letter concerning hazing, and the Office of Public Affairs’ Dartmouth in the News digest has again omitted to note the Huffington Post’s story about the faculty’s letter and Andrew Lohse’s piece in the New York Daily News. At least the administration is consistent in hushing things up as best it can.

Hazing: The Silence of the Kims

The utter silence of President Kim and Dartmouth’s First Lady Younsook Lim during the current hazing scandal is perplexing. The crisis could be a great opportunity for Mme. Kim to shed her cloak of invisibility, and begin to take the place in the College community that every President’s wife has occupied before her. She is well qualified to play the traditional role of Dartmouth’s mater familias: she is a practicing pediatrician, and as anyone who has worked for her in the President’s mansion knows, she is a demanding perfectionist. Regrettably, her non-participation in the hazing debate, and her general absence from College life, reinforces the view that she is just enduring her time in Hanover with gritted teeth, waiting for JYK to move on to a job in a more worldly venue like Washington or Geneva.*

As for Jim Kim, the dangerous hazing activities reported by Andrew Lohse — who, rightly or wrongly, blamed Kim himself for the administration’s inaction — would seem to be a logical part, or at least an extension, of Kim’s anti-alcohol collaborative. Is President Kim simply befuddled by the whole mess? Certainly as a hard-working pre-med during his undergrad career, he would have had little contact with the Dionysian excesses of Greek life, but one would think that his training as an anthropologist had equipped him to analyze the situation, and do something about it. After all, he is always discussing his ongoing ethnography of Dartmouth, as he did last summer in his Presidential Lecture:

Now, I’ve had a unique and wonderful experience of actually being trained how to do that, because as an anthropology grad student, you do something called ethnography, participant-observation ethnography. The whole point of ethnography is that you put yourself into a completely foreign situation, and you sit there and you suspend all of your own assumptions about how the world works and what’s normal and what’s reasonable, and you work and work and work to try to understand how that particular group sees the world. As you write about it, that’s your thesis; that’s the work of anthropology.

Lohse’s revelations were published two weeks ago; to date the administration has only responded in a piecemeal, defensive fashion. Certainly Kim’s leadership coach at the Tuck School, Marshall Goldsmith, has an entire playbook on the subject of crisis management. Perhaps we’ll hear from our leader this week?

*Addendum: President Kim is to be congratulated for his taste in the finer things. At a state dinner at the White House on October 13, 2011 (picture above) in honor of the visit of South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak, Kim appears to be wearing a somewhat snug, though elegant, Giorgio Armani tuxedo, identifiable by its plunging lapel line.

Another Hazing Forum

Andrew Lohse ‘12 Slams Frat Culture in New York Daily News

Under his own byline, Andrew Lohse ‘12 today published a column in the New York Daily News entitled The drunkest four years of your life, A Dartmouth student reflects on debauchery in fraternity systems at America’s most elite colleges. Although the piece reprises some of the points that Lohse made in his controversial column about hazing at SAE, he takes care to situate hazing at Dartmouth in the context of overall American college life:

Bizarre hazing experiences are unique to neither my former fraternity nor to Dartmouth. In recent years, the secretive depravity of fraternity life has been exposed on a broad scale.

These revelations include a hazing death and ensuing $25 million lawsuit at Cornell’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon, the expulsion of the University of Michigan’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon for its physically abusive hazing practices and the continued scandal surrounding Yale’s Delta Kappa Epsilon, which was suspended after its pledges were paraded around a quad shouting slogans like “No means yes, yes means anal.”

In our most elite colleges, not to mention our public universities, examples of the debauchery of fraternity life abound.

Lohse then extends his analysis to describe the consequences of campus hazing for America’s moral climate, particularly in the world of high finance:

In consequence, these cultures of secret depravity at elite schools produce hordes of narrow-minded investment bankers and consultants with no social perspective except personal gain. These are the same “me first” graduates who have been intimately involved in sinking the economy with bad mortgages, crony capitalism and casino-style private equity schemes — as long as they got their payday.

Note: Although the Office of Public Affairs news digest noted Lohse’s previously published efforts, for example in its digest of October 13th, 2011 that pointed out Lohse’s column decrying the overemphasis on corporate recruiting by undergrads, today’s Dartmouth in the News makes no mention of Lohse’s column.

Faculty Letter Had Limited Distribution

Sources on the faculty have indicated to Dartblog that due to a lack of access to a complete faculty e-mailing list, the faculty’s anti-hazing letter was not offered to all of Dartmouth’s professors for their signature. A total of 105 professors out of the College’s 452.4 FTE faculty members signed the letter.

For a Hazing Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Word has reached Dartblog that the administration is working hand in fist with the Town of Hanover Police to prosecute fraternity members for past hazing practices. Needless to say, the brothers have clammed up tight; nobody wants to see a bro charged by the police.

Let’s take a larger view. Perhaps we can be inspired by Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which had as its goal the complete airing of crimes committed under apartheid — with amnesty for most cooperating witnesses, especially in the case of fully disclosed crimes committed under orders.

Dartmouth could follow this model. The College, in cooperation with the Hanover Police and the Grafton County prosecutor, could offer a similar amnesty so that people involved in hazing may come forward with the truth. Hold open/closed hearings. When the full extent of the practices is revealed, the community can work effectively to eradicate hazing from fraternities, teams and other organizations.

For the College and the Town of Hanover to now punish SAE and its brothers, when the members of numerous other organizations remain unsanctioned for acts equivalent or worse, is a travesty of justice and a failure of leadership. It is clear that there is a hazing culture at Dartmouth today. We should not punish just a few students, when hundreds of undergraduates have been involved in these dangerous and unhealthy activities. At this point, nobody should be punished. We should look to the future.

How to deal with hazing? First off, people who have been hazed in the past will remain hazed no matter what we do today. With a full knowledge of past hazing gleaned from a Hazing Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the College can develop policies both educational and punitive to ensure that hazing does not occur again. This space offered a few ideas the other day.

Addendum: The Navy has a zero-tolerance policy for hazing. Eight sailors received general discharges this week after a hazing incident on the USS Bonhomme Richard:

The Jan. 17 incident also occurred just two weeks before Democratic Rep. Judy Chu called for stronger measures to eliminate hazing.

“The highest military officials must make eliminating hazing a top priority. They must stop pretending there is no problem. None of this will change until the secretary of defense commits to eradicate the culture of hazing that is so ingrained within our troops,” Chu, D-Calif., said Thursday.

All eight soldiers have the right to appeal their general discharges, but none has done so at this time. Since they did not receive dishonorable discharges, they will not lose their GI benefits and will still be able to say they served in the Navy.

Addendum: An investigation by The Orlando Sentinel provides a look at the circumstances surrounding the hazing death of a member of the marching band at Florida A&M. The article details the significant programs in place to ban hazing, and the flagrant determination of band members to ignore all the warnings and rules.

The D Silent on Faculty Hazing Letter

Although The D ran a piece today quoting Susan Zaslaw, associate director of administrative computing, that the new Microsoft Outlook server has experienced a few “hiccups” since it began last spring, complaints regarding the new system have fallen, and students “appear to be happier,” — with no observations at all from students or faculty regarding the controversy-plagued software — the College’s paper of record had not a word on the fact that last week 105 Dartmouth professors signed an open letter decrying hazing. As you will recall, the Huffington Post printed the letter on Friday, and Dartblog published it on Saturday. Perhaps the Editors are still engaged in fact-checking.

Americans in Paris: Benjamin Franklin

As we saw last week, American statesmen are well represented in the streets and parks of La Capitale — though I don’t expect to see an avenue George W. Bush any time soon. This monument to Ben Franklin stands at the start of the rue Franklin.

The genius who unleashed onto Europe and America torrents of light. The sage that two worlds celebrate. (Mirabeau June 14, 1790)

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau (9 March 1749 - 2 April 1791)

105 Faculty Sign Anti-Hazing Letter; D Tries to Quash; Huffington Post Prints

A letter decrying hazing signed by 105 members of the faculty has been published by the Huffington Post after The D refused to print it as a Letter to the Editor. The editors’ decision not to accept the faculty letter is inconsistent with past practice: most recently, a letter of protest from 75 professors regarding the administration’s budget cuts was published on January 26, 2010, along with the names of all of its signatories. That letter is still available on-line.

Although The D’s editors did ultimately accept the hazing letter as a paid advertisement (see above right), this format would prevent the ad from appearing in the newspaper’s on-line version as an item that would be recorded by internet search engines — seemingly as part of the administration’s effort to tamp down the burgeoning story about hazing practices at Dartmouth’s fraternities.

The hazing scandal appears to have legs. Although President Kim has been entirely silent on the matter, and the Office of Public Affairs’ Dartmouth in the News digest has refused to note the numerous national and local publications that have commented on it, Dartblog has learned that several national publications are currently looking at the story with the goal of reporting on it in greater depth.

Today’s Astoundingly Stupid Comment

The upcoming public offering of shares in Facebook will leave Mark Zuckerberg with almost dictatorial control of his company. Should we care? Today’s article about FB’s IPO in the Times included the following lamentable quotation:

The power that Mr. Zuckerberg wields over the company has already drawn scrutiny. “You’re willing to take someone’s money but not willing to invite their participation,” said Charles M. Elson, a professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware. “It makes meaningless the notion of investor democracy.”

Professor Elsen added that Mr. Zuckerberg’s arrangement is similar to moves by founders of other technology companies, including Google, to create special classes of stock that grant them extra voting power. (The New York Times Company and other media companies have similar structures.)

Gosh. This is almost like something out of Atlas Shrugged. If people offer you money as an investment in your company, they should accept the best deal that they can negotiate — or they should not invest at all. There are a lot of other places to invest money. That is the very essence of the free market: a fair deal is one to which two parties agree. As long as there was no illegality or fraud, there is not much more thinking to do.

When I hear about notions of “investor democracy,” I reach for my pistol. Joseph Schumpeter is undoubtedly smiling sadly right now; his prediction seems to be coming true.

Hazing: Teaching Pledges to Say No

It was disheartening to learn about the Kim administration’s response to Andrew Lohse’s November, 2010 revelations about hazing. The reflexive excuse seems to have been that because Lohse wished to remain anonymous, there was little that could be done to convict SAE members of violating College policy and NH state law.

How sad to see this rush to prosecute. If in loco parentis means anything anymore, education rather than convictions should be the administration’s goal. As a father, if I were to catch my son or daughter in this type of transgression, my instinct would not be to call in the law enforcement authorities; rather, we’d have a series of long talks, and perhaps there would be inside-the-family punishment, but, in short, parents don’t call the cops on their kids. (The formalists among you might retort that the College has a legal obligation to do so, but as this space has noted previously, there is a great deal of leeway in the implementation of our laws. Has any institution of higher learning in NH ever been prosecuted for not informing on its students?)

Here’s a modest proposal or two for how the administration might have acted (and still might act) once it understood that hazing is a serious problem that extends far beyond the confines of Andrew Lohse’s fraternity. (As Dean Johnson recently wrote: “I also want to dispel the notion that hazing is limited to the Greek community. The abuse can and does happen in various types of organizations and teams, particularly those for which membership is selective.”).

Short Term: The accounts of hazing that I have heard from students all seem to recognize that there is an opt-out choice for students with the nerve to resist peer pressure. Athletes under team instructions to stay dry easily avoid the alcohol-saturated parts of hazing, and students who simply reject the proceedings due to their possession of a remnant of self-respect seem to be given a pass as well. Pressure will be applied, sometimes at high volume, but numerous sources have confirmed to me that a pledge who resolutely says no to hazing will not suffer any consequences at that time or later on in their life in a Greek house.

To my mind, the best way to throttle hazing is via the education of freshman. Get them all together (perhaps in two groups due to space constraints) during Freshman Week and recount to them the pluses and minuses of Greek life. Don’t hold back. Admit honestly (Deans, I know that this will be hard, but you can do it!) that the College has long had a serious hazing problem. Describe unflinchingly the foul things that have been done supposedly in the name of brotherhood — the goal here is similar to the horrific traffic accident videos that one sees in driver’s ed classes — and then tell the newly arrived students of the psychological and physical harm that has been experienced by pledges as a result. Have students past and present describe their experiences; have counselors explain how the attitudes engendered by hazing detract from the life of the College. And have present-day fraternity brothers and others explain how they resisted the pressure put on them to take part in hazing, and then encourage the freshman to have the manly courage to forgo this juvenile behavior.

Finally, President Kim can make an appearance to describe how the College will take hazing seriously in the future, and students caught doing so will be separated permanently from the College. He is good at this kind of motivational lecture; let’s use that talent.

After Freshman week, the rest of the College can follow up over the ensuing months. Team coaches can decree that all teams will be dry in-season. Faculty freshman advisers, major advisers and even thesis advisers can counsel students on the harm that they have seen in the past from hazing (almost everyone has stories).

Long Term: Over time, the only way to put real pressure on fraternity members to comport themselves like gentlemen is to provide the frats with competition. As long as the fraternities have absolute power over Hanover’s social life, they will be free to be absolutely corrupt. Nightclubs and cafés dreamed up by administrators won’t cut it, as decades of expensive experience has shown. So what to do? This space has repeatedly pushed for two major reforms at the College:

● We need more sororities: today there are approximately as many Greek women as men, but they have about half as many single-sex houses. Some sororities have over 150 members, and many have no physical plant. The College could make low-interest loans to new houses to help them build their own buildings. And the administration should allow them to be local sororities — as opposed to dry nationals — so that they may serve alcohol. These new houses will be attractive social alternatives to fraternities; and they will be infinitely safer spaces for women, and more civilized venues for all.

● We need to restore the social value of the college’s dormitories. Today students live in five or six dorms during their Dartmouth lives. Each time that they return to campus, they are thrown into the housing lottery and end up in a different dorm. You don’t need a doctorate in anthropology to know that stable communities will not develop in residences where nobody stays for longer than three terms. Transient hotels are not homes in which people want to invest time or effort. If students had the option of returning to a home dorm over their entire four years at the College, the dorms would return to being the social centers that they once were.

Needless to say, the above is but an outline for possible College policies. But, at least, let’s hope that these ideas begin a more meaningful conversation than other commentaries that have recently appeared.

Sorority Hazing. Not So Much

Dartmouth’s sororities seem to have avoided the unsanitary and dangerous hazing practices that mark many of the College’s fraternities and teams. Members of Dartblog’s Baker Tower Irregulars have filed the following reports:

● “As for hazing, the worst that sororities do is give their pledges a lot of alcohol and sometimes have gross food fights. Women do not bond through humiliation and degradation, and trust me there would have been about 5000 D tell-alls by now if Dartmouth women were ever forced to go through anything demeaning for membership in a sorority… all of sorority hazing is quite visible and usually involves having to wear silly outfits (KDE/everyone), fanny packs (Sigma Delt), or bows in your hair (KKG).

Sorority meetings do sometimes entail telling scandalous stories about yourselves or other sisters, and sex and drinking are often involved, but they are no more crazy or shocking than something you’d see in an episode of Sex and the City. In my experience, the women at Dartmouth these days seem much more self-assured and self-respecting than the men (overall), so I can’t even imagine how such a culture would have developed among us.”

● “The basic run down for sororities I know is all about the same. You dress up in flair around campus. You learn some songs and dances that you preform at fraternities, you bake, plan a party for the sisters, go on a few scavenger hunts. There is some drinking, but nothing were you have to drink till you boot or do anything terribly outrageous.”

● “Sorority pledges have been made to carry around fanny packs (called ‘pledge packs’) at all times with contents related to their ‘member education’ at the sorority. They have been made to write messages in chalk in public areas of the campus that celebrate the purported value and importance of their sisterhood. They have been made to set auto-replies on their email with messages like ‘My big sisters are better than yours! I love – sorority!’ In my opinion, the worst form of hazing for women is the expectations of their [post-pledge] behavior imposed upon them. These expectations have been described in The D by Natalie Colaneri here.”

● “During our “pledge term,” each member of the new class gets two “bigs”—a senior in the sorority and a junior on the sorority. For most of the term, the members of the new class do no know who their “bigs” are. They receive emails from their bigs who use email accounts that they have created in order to hide their identities. On the first day that we became pledges, outside of our dorm room doors we received packages from our “bigs” containing weird clothing, some random items, often some candy or food, and instructions for what we need to do. That day (and sometimes for longer periods of time) all pledges must wear the clothes they were given around campus and follow all of the instructions given to them.

For the next few weeks the pledges receive emails from their bigs containing various pledge missions. Some of these include:

- Performances in Food Court or Collis
-Wearing bizarre outfits
-Performing songs/dances in the library or on the Green
-Taking pictures or videos with certain people on campus (Sun God, Frat guys, etc)

In generally the missions involve doing something embarrassing or bizarre in public. Basically every time a pledge receives an email from her bigs, she must answer and perform the task she is assigned. Personally I only received a few pledge missions and they were not very extensive or embarrassing.

A few weeks later, we were given another mission where we had to go all over campus and take part in various things. There was some drinking involved, but no one was forced to drink anything and everyone was asked via email earlier that day to let them know if we did not want to drink alcohol. Then later that night our bigs were revealed. This is the night we are considered full members of the sorority. As I said, I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes at other sororities, but from what I’ve seen on campus most of the other pledges perform similar tasks, i.e. wearing odd clothing and doing bizarre things in public.

Just to clarify, no one that I know in my sorority or any other sorority considers anything that happens during pledge term to be “hazing.” Most girls wear the bizarre clothing and perform the odd tasks proudly. Everyone on campus knows why they are doing these things anyway, so it is not even very embarrassing. Everyone looks at it as just a fun rite of passage. I don’t know of any incident where a girl was forced to do something that she really did not want to do, or consume any alcohol when she did not want to. Everyone views the pledge missions as a rite of passage that every class has to go through, and its actually a great way to bond with your new sisters.”

Addendum: On October 9, 2006, over 25 members of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority were involved in an incident of group intoxication at the Great View roller skating rink in Enfield. Eleven KKG sisters were arrested for underage drinking, and three were sent to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center for treatment.

Sexual Assault Meeting: Did It Happen?

The Sunday Valley News reported on Saturday’s important meeting on sexual assault and hazing at the College. The headline in the paper was: “Dartmouth Panel Launches Group Effort Vs. Sex Assault.”. However the article was not on-line in full, though the piece was noted on the Valley News’ website. Herewith an excerpt from the VN article:

Dartmouth Panel Launches Group Effort Vs. Sex Assault
BY MAGGIE CASSIDY
Valley News Staff Writer

HANOVER — More than 120 Dartmouth College students, faculty and staff gathered yesterday to discuss sexual assault on campus in what organizers called “the first event ever of its kind” at the school. Members of the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault, which hosted the nearly five-hour long symposium at the Hopkins Center’s Alumni Hall, said they hope to hold similar events annually in an effort to encourage conversation and collaboration among Dartmouth groups and community members concerned about sexual assault…

The symposium coincidentally took place three days after The Dartmouth published scathing accounts of what student columnist Andrew Lohse claimed to be hazing culture within the college’s Greek community, including allegations of widespread sexual assault. Hall said organizers began planning the symposium last September, but acknowledged some of the allegations of sexual assault made by Lohse — whether or not those specific instances are true — are the type of behavior the committee aims to eradicate. Several symposium members spoke against singling out the Greek community in the discussion of sexual assault, saying the problem is more widespread.

Once again, no reference to the article appeared in the Dartmouth in the News digest either yesterday or today. The digest is published by the Office of Public Affairs, which perhaps should change its name to the Office of Only Positive Public Affairs.

More Tales of Hazing

Not that Dartmouth hazing was much of a secret to anyone who was watching, but if you dig around a little, it is amazing just how many people wrote quite openly about it. In a December 9, 2010 post in The Good Men Project blog, SAE brother Snowden Wright ‘04 offered us 3,970 words about his frat initiation rites — though with his tongue firmly in his cheek, he gave his house a pseudonym: Kappa Omega Kappa (get it?).

We watched nervously as they filled a hollow, plastic half of a swan, probably once a lawn ornament, with at least 11, 12, 13 cups of beer. They asked if one of us had the guts to chug it all. Whoever made the attempt, I can’t remember now, sucked almost eight beers through the beak of that swan before, I remember clearly, spewing throw-up everywhere. The plastic swan was refilled with beer. The house president drank the whole thing.

Next, each of us had to jump, one after the other, into a small baby pool filled with twenty inches of water. Remember, it was winter in New Hampshire. We were given a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor as well as an order: “Drink it or wear it!” So, while some of us chugged the beer, while others poured it on their head…

The older members requested our presence by chanting, “Whale shit! Whale shit!” and stomping their feet. We were led waddling out by our pledge trainers until we formed a circle in the center of the room. And there we were introduced to a game called Dome…

In Dome, a game played not only by Dartmouth fraternities but also by its sororities, a trash can is situated between two people, one of whom has challenged the other, usually by taking off his shirt. Dozens of 10-ounce cups full of Keystone Light or Bud Heavy are placed on a table next to the contestants. An official with a stopwatch stands to one side of the match. Each contestant is required to chug a cup of beer within either 20 or 30 seconds, depending on his skill level: first beer, second beer, third beer, so on and so forth, ad nauseam. Literally. First person to vomit loses the match.

The winner, in order to stay sober enough so that he can get drunk after the meeting, “pulls the trigger,” sticking a finger down his throat until he pukes what he chugged during the Dome. I won the game once, but couldn’t make myself vomit…

Periodically throughout pledge term, we had to perform “Feats of Strength,” assignments that took their toll on our bodies rather than our sobriety. One night each of us was required to drink a gallon of whole milk in 30 minutes. The immediate result was three trash cans full of white froth already curdling with stomach acid. One day each of us was required to eat an extra-large bag of marshmallows. The eventual purging of liquid fluff was so violent it burst a blood vessel in somebody’s eyeball…

On the ultimate night of our period of initiation into adulthood, my fellow pledges and I spent hours running around campus, solving puzzles as part of what amounted to a glorified treasure hunt. We went to the basement of the library and had to take a shot of something. We went to a dorm across campus and had to take a shot of something. We went to a far hole of the golf course and had to take a shot of something…

Around midnight, the pledge trainers ordered us to remove our clothes. They led us into the basement. To the chorus of “Whale shit” from the brothers, all of us, stripped down to our boxers, had to walk around the room as we were pummeled with mashed potatoes, the instant kind…

Our exploits—throwing furniture out of windows, breaking legs, streaking, pissing ourselves on a dare, even drinking our own puke—became our identities…

Addendum: Attentive readers of past columns will recognize that many elements in the above were also found in Andrew Lohse’s D piece. However, the events described here by Snowden Wright, which date from the author’s time at Dartmouth between 2000-2004, seem to have been embellished by SAE’s brothers in the intervening years.

Can’t See the Forest OR the Trees

On May 12, 2010, the Alumni Council received the REPORT OF [THE] ALUMNI COUNCIL COMMITTEE TO SUPPORT GREEK LETTER ORGANIZATIONS. Over two years in the making, the 18-page investigation was prepared by the below-illustrated list of administration and alumni luminaries. While it is long on adult concern about how ever-so-messy those Greek houses can be, not a word appeared therein about hazing. Way to go guys!

Something’s Happening Here

From: Panhellenic Council (Panhellenic.Council@dartmouth.edu) Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:35 AM

Subject: **Kind Campaign**

*Ever felt stereotyped because of your Greek house?*
*Ever stereotyped another house?*
*Ever been hazed?*
*Ever hazed someone else?*
**Ever thought women could be kinder to each other?**

Please join the Panhellenic Council, this **Wednesday, February 1st at 7:30 PM in Collis Common Ground** for a night of education and frank conversation as we confront issues of female divisiveness in our Greek system. We hope to bring new members of sororities and upperclass women together to figure out how sororities can be used as a vehicle for overcoming girl-on-girl “crime,” such as cattiness, stereotyping, gossip and hazing.

We will be screening the award-winning documentary, “Finding Kind,” produced by the nonprofit organization the Kind Campaign. The Kind Campaign aims to educate women about the negative and lasting impacts of girl-on-girl “crime,” and help us understand how our experiences as adolescents and young women can transform our relationships well into adulthood. The film will be followed by a discussion led by Jennifer Sargent, New Hampshire District Court Judge and Dartmouth professor (see details below).

Catered by Boloco: come early to get food before the movie starts!

Hazing: Point and Counterpoint

For thoughtful exegeses of the reasons to deplore or approve of hazing, The D has offered two columns. One, critical of hazing, ran today; it was written by Dani Levin ‘12. She focuses not only on the individual cost of hazing, but also on the effect that the practice has on the College’s overall moral climate.

The other column appeared on October 12, 2007; it was penned by Tom Mandel ‘11. Tom looked at the bonding effects of shared, demanding experiences, though he does not attempt to justify waste-filled kiddie pools and exotic omelettes.

Dani is the president of Sigma Delta sorority, and Tom is, uh, the son of Dartmouth’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees Stephen Mandel ‘78.

Hazing Still Under the Rug

The College’s Office of Public Affairs daily news digest is still keeping word of the ongoing hazing controversy safely out of sight. Maybe if we all don’t talk about it, the problem will go away?

As you will recall, the controversy has now been reported on by the Valley News, Gawker, The Huffington Post, IvyGate, The Daily Caller, Business Insider, Jezebel and Ricochet.

Hazing in The D

If anyone pleads ignorance about hazing at the College, their assertion only means that they have not been talking to students and, amazingly enough, not reading The D. Below is a compendium of D pieces over the past few years that should have alerted even a particularly obtuse administrator (or college president) to the problem.

● Lauren Rosenbaum ‘11 on November 22, 2010:

However, anyone who has rushed a fraternity, Brace included, knows that their truly “traumatizing and dehumanizing” hazing rituals occur behind closed doors and are far more dangerous than wearing a silly uniform…

I won’t pretend to know everything that goes on during a pledge term and frankly I would rather be kept in the dark when it comes to the most egregious rituals. Carrying lunchboxes is one thing, but students should not be forced to consume such massive quantities of alcohol, vomit on their fellow pledges, stay awake for unreasonable periods of time, eat raw animal products or touch their brothers in inappropriate ways (examples that friends have described to me) all in the name of becoming “a part of something greater than themselves.” Fraternities should not define their level of masculinity according to how degrading, disgusting and downright dangerous their pledge terms are. [Emphasis added]

● Brian Solomon ‘11 on October 20, 2008:

As we roll out of one of the busiest weeks on campus — starting with fraternity and sorority rush and capped off by an exciting Homecoming weekend — the dangerous issue of hazing looms ever larger on Dartmouth’s social scene and yet consistently remains an open secret, festering right in front of the College’s inattentive eye.

An outsider may scoff at the mention of widespread hazing, but anyone with even a remote connection to the Greek system, athletic teams or dozens of other organizations knows the truth…

Many organizations (including, but not limited to, fraternities) flaunt these rules brazenly, while others are more secretive. Wearing ridiculous clothing, engaging in “buffoonery” and doing various chores has largely become acceptable and expected within the greater community, and it may be more silly than productive to punish these behaviors. But there are other much more serious hazing infractions that occur, most notably against new pledges. While every night on campus has become an excuse for raucous binge drinking, the rush process provides an opportunity for coordinated, forced consumption of extreme amounts of alcohol — even by Animal House standards…

Those who argue that the College simply is not aware of such practices are naive at best. Certainly many in the administration, as high up as those on the Board of Trustees, have personal experience in fraternities and sororities either here in Hanover or elsewhere that keep them from claiming any sort of oblivious innocence…

Perhaps the College should get off its high horse and start addressing the problems, instead of just trying to cover them up. After all, if the health of students isn’t important enough to protect right now, we can always wait for a lawsuit. [Emphasis added]

● Alex Howe ‘08 on October 12, 2007

And here they were: the weight-trained, the pledge-educated. I’d heard the stories. Two guys strongly encouraged to finish a huge bowl of beer between them, enough beer to guarantee vomiting. Thing was, they had to throw up into the bowl. And keep drinking.

I can’t moralize. That story is extreme; others, usually rather safer, merely impress with their creativity. After all, 19 is the proper age to cross all kinds of fun unpleasantries off your to-do list, Drink Beer Until Vomit included. And these guys, they’re not all beaten spouses. Some aren’t kidding themselves when they say their pledge term was fun. Nonetheless, with the worst of them there’s a visible diminishing, a light gone from the eyes.[Emphasis added]

● Zeke Turner ‘09 on July 13, 2007

First of all, a great many of our fraternities have broken off from their national chapters and now operate as privately owned, one-of-a-kind, rogue organizations that make their own rules and define their own identities. Alpha Delta, Alpha Chi Alpha, Bones Gate, Phi Delta Alpha, Epsilon Kappa Theta, Chi Gamma Epsilon, Sigma Delta and Chi Heorot were all once responsible to a larger bureaucracy but now govern themselves.

In lieu of national dues, we have five-figure slush accounts. Some of the hazing that goes on here might be sadistic and weird, but it does not compare to the stories we hear from our friends at other schools. My house does not even have Greek letters.[Emphasis added]

● John Strayer ‘96 on March 4, 1994

A few facts are obvious. Everyone, including the administration, takes for granted that hazing is widespread among organizations on this campus. In the case of Greek organizations, some would say that hazing is integral to the life of these houses.

First, hazing is often physically dangerous. In Hanover we are lulled into a false sense of security. A drunk pledge is not likely to get behind the wheel of a car or wander into a dangerous neighborhood. However, the amounts of alcohol involved in hazing could still lead to alcohol poisoning or even death.

However, far more serious than the physical dangers of hazing are the psychological effects. Hazing engenders a very specific mental attitude: you will submit to your superiors and will not ask questions. In fact, you are expected to enjoy it.

The problem with hazing is that it focuses on largely negative experiences. Pledges feel connected because they have all cleaned vomit off the basement floor or taken orders from the same brothers.[Emphasis added]

Addendum: Given that the College has charged numerous Greek organizations, sports teams, and other groups with hazing over the past decades, it does not take a great deal of imagination to understand that there is a generalized hazing problem at the College today, and there has been one for a many years.

Addendum: A young alum writes in:

I can say as a recently graduated alum that not one whit of this should come as a surprise to any student on campus, nor to any administrator, even ignoring the fact that Lohse spilled these details to them a year ago. Everyone knows that fraternity hazing entails this kind of gruesome (and often emotionally stunting) stuff, even if they didn’t know the explicit details of which house does what.

Addendum: A D poll described in today’s paper of 102 Dartmouth students found that 97% of students were aware that hazing occurred in Hanover.

Paris Journal: M. Georges Washington

While the French élites may have earned a reputation for anti-Americanism, the broad mass of people here seem endlessly fascinated by the U.S.A. — and the streets of Paris are filled with monuments large and small to the close historical relationship between the countries. George Washington’s statue stands at the center of the prestigious Place d’Iéna.

Note: The dedication on the base of Washington’s monument reads:

Given by the women of the United States of America in memory of the friendship and fraternal assistance offered by France to their fathers during their fight for independence.

Needless to say, these words were drafted at a time when there was a different sensibility about gender relations and women’s role in history.

The Valley News and The D On Hazing

The Valley News weighed in yesterday with a well scrubbed article on the hazing scandal at the College. Regrettably, the article is not on-line. It begins as follows:

Another public relations headache for Dartmouth College is making waves around the Internet this week after a scathing editorial in the student newspaper alleged that one student’s “dehumanizing” hazing experience is the norm, not the exception at Dartmouth fraternities.

How curious that a reference to PR makes the story’s lead. One would think that the physical and mental health of students would figure somewhere in the paper’s take on hazing. Later on, the paper noted SAE President Brendan Mahoney’s view of the situation.

Brendan Mahoney, student president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, has roundly denied all allegations against his fraternity, and the college administration says that while they take Lohse’s claims seriously, there is no evidence or corroborating witnesses to back them up.

To my mind, even though we are only in January, Mahoney wins Dartblog’s Pinocchio Award for 2012 and the Kim Administration walks off with the Ostrich Prize. Geez, even yesterday’s D has an editorial entitled “The Importance of Accuracy,” in which it roundly states that it corroborated the information in Andrew Lohse’s column (as Dartblog did before printing the initial version of Lohse’s piece):

To publish a column that levels such serious allegations against any institution without taking the time to corroborate such accusations is an affront to the principles of integrity widely cherished by responsible journalists. We did our utmost to confirm that The Dartmouth would not, in publishing this column, be giving voice to patently false claims against both a campus fraternity and the administration. Ultimately, a number of changes had to be made to the original draft after new information came to light.

It was not a desire to shelter Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity or the College administration, but rather our responsibility to corroborate facts that led to a delay of several days between our receipt of the column and its publication.

Nobody is coming out of this whole thing looking good. That’s for sure.

Note: There was no reference again yesterday to the hazing scandal in the Dartmouth in the News digest from Public Affairs. This omission marks the first time in my memory that the digest has omitted a story about the College that appeared in the Valley News.

Why Good People Do Bad Things to Good People

A longtime Dartblog reader — a Dartmouth-trained psychiatrist — shares some thoughts on the pressures and obligations of members of large institutions:

Mr. Andrew Lohse ‘12, the author of the column on hazing in the Dartmouth Greek system, says that he has learned that “good people can do awful things to one another - for absolutely no reason.” How true!

There are two classical social psychological studies which bear this out, if it needs bearing out. One was by Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale in the early 60’s who conducted an experiment in which “subjects” were told that they had to apply electric shocks to “students” who were trying to learn a task when errors were made, on the argument that the shocks helped the “students” learn. It was all bogus and there were no shocks, but the “subjects” believed that they were administering intense shocks to the “students.” All in the name of “help.”

The second experiment which comes to mind is the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo in 1971. Stanford students were assigned to be either “guards” or “prisoners” in a setting in the basement of the Stanford Psychology Department. The study went on for several days, during which the “guards” behaved extremely abusively to the “prisoners.” Zimbardo is a brilliant guy.

You can Google these studies to read about them. Needless to say, they were never repeated. The lesson of these experiments (not to mention circumstances which occur in political or military settings) is clear. Institutions have a clear responsibility to protect those for whom they have a significant measure of responsibility from physically or psychologically harmful consequences of sanctioned activities which occur under their purview.

I hate to say this, but, were I Mr. Lohse’s parent, I would be talking to an attorney. That might get the administration’s attention, if more reasoned approaches do not.

Note: My correspondent might also have referred to the Asch conformity experiments (no relation to me) in which subjects in an experiment at Swarthmore were cajoled by peer pressure into conclusions that were patently wrong. Only 24% of subjects refused to ever conform to the obviously incorrect, prevailing opinion; all the other subjects gave into pressure to provide a wrong answer at least once in a series of tests.

Addendum: A Letter to the Editor today in The D opines: “Simply put, if you are sick of swimming in a pool of feces, get up out of the pool and walk away.” The above psychological research shows that in many instances, this action is more easily advocated than done. The world is a great deal more complicated than the author of this letter understands or will admit.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

When the government sees a problem, its reflex is to create a committee; when the administration is worried about students, hey, let’s have a forum. Wesley Schaub has called yet another one.

I can’t quite see what is going to happen there that hasn’t happened a great many times before. And ol’ Wes sure seems tentative in his below e-mail, doesn’t he? Especially for events that are clearly in contravention of state law.

To my mind, the answer lies with the freshman class. Tell ‘em that they have it in them to stand up to hazing. They should do so as a group. And if they don’t, there will be a real price to pay. If the manly virtue of resisting peer pressure isn’t enough for them — with a dash of fear thrown in — they should know that nobody wants to kiss someone who has been drinking ass beer and eating vomelettes.

By the way, where is global health expert medical doctor President Kim in all of this?

–––- Forwarded message –––-
From: Wesley W. Schaub
Date: Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 1:48 PM
Subject: Hazing Forum
To: “Wesley W. Schaub”

Hello everyone,

With everything happening around the hazing allegations I wanted to offer you the opportunity to attend a forum on hazing. I want to revisit what hazing is and discuss ways for to evaluate current practices. This will not be a discussion on current events, but a forum to help your group change to avoid problems in the future. The meeting is Monday at 3pm in Paganucci Lounge. Again this meeting isn’t required, but current and newly elected presidents and new member educators may want to attend. My hope is that the discussion will revolve around what constitutes hazing and how to create positive change.

Wes Schaub
Director, Greek Letter Organizations and Societies
Dartmouth College

Public Affairs: Swept Under the Rug?

Dartmouth’s Office of Public Affairs sends out a digest each day with news about the College, alumni, faculty, and pretty much anything pertaining to the College that has been mentioned in the press. Yet somehow, Andew Lohse’s much quoted piece about hazing, and the many internet news sites that have referred to it, didn’t make it on there today.

How come? The piece has now been picked up by Gawker, The Huffington Post, IvyGate, The Daily Caller, Business Insider, Jezebel and Ricochet.

“Deny, Deny, Deny”

Bill Clinton’s famous imprecation to his erstwhile paramour, Monica Lewisnky, to “deny, deny, deny” their relationship, seems to be the basis for the administration’s strategy in dealing with Andrew Lohse ‘12’s allegations about fraternity hazing. In the D’s news story today that accompanied Lohse’s revised column describing hazing practises, Kim administration Chief of Staff David Spalding denied seeing photographs of hazing when he and Associate Dean of the College for Campus Life April Thompson met with Lohse, and SAE President Brendan Mahoney ‘12 denied that hazing practices took place at the frat.

Err… almost. In fact, Spalding was quoted as saying that “he did not recall seeing photographic evidence of hazing in a November 2010 meeting with Lohse.” Did not recall? Geez. That’s a Watergate expression that means ‘I don’t want to lie here, but I sure ain’t going to tell the truth, so I’ll use the I don’t recall expression.’

Sheesh. Funny enough, Spalding is far more assertive in affirming that “Lohse did not present him with videos of alleged hazing incidents.” That’s a real denial.

As for the images, I wrote to Andrew Lohse ‘12 to ask him about whether he showed images to Spalding at their meeting. He replied affirmatively (means yes) and he immediately sent me the below e-mail to April Thompson, which he wrote several months after his November 2010 meeting with Spalding and Thompson.

From: Andrew B Lohse
Date: Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 2:23 PM
Subject: Follow Up?
To: “April D. Thompson”

Hi April,

Just wanted to follow up with you and check in on the status of the
project you mentioned regarding hazing that you had wanted my input
on. It’s been a while since our last phone conversation, and I was
wondering if there were any updates from the last few months.

A link I received from a friend today made me think of the situation
we were discussing; I’m sure you’ve seen this—

http://www.annarbor.com/news/parent-university-of-michigan-fraternity-hazed-pledges-sigma-alpha-epsilon-suspended/

The story really got me thinking about the hazing and substance abuse
issues we had been talking about/working on. In this Michigan case it
seems like a very small piece of information resulted in an actionable
change. It really got me thinking of the kind of change we could
create given the vast information we have at our finger tips. With the
wealth of details, facts, images, and emails I gave to you and Vice
President Spalding, I’m sure that you—especially with Dr. Kim and his
public health focus at the helm—have put together some really great
projects to start addressing the issue at Dartmouth over the last few
months. I hope I can still help. I’m sorry I haven’t gotten back to
you sooner, but last we talked it seemed like you already had
something in the works and would reach out to me soon, and I’ve been
busy working and planning a long backpacking trip (which I am on now).

In December, we (Jordan Osserman, Aimee Le, and myself) had flirted
with the idea of going to the press with our story. We talked
extensively with a reporter at the Boston Globe who was very
interested to run with the story “Dartmouth College administration and
globally lauded public health expert president negligent in massive
hazing and substance abuse culture despite entreaties by victimized
students”, but I ultimately told her to kill it because I have a lot
of faith that the administration can make a real change and will step
up to this problem in our community with creative ideas from Dr. Kim
and all of the Deans. Again, like I said in the fall, I really hope I
can help in the process…

Best,
Andrew [Emphasis added]

As for SAE President Brendan Mahoney ‘12, his denial had even more finesse than Spalding’s. As The D reported, “Mahoney also said he had not personally experienced any of the hazing practices described in Lohse’s statement.” What the heck does “personally experienced” mean? That he didn’t personally…

…swim in a kiddie pool full of vomit, urine, fecal matter, semen and rotten food products; eat omelets made of vomit; chug cups of vinegar, which in one case caused a pledge to vomit blood; drink beers poured down fellow pledges’ ass cracks; and vomit on other pledges…

Did he know that it was being done? Did he see it? Did he order it? Again, Lohse says that Mahoney was an integral part of the fun in their pledge year in 2009. And I have received e-mails from other SAE members confirming that such practices regularly occurred.

One would hope that the D’s reporter would polish her skills at cross-examination in order to ferret out facts — especially when dealing with people who would prefer to play semantic games rather than tell the unvarnished and complete truth.

Addendum: Despite Dean Johnson’s efforts to cover the College, Wes Schaub’s supposed anti-hazing campaign consisted of no more than the annual, toothless “please don’t do this” effort. By all reports, hazing throughout the College continued unabated over the most recent terms.

Lohse Describes His Interactions With the College Administrators

At Dartblog’s request, Andrew Lohse ‘12 has described his discussions regarding hazing with College administrators and their reactions to his information.

On Tuesday November 16th 2010 at 1:00 pm I met with David Spalding and April Thompson in a conference room at Collis to discuss fraternity hazing. I brought with me to that meeting a dossier of fraternity hazing and substance abuse related information — including at least one picture of SAE pledges very obviously about to be hazed (I had others but am not sure if I had them with me at the time or showed them to those present. One was stored my cell phone), and one picture showing myself leaning over a fellow pledge vomiting in a trash can following pledge meetings hazing.

I spoke from an outline of points I had prepared about my own experiences and my observations and research about these practices in Dartmouth social life. I described to Spalding and Thompson the vast majority of Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s pledge term hazing. This was a very hard conversation to have, given the levels of shame, embarrassment, and guilt I experienced for being involved with such processes, and the fact that I still had friends in that organization and was still considered a “suspended” member.

When I passed across the table to Spalding the said image of imminent hazing, an image of the pledge class standing in front of a table holding more than 550 cups of beer and explained that hazing experience — which was certainly not as bad as the kiddie pool from sink night — I registered Spalding’s expression as being aghast, even white faced. He remarked that he had never seen or heard anything like that before. Spalding’s statement to The Dartmouth that he “does not recall seeing pictures” during this meeting is evasive and inaccurate.

The meeting concluded with Thompson and Spalding promising that action would be taken in regard to the said hazing, as that fall’s pledge term was well under way. I reiterated that at the time I wished to remain anonymous to protect myself from what would most likely be bitter retaliation (as I myself had seen in my own much-regretted experiences of May 2010 with Phil Aubart and the SAE “DartCoke” event). They made protecting my anonymity a priority, a fact I appreciated.

At that time I had not entertained the notion that my anonymity would handicap their efforts in any way. Researching similar cases at other schools, I have never found that a student wishing to remain anonymous delegitimized either his experiences or a university’s ability to investigated and end abusive practices.

On Tuesday, November 30th 2010 at 1:42 AM, I followed up with April Thompson regarding our meeting and regarding the imminent “hell night” hazing to be held on December 1st 2010. I had not heard from her since our meeting. She soon responded about a forthcoming Hanover Police “sting”. I wrote a lengthy email suggesting that such a “sting” might not be the best way of addressing the issue, as it might only produce a small change in the system (one fraternity’s derecognition) and not across the board change, as SAE is not the only fraternity to employ abusive hazing practices. Further, I suggested that such a “sting” might in fact create sympathy for the Greek system.

At the time of that discussion, I was not aware that, as The Dartmouth reported on January 25th 2012, “Administrators also discussed plans for “Hell Night,” the culminating event of pledge term, with the then-president of SAE to ensure that the event would not violate the College’s hazing policy, Spalding said.”

This statement reveals that Spalding spoke with SAE prior to the “sting”, thus informing them of the scrutiny they were unknowingly under. Obviously, due to that communication, the fraternity altered its plans and the element of surprise was lost. It is obvious that such a turn of events would compromise the “sting” and not produce an accurate revelation of the practices.

In an email on Monday, February 21st 2011 at 2:23 PM, I followed up with Thompson, further referencing the pictures that were displayed in the November 16th meeting. I wrote: “With the wealth of details, facts, images, and emails I gave to you and Vice President Spalding, I’m sure that you—especially with Dr. Kim and his public health focus at the helm—have put together some really great projects to start addressing the issue at Dartmouth over the last few months.” Thompson did not respond to my message. No such plan was outlined.

I followed up again on Saturday April 16th 2011 at 6:23 AM, asking Thompson what updates she could relate to me about President Kim and Spalding’s assumed action to address the hazing issue. Thompson did not respond to that message either.

In July 2011 two members of Dartmouth’s SAE chapter attended a national or regional meeting where they were confronted by an administrator for the fraternity’s national organization regarding the hazing information I assume that they received from April Thompson. I had a conversation with a fraternity brother who expressed fear over the fact that national was aware of the house’s hazing practices. The fraternity held a meeting to discuss how to move forward regarding hazing since the next term would be a pledge term (the summer is not a pledge term). I felt falsely optimistic at that point that change could be achieved from the inside. I had a conversation with a fellow ‘12 brother, who was skeptical about whether or not hazing “built brotherhood” on this point.

On Monday July 11th, 2011 at 4:18 PM I emailed April Thompson expressing this optimism, and expressing that it seemed like the “backchannel” discussion could have forced a change. No change occurred and the rituals continued unabated that fall. I left the College on October 31st for a medical leave.

All of the emails referenced in this statement were sent to The Dartmouth as a part of corroborating the story and Op-Ed of January 25th 2012. They were aware of all of this information when they printed those reports.

The Sexperts: Life Goes On

While the campus seems focused on the HazMat scandal, life continues unabated in other parts of the College:

From: Sexperts Sexperts@dartmouth.edu
To: CAMPUS-EVENTS@listserv.dartmouth.edu
Date: Jan 24, 2012 at 6:29 PM
Subject SexTalk: Condoms and Lube: WEDNESDAY 4:15

This winter, The Sexperts bring you another awesome workshop in our SexTalks series!

SexTalk: Condoms and Lube
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
4:15pm in Collis 101
~ Open to everyone ~
Sponsored by the Sexperts!

Condoms and lube used properly reduce the chance of getting HIV/AIDS by 85-95%
Condoms and lube used properly reduce the likelihood of unwanted pregnancies to as low as 2%

But Condoms and Lube can also be FUN!
Neon, studded, ribbed, flavoured, glow-in-the-dark, personalised….
Warming, sensation-enhancing, cooling, yummy…

Come try out different types of condoms and lubricant with the Sexperts! And perhaps even win a few of the unusual kinds!

Thought of the day (from a concerned student):
“Condoms are cool, but you can’t put a condom on your heart, baby.”
(ie: It’s not all about the plumbing. But if you DO use the plumbing, wrap it up first)

Also, there may be food.

Addendum: Dartbeat follows up with pictures and commentary. The Sexperts blog is here.

Dean Johnson on Hazing

Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson has just sent out the below message to the College community.

HazMat Scandal: The Players

Who are the players in the unfolding HazMat scandal?

Andrew Lohse: Lohse ‘12 is a controversial figure on campus. His columns in The D are written in a colorful, fluid style (actually, they are far more cogent than the first draft of the column that this space published yesterday), and the pieces generate reams of commentary. He has published columns in the Harvard Crimson and the New York Daily News, and one of his recent columns was noted by the NYT Dealbook, the Atlantic, and other publications. However, Lohse is better known for his arrest in the spring term of 2010 for cocaine use, and the subsequent allegation that he harassed the fraternity brother who reported that students were using illegal drugs in the public space of their frat. Does having the whistle blown on him disqualify Lohse forevermore from being a whistleblower himself? I think not. One might even conclude that Lohse learned something from his past experience, and taking an example from the student who went out on a limb to denounce the drug use, he has decided to become a whistleblower himself.

The Administration: My mailbox is full of comments referring to the Catholic Church and Joe Paterno. While the College did hire a new GLOS (Greek Letter Organizations and Societies) director, Wes Schaub, in the summer of 2011, Schaub’s efforts against hazing have been tepid. Visible Greek wear, most notably Alpha Chi’s red siren baseball caps, has been banned during pledge period, but beyond that, nothing has been done publicly, and little has been done behind the scenes. When Lohse met to discuss rampant hazing over a year ago with President Kim’s Chief of Staff David Spalding ‘76 and April Thompson, Associate Dean of the College for Campus Life, they promised to bring his information (as confirmed by videos and pictures) to the attention of President Kim. At that time, Kim, who has shown no lack of energy on the national stage in publicly combating binge drinking (he has just returned from a meeting of his Collaborative in Texas), had various options open to him. To this writer’s mind, he should have assembled Greek leaders and read them the riot act: We are aware of these dangerous practices, they have to stop now, we will ferret them out if they continue, and students will be permanently separated from the College and houses permanently de-recognized if they occur again. But a quick search of The D shows no evidence that President Kim said anything about hazing in 2011. In fact, one has to think that he and his administrators wanted to cover up Lohse’s allegations. That’s not leadership as I understand it.

The D: Ah, The D. Much derided on campus for terminal blandness (yesterday’s paper included a hard-hitting report on Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations, the College’s ongoing sustainability efforts, and an extended obituary for an alumnus who had little involvement with Dartmouth after graduation), The D needs to play a role in improving the College. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, as Justice Brandeis wrote, and The D should start to conceive of itself as more than a re-packager of the College’s press releases. As for the paper’s handling of Lohse’s column, as I wrote yesterday, the Editors should have published it after the usual vetting, without passing it around to various other parties.

Dartmouth Students: For a great many undergrads, Lohse’s piece was not news at all. Tales of “ass beers” and “vomelettes” have been making the rounds for years on campus. With over 60% of upperclassmen in Greek organizations, the number of students in, ummm, contact with hazing practices must be high. How long has this kind of thing been going on? Chris Miller ‘63’s The Real “Animal House”: The Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie (2007) doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination regarding his own experiences, but it seems that today’s students have tried to go above and beyond. As to why nobody before Andrew Lohse went public in describing hazing rituals in all of their unsanitary and degrading glory, well, it is a shame for the College (and for past victims, however willing, of this abuse) that we have had to wait for him.

The Class of ‘15: Will the Class of 2015 submit to the usual initiation rites? Or will its members who join fraternities and sororities do so with a higher sense of what it is to be a member of a Greek organization?

Erratum: This post originally noted that Wes Schaub had been hired in the summer of 2010. That information was incorrect, as shown by the D article to which it was linked.