Dartblog

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.

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.

The D reported on a talk given two weeks ago by Philosophy Professor Susan Brison — who, after 27 years in the Phil Department, is still an Associate Professor. Her contention: the priority given in constitutional jurisprudence to the First Amendment’s Free Speech clause is unjustified in that it unduly limits the obligation of a civil society to restrict hate speech. To say that her presentation — at least as reported in The D — was all over the map, is to understate the situation. This is the kind of talk that might work with undergrads with little background in con law, but to ignore the undergirding role of free speech in our democracy, to hide behind the skirts of philosophy by asserting that implementation is not her concern (thereby ignoring the evident problems of interpretation, chilling effect, and the slippery slope), and to conclude that she is opposed to hate speech codes on campus — even though she seems to favor them in the society at large, which would necessarily include university campuses — well, let’s just grade this presentation with an I+ (“I” for incoherence).

But these matters are not my concern today, for Brison began her talk — again, as described by The D’s reporter — with some autobiography and some history:

When Brison first came to Dartmouth in 1985, she “arrived on a campus that was rife with racist hate speech,” she said. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day did not become an official holiday in New Hampshire until fifteen years later, when New Hampshire became the last state in the nation to name a holiday after him in 1999.

To state that the College was rife with hate speech in 1985 is no more accurate than saying so about the present day. Dartmouth has never had a tolerance for hate speech; the core values of this institution have been opposed to it for as long as I have been associated with the College. That is not to say that in an academic community of 10,000 or so people there are not occasional incidents of violent, demeaning, racist or other types of reprehensible speech. The last three years have seen a racist putdown of President Kim, and homophobic graffiti. Going back a few more years reveals controversy over the visit by the North Dakota Fighting Sioux hockey team, and generalized charges of racism by the College’s Native Americans.

So is today’s campus rife with hate speech? No more so than the College in the 1980’s (or the late 1970’s, when I was in Hanover as a student). For Professor Brison to level this charge — the only example that The D’s reporter cited as Brison’s evidence was the State of New Hampshire’s refusal to make Martin Luther King’s birthday a holiday — is the kind of intemperate demagoguery that one might expect from a fringe politician. It is not the balanced and thoughtful weighing of information and ideas that we would hope for from a Dartmouth professor.

Addendum: Criticism of the Old Dartmouth is an age-old sport at the College. In my day, too, we were quite certain that we were enlightened, tolerant and open-minded; yet somehow we knew that the College’s past was filled with shameful acts and expressions, both as a matter of individual behavior and administration policy. If things hold true to form, today’s students need only wait twenty of so years for kids from the class of 2035 to make the same allegations about Dartmouth ca. 2012. And they will undoubtedly be aided and abetted by shallow-minded professors who make contentious accusations that are unsupported by research, data and analysis.

Addendum: A longtime observer of the college writes in about Brison and free speech:

In a packed Leverone Field House which included the academic and administrative hierarchy of the College, I watched George Wallace offer a civilized and cogent defense of the indefensible. No minds were changed, but the the tolerance of the speaker and the audience for the expression of repugnant views left a lasting impression on me and, I suspect, everyone else including Wallace. I walked out of Leverone thinking I had just witnessed a triumph of free speech and American democracy as well as the essence of Dartmouth.

Brison seeks to replace freedom and tolerance with repression. Orwell knocks.

The real question is how someone as intolerant and rigid as Brison becomes a tenured professor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.