At Dartmouth, the Hysteria Continues
Posted on January 29th, 2015 in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »
“Following a series of high-profile reports of sexual assaults at universities around the U.S.,” TIME reports, Dartmouth has just announced a ban on hard alcohol on campus.
Dartmouth president Phillip J. Hanlon has a plan to address what the Wall Street Journal refers to as “a rising tide of complaints that have tarnished the school’s reputation.”
Here’s what the Journal says about the complaints, but it sounds like this could benefit from further investigation:
Faculty requests to close fraternities and rein in the drinking culture at Dartmouth have issued for decades and come to nothing. They resurfaced again and took on added gravity when a series of sexual assaults preceded a 14% drop in applications two years ago. Last April, Mr. Hanlon announced that “enough was enough” and created a task force to oversee a course correction at the school.
Ironically, the fraternity-related complaints seem to have come from a now-debunked article in—wait for it—Rolling Stone relating the story of Andrew Lohse, a Dartmouth grad who’d written a tell-all about fraternity hazing at Dartmouth. New fraternity members, Lohse charged, were made to swim in kiddie pools full of vomit and semen.
Here’s what the Dartmouth, the student newspaper, said about that controversy:
In 2012, the College launched an investigation into [Sigma Alpha Epsilon] in response to Lohse’s public account. Later that year, the College charged SAE and 27 of its members with hazing violations. Charges against all 27 members were later dropped.
College spokesperson Justin Anderson wrote in a statement at the time that “information initially presented to the UJAO supported the charges. Information received subsequently, however, indicated that the initial information contained inaccuracies and was not a sufficient basis for the charges to proceed to hearing.”
The withdrawal of charges came two days after Rolling Stone magazine published an article featuring Lohse’s account of hazing at Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
It is, as they say, deja vu all over again.
Back to the present day, here’s what the Journal says about Hanlon plan:
Mr. Hanlon’s 6-page plan is a series of directives largely absent of detail. It calls for a four-year sexual violence prevention education program and a “consent manual,” which is to include “realistic scenarios and potential sanctions to reduce ambiguity about what is and what is not acceptable.”
The Journal adds this rather odd paragraph:
Once dominated by wealthy, white men the student bodies at colleges and universities across the nation are now nearly 60% female and 40% nonwhite and some students believe institutional norms haven’t kept pace with the changing demographics.
Colleges and universities across the country were all once dominated by wealthy white men? The remnants of which are apparently responsible for an “epidemic” of sexual assault on campus?
Just like the women at UVa who are told whom they can and can not socialize with, Dartmouth students may now find that their pleas for greater university involvement in their affairs has unintended consequences. Next up, we can expect universities to establish curfews and dress codes, and policies to make sure that their students are brushing their teeth.
16 Responses
1/29/2015 2:38 pm
I enjoy your writing. That said, please never again write “deja vu all over again.” Plain old “deja vu” is sufficient.
1/29/2015 2:51 pm
Ostap: whoosh. Check your humor detector’s Berra settings.
1/29/2015 3:24 pm
You know that’s a Yogi Berra-ism, right, Ostap?
1/29/2015 6:21 pm
When I went to college I didn’t join a fraternity because I was a good little Baptist kid and didn’t drink and came from a family of militant teetotalers, but if I was going to college today I would be temped to join one just to spite the PC hysterics.
1/29/2015 6:37 pm
[…] “rape culture” foolishness continues to roll right along even after the UVA gang rape article that amped it up turned out to be a total […]
1/29/2015 9:36 pm
Richard - Did you see that a grand jury declined to indict the five students accused of sexual assault at William Patterson University? The university president, Kathleen Waldron, says they respect the decision but the university’s discipline process will continue…
1/29/2015 9:37 pm
To go along with ‘driving while black’ we now have going to school while white…
1/29/2015 10:55 pm
The puritanism is too much. Sorry, but the banning just moves everything into whole new spaces. Probably will be more drinking in trips away from Dartmouth or in rest of Hanover, which will be a boon to local Hanover pubs while probably raising the conflict between Dartmouth and the rest of Hanover.
This is an example of how to create a motherload of unintended consequences.
1/30/2015 1:37 am
If the underlying idea behind banning hard liquor is to keep teenage coeds from drinking too much and getting into unfortunate sexual episodes, wouldn’t it make more sense to ban soft, tasty alcoholic beverages like wine?
Nobody should be allowed to drink anything but bourbon and branch water. That might cut down on underage drinking.
1/30/2015 10:29 am
The small conservative Baptist college I attended had a ban on alcohol and strictly enforced their rules to keep men out of the women’s dorms and women out of the men’s dorms.
Little did we know that the hoards of Godless liberals were going to steal our schtick and pretend it was something new!
LOL.
1/30/2015 11:18 am
Someone forgot to un-bold…
1/30/2015 1:31 pm
As a Dartmouth grad, I can attest that, entirely separate from the question of sexual assault, the drinking culture there was totally out of hand in the years I attended. I can’t say what things are like at Dartmouth now, but if the culture has not, in fact, changed, it is about time that the College administration took some firm steps to address it.
1/30/2015 3:18 pm
Yes, I know you’re quoting Mr. Berra. It was hysterically funny when he said it, but it’s been over-used to the point of being hackneyed. No one, but no one, ever just writes “deja vu” anymore.
1/30/2015 3:38 pm
Suuuuuuuure, Ossie. No really, we all believe you.
😀
1/30/2015 3:40 pm
I used to like this blog, but no one ever comes here anymore. It’s too crowded.
2/10/2024 11:02 am
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