{"id":4661,"date":"2012-04-07T15:20:49","date_gmt":"2012-04-07T19:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/?p=4661"},"modified":"2016-11-16T19:59:11","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T00:59:11","slug":"some-polemical-reflections-on-the-dartmouth-hazing-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/crcl\/some-polemical-reflections-on-the-dartmouth-hazing-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"Some (Polemical) Reflections on the Dartmouth Hazing Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rolling Stone<\/em> recently published a long story<\/a> about Andrew Lohse, a Dartmouth senior who blew the whistle\u2014assuming there was a whistle to blow\u2014about hazing practices at his school\u2019s social fraternities. \u00a0In January of this year, Lohse published an op-ed<\/a> in The Dartmouth<\/em>, chronicling his experiences with a particular Dartmouth fraternity and reproaching the school\u2019s network of Greek letter organizations\u2014Dartmouth has long been a breeding ground for \u201cGreek life\u201d\u2014of perpetuating a \u201cpervasive hazing, substance abuse[,] and sexual assault culture.\u201d\u00a0 Here is the essence of Lohse\u2019s expos\u00e9:<\/p>\n

I was a member of a fraternity that asked pledges, in order to become a brother, to: swim in a . . . 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\u2019 ass cracks; and vomit on other pledges, among other abuses. . . . \u00a0As a pledge, I ceased to be a human being; instead, I became \u201cwhale shit.\u201d \u00a0In the process, I, my fellow pledges[,] and all pledges since . . . have been implicitly encouraged to treat Dartmouth women with about the same respect with which we treated each other in our social spaces: none. \u00a0Fraternity life is at the core of [Dartmouth\u2019s] human and cultural dysfunctions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lohse went on to censure Dartmouth administrators for failing to take action to reign in the school\u2019s fraternities, reminding his readers that Dartmouth\u2019s Greek system is in need of \u201cextensive oversight and restructuring.\u201d\u00a0 He also named names and took aim at Dartmouth\u2019s president, Jim Yong Kim.<\/p>\n

After several students attacked Lohse on The Dartmouth<\/em>\u2019s website, his story attracted the attention of Rolling Stone<\/em>, which gave him an opportunity to elaborate on his experiences as a fraternity brother turned social reformer. \u00a0In the course of telling Lohse\u2019s story, Rolling Stone<\/em> made three assertions: first, that irresponsible fraternity brothers exert significant influence over the tenor of social life at Dartmouth; second, that the aforementioned fraternity brothers are supported in their endeavors by a large network of equally irresponsible Dartmouth alums, many of whom work in the financial sector, where they perpetuate the modes of thought instilled in them by their fraternities; and third, that many of Dartmouth\u2019s students and administrators are in denial about the ways in which Greek life degrades higher education at Dartmouth.<\/p>\n

There is nothing surprising about Lohse\u2019s claims; social fraternities have long been known to rely on cheap bear, and on the insecurities of young men (and women) desperate for social acceptance, to bring out the lowest instincts in American college students.\u00a0 If there is anything interesting about Lohse\u2019s story, it is the fact that it has elicited so much resentment from the young man\u2019s classmates. \u00a0The simplest explanation for the backlash is that Dartmouth\u2019s undergraduates are angry to see their laundry aired in public.\u00a0 But there is also the fact that many Dartmouth students see Lohse as the physician who won\u2019t heal himself, for he was at one point suspended from Dartmouth for cocaine possession, and he appears to have begun his reformist efforts only after the drug bust and his subsequent disillusionment with Dartmouth. \u00a0As Rolling Stone<\/em> took pains to point out, moreover, Lohse studied Fitzgerald\u2019s This Side of Paradise<\/em> before coming to college and, upon arriving at Dartmouth, made it his business to establish himself on the campus social scene as quickly as possible, a goal that led him to curry favor with the fraternity he would eventually join and later expose.\u00a0 If Rolling Stone<\/em> painted a negative portrait of Dartmouth, it drew an equally unappealing picture of Lohse.<\/p>\n

Rolling Stone<\/em>\u2019s willingness to highlight Lohse\u2019s checkered past means that the young man has struck many readers as a hypocritical figure, a fact that might explain why several individuals have penned articles<\/a> criticizing the Rolling Stone<\/em> article.\u00a0 The attacks<\/a> leveled against the article are precisely the ones one would expect, namely, that it overstates the extent to which the Dartmouth social scene is shaped by fraternities, that it relies on the recollections of a former fraternity brother who is equal parts disgruntled and vengeful, and that it draws a tenuous link between fraternity life and American corporate culture in order to sell magazines to an audience upset with Wall Street. \u00a0The problem with these lines of attack is that they do nothing to undermine the veracity of the article\u2019s claims.\u00a0 Lohse is not an ideal whistleblower, but the fact that he might have an axe to grind does not mean that his account is fallacious. \u00a0Those who accuse Lohse of exaggerating or lying ought to be prepared to document his dishonesty.\u00a0 Indeed, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that many of the story\u2019s detractors are unable to tolerate even a small amount of criticism of the institutions they hold dear.<\/p>\n

By depicting the social fraternity as a kind of preparatory school for social climbers hoping to succeed in American corporate culture, Rolling Stone<\/em> unabashedly politicized the conversation about Greek letter organizations. \u00a0It will be no surprise, then, if the debate over the article\u2014and over the accuracy of Lohse\u2019s account\u2014comes to reflect a larger disagreement about the values that college-bound Americans ought to embrace, as well as about the character of the American corporate world.<\/p>\n

At this early point in the Dartmouth hazing controversy, a number of questions have yet to be answered.\u00a0 It is hard to tell what motivated Lohse to cooperate with Rolling Stone<\/em>, and it is equally difficult to discern the motives of the Dartmouth fraternity brothers and officials who have tried to discredit him.\u00a0 It is also hard to speculate about what exactly happened among the drunken blokes Lohse described in his op-ed; there are no photographs or video recordings to give the lie to anyone\u2019s account.\u00a0 Thus far, however, no one has refuted Lohse\u2019s story, and no evidence has surfaced to discredit his account.\u00a0 Moreover, Rolling Stone<\/em> has provided college students with an excellent opportunity to have a conversation about how a university\u2019s social life should be organized, and about the ways in which students ought to interact with one another.\u00a0 There thus arises a simple question: why do some readers feel threatened by Lohse and the article about him?\u00a0 And why do some students grow so nervous when a journalist highlights a few of the negative aspects of their school?<\/p>\n

Though all of the facts have yet to surface, the Rolling Stone<\/em> story is entirely plausible, at least in the sense that it is easy to imagine fraternity brothers force-feeding beer to one another, as well as engaging in all of the rituals that Lohse has depicted.\u00a0 Whatever happened at Dartmouth\u2019s fraternities, it is clear that, as an institution, the social fraternity is outmoded and embarrassing.\u00a0 To say that fraternities are an embarrassment to American higher education is not to say that all fraternities are alike, or that they are all incapable of playing a constructive role on college campuses.\u00a0 The claim is simply that, by their very design, social fraternities tend to degrade the environments in which they exist, as well as the people who associate with them.\u00a0 There are at least three reasons why fraternities are more than likely to debase the colleges at which they are allowed to function (much of what follows can and should be applied to social sororities as well).<\/p>\n

First, fraternities are powered by the insecurities of college students, many of whom are profoundly worried about the prospect of ending up without friends, of being left to navigate college without a social support network of some kind.\u00a0 The fraternity promises young men that they won\u2019t have to worry about being alone, and it draws them in by offering a half-baked sense of belonging, a steady supply of interchangeable acquaintances, and boilerplate rhetoric about the importance of concepts like virtue and character and unity. \u00a0What the fraternities peddle isn\u2019t especially pretty, but in moments of fear, college students take whatever they can get. \u00a0The problem with social fraternities, then, is that they exploit and reify the self-doubt of those who aspire to join them.\u00a0 Our university system should be encouraging young people to cultivate confidence, insight, and repose by learning about their own mental and emotional dispositions, and by forming distinctive friendships based on their unique interests.\u00a0 The fraternities have nothing to offer in this regard.\u00a0 Indeed, they tend to discourage development and maturation, for their fundamental message is that, as long as one is part of some large group, everything will be all right.<\/p>\n

Second, because Greek life tends to attract certain types of individuals\u2014often, those who value conformism and want to be part of a group with distinct and recognizable boundaries\u2014fraternities are bound to develop a particular bias: they are bound to develop into institutions that discourage independence, imagination, and innovation.\u00a0 In its present form, at least, the fraternity can function only if it embraces a series of lowest common denominators, a series of activities so basic that nearly everyone can engage in them without difficulty. \u00a0Hence the fraternity\u2019s tendency to organize itself around endeavors like drinking alcohol, watching ESPN, and throwing multi-colored ping-pong balls into plastic cups.<\/p>\n

Third, fraternities serve an unfortunate expressive function.\u00a0 The fraternities brandish a crudeness and a vulgarity that credulous freshmen often mistake for strength and confidence.\u00a0 What follows from this is familiar: young men flock to fraternities because they don\u2019t see organized displays of what they take to be confidence anywhere else on campus.\u00a0 The fraternities appear to young men to monopolize the concept of manhood, and anxious college kids\u2014who long to be seen as strong and manly and self-assured\u2014are led to believe that the fraternity is the only zone in which self-confidence can be found.\u00a0 All of this points, of course, to a more fundamental problem.\u00a0 Because American culture has been unable to offer anything resembling a meaningful picture of manhood, young men often mistake the hoggish conformism of the fraternities for masculinity.\u00a0 The failure of our culture to provide a constructive vision of what young men ought to be has created a void that the fraternities have managed to fill.\u00a0 The problem is that, if there is such a thing as a conception of masculinity worth striving for, it’s certainly not the one advertised by the fraternities.<\/p>\n

Time might help to sift fact from fiction in the Lohse saga.\u00a0 But there is no need for universities to wait before they do what needs to be done: push the social fraternities and sororities off of their campuses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rolling Stone recently published a long story about Andrew Lohse, a Dartmouth senior who blew the whistle\u2014assuming there was a whistle to blow\u2014about hazing practices at his school\u2019s social fraternities. There is nothing surprising about Lohse\u2019s claims; social fraternities have long been known to bring out the lowest instincts in American college students. 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