“Now Is The Time To Come Together, Rise Up, And Fight Back,” Cry Student Groups Characterized By Exclusivity And Historic Privilege Within The Dartmouth Community

Hanover, N.H.—Over the past couple of weeks, two fraternities tired of being brutally, personally victimized by the heinous acts committed by their own members have taken it upon themselves to stand up and fight back. In forms of heroic activism surpassing that towards any other recent social or political cause championed by this community, other affiliated students have banded together to help mobilize Dartmouth students to vote for Article 9, a zoning amendment that would allow de-recognized houses to continue to operate independently of college jurisdiction. This would effectively allow them to effectively reclaim ownership of this exclusive system that has remained a steadfastly privileged, dominant force within the Dartmouth community.

In the weeks leading up to the vote, members of these communities have taken initiative to gather funds to support this issue through valiant efforts such as emptying out their piggybanks, putting away savings by ordering from Kata Thai instead of Tuk Tuk, and of course graciously accepting donations from their millionaire alumni base. These efforts resulted in their raising well over $20k. “It is truly admirable to see Dartmouth students uniting to raise money and support causes that truly matter,” says alum Ronald Hastings, ’84.

The money raised has gone towards some of the various efforts put forth to raise awareness about Article 9. These efforts include the production of t-shirts making creative use of colonial imagery to advocate for the cause, the posting of the banner pictured above, on which one student fighting for the cause generously wrote the word “women” in pink in order to ensure that it be legible and appealing to female members of the Dartmouth community, and of course, education: One of the affected fraternities has used the funds to generously provide barbecue-catered outreach events to teach other affiliated students about some of the benefits of the amendment, such as the way it maybe might hopefully help sororities but probably not, or the fact that if you vote for it you get free hot dogs.

“Dartmouth students are being wronged, and the College will tread on us no longer!” cries Todd Atherton, ’17, a wealthy, affiliated white male catered to by virtually every system in place at this institution who has never experienced discrimination on any social, economic, or political level.

“This is about much bigger than ourselves,” Atheron asserts, “This is about the community as a whole, and will ultimately benefit each and every Dartmouth student—provided, of course, that they are part of a privileged contingent of campus that has never been marginalized or made to feel uncomfortable within the Greek system.”

However Macy Johnson, 19, is of a different opinion, saying, “I don’t know how this will impact Dartmouth as a whole, I just have a lot of friends in SAE and I feel bad for them.” She went on to tell the heroic tale of how members of this fraternity had worked so hard for so long to overcome the heinous and humiliating actions that they themselves knowingly committed, and all they want to do is put all of this behind them so they can move forward and continue to commit similar actions with complete lack of consequence. “Their perseverance really is admirable.”

We tried to reach her best friend, Hayley Pearce, 19, for a second opinion, but Pearce was unable to speak to us due to still being hungover from a party the two had attended together at SAE the night before. “Besides,” says Johnson, “Haven’t they already been punished enough?”

When questioned about why this community is choosing to focus so much energy on this issue as opposed to other current political issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement and protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, students skirted the question, mumbling things about being “really busy this term” and “CS problem set due Thursday.” Says Atherton, “in this day and age you only have so much time you can’t spread yourself too thin, so it’s important to focus on what really matters—like taking back what’s rightfully ours.”

–LK-P ’18