So frat boys get drunk and yell at chicks, and chicks get pissed off, and suddenly that means that "the women and minorities of Dartmouth [are] asking for help?"

The Psi U incident is no plea for social equality, nor is it some telling tale about how underlying racial and gender tensions permeate the Dartmouth community. It is a simple case of drunken stupidity.

I am glad that this individual chose to voice her concerns about the incident publicly, and I value the fact that we live in a community close-knit enough to hear those concerns, but not because it helps us understand how unfair society is, or because I feel that what white, heterosexual, able-bodied males, like myself, the frat boys in question, really need is another dose of white guilt. I value her voice because it allows us as a community to chastise those who violate our norms.

It works like this:

Boys get drunk, boys become assholes. Boys say things to girls they shouldn’t say. Girls announce publicly that boys ARE assholes. Boys face snickers and jeers wherever they go, and hopefully decided not to be assholes anymore.

The message this young woman sent was to the assholes who barked at her, not to any silent majority.

And treating this incident as a cry for help from Dartmouth’s poor and down-trodden women only reinforces the false image of women as helpless victims, unable to defend themselves and dependent on the mercy and charity of men, thus perpetuating the inequality.

Dartmouth’s women are tough chicks. They can stick up for themselves. Crying for help? Fuck that. Crying for help is something you do alone in your room. What this girl did is point the finger, not at men in general, but at the particular pricks who offended her. I applaud her for doing it.

The vast majority of Dartmouth students are clear thinking and rational people who treat all of their peers with dignity. Of course there are men who mistreat women, and those whites who discriminate against blacks, as there are women who mistreat men and blacks who discriminate against whites. And when those incidents occur, I hope that those victims too chose to speak out, because such public expression (and the condemnation of the guilty that follows) demonstrates how the community as a whole feels about such treatment.

The incident inspires me not to lament how far we’ve left to go, but to laud how far we’ve come.

- Timothy Miller ‘03

The point is: incidents like the one at Psi U follow a pattern. And the fraternity brothers weren’t just yelling and acting drunkÓthey were using racial and sexist slurs. That is the difference between this incident and other drunken incidents. You can’t simply ignore or de-emphasize the content of what was said.

I’m not the only one who’ll tell you that there is nothing "isolated" about incidents such as theseÓnot when they follow such a pattern.

The fact that this one women blitzed to the campus does not indicate rampant social injustice towards minorities and women. But the fact that incidents like this occur on this campus and in our country with certain regularity does indicate this. You can’t view this incident apart from all else that goes on at Dartmouth or the rest of the country.

The woman’s call for help was not an act of helplessness. There’s no shame in asking for help when you need it. It doesn’t imply helplessness. We all need help when facing issues as seemingly insurmountable as inequality and injustice. For men to help women gain social equality in no way perpetuates inequality.

For anyone who suggests that men and women are viewed as equal by our campus and our society, I encourage you look at the numbers.

Compare how much the average woman earns to what the average man earns. Look at the number of female doctors compared to the number of male doctors. Look at how many Supreme Court justices have been female compared to those who have been male. Look at how many presidents of this country have been female (or anything other than white males). Look at what percentage of rape, sexual assault, and domestic violence victims are women and compare those percentages to those of men.

The reality is that we live in a sexist society.

I didn’t intend to imply that every man should be held responsible for the actions of these couple of guys. I do, however, hold every individual man responsible for how he reacts to incidents such as these. If they act as I initially didÓto scoff and dismiss it as no big dealÓthen they should be held responsible for their indifference.

Inaction is action, my friend. We’re either going to help women gain equality, or we’re going to stand as an obstacle in its process. This belittles them in no way.

- Alexander K. DiGiorgio ‘04