So how long has it been since Dartmouth first began to admit women to the student body? With the first full-time female students in 1972, we’re nearing four decades of coeducation. But despite Dartmouth going co-ed well before the first memories of current students, many of the persistent themes on our campus would seem to suggest coeducation arrived to our snowy New Hampshire grounds much later. Gender inequality, sexual assault, campus spaces and fraternity dominance—these issues continue to haunt our discourse and maintain a lingering presence regardless of how many panels and task forces we create to investigate them.

While sex-based discrimination and inequality certainly isn’t exclusive to Dartmouth, our campus seems to move at a painstakingly slow pace compared to the outside world and other colleges. As a transfer student from UC Berkeley, I felt the difference the moment I stepped onto campus. Beneath the friendliness of each student, the excitement of DOC trips, and the breathtaking wonder of the Green and our historical buildings, there was something else. It was an undercurrent of proud athleticism, rugged outdoorsmanship… and…what was it? Privilege. I could almost taste it in my mouth through the cool autumn air.
Not privilege as material wealth, or class division—though I would find it in abundance later—but instead a lofty inaccessibility. Not elitism, but elite. It was evident in the physical structure of the campus. I was used to precise, ADA-compliant angled ramps abundantly positioned throughout campus and handicap signs dotting campus. Cultural relics in Berkeley challenged authority on the faded face of Bob Marley. Here, I was greeted with wide fields and majestic entrances and steps, daunting and proud. When I arrived, Berry Library’s Orozco murals stood out to me as a half-amused study of a primitive “other.”

But besides these physical hallmarks, these differences created a certain feeling that gnawed at me, like a word on the tip of my tongue that I couldn’t quite name and still can’t to this day. It is a feeling that there is a “correct order,” one distinctly Dartmouth and not the of the powerful institutions that create class, race, and gender divisions in society. In the case of gender, this “correct order” wasn’t something as obvious as meeting housewives-to-be or even seeing women as more “subdued.” But when I thought about gender and gender discrimination here at Dartmouth, there was something that made me think of polo shirts, golf sweaters, neat haircuts, and smiling rows of white men.

In my time here, I’ve met others who have shared that feeling. One said that she felt it was the male-centrism still present in the administration and alumni. Another has said that she actually thought the women were more subordinate here to the men. In her opinion, the fraternity environment forced women to become subservient, even if they didn’t start out that way. I don’t know if I can really echo those claims in my own experience, but I do know that I am not entirely alone in my sentiments.

After all of this, readers of this editorial may think that my reaction was obviously revulsion, that I made a horrible mistaking coming here. Some readers who agree with me are probably nodding in emphatic acknowledgement, thinking about their own experiences. Those who disagree might be thinking that this “Berkeley liberal” must have had some sort of culture shock after coming into a “normal” environment.
Well, I have a guilty confession to make—I didn’t greet this feeling with anger, revulsion, or even distaste when I first began walking across the Green. I welcomed it.

I didn’t hate Berkeley and I left many friends when I transferred across the country to Dartmouth. However, I hated the rat race that had overtaken it by the time I was there. Whether it was always there, I can’t say, but when I was there, it wasn’t a place of grand rebellion or anti-establishment sentiment—and that wasn’t my thing anyway.

What it was though was a place where introductory classes tried to “weed” students out of the department’s majors. It was a place where those interested in economics and business engaged in climbing over one another to gain a place in these coveted majors. Those progressive values that were normally associated with Berkeley were well in the background, whispering, if not simply rasping, almost imperceptibly. Instead there were endless meetings and hundreds of business clubs, with some students more often in suits than casual clothes, and not for interviews. The competition, anxious bustle, and above all, insecurity that radiated from the organizations and its students left a sour taste in my mouth.

So when I arrived here, this proud Sparta of colleges, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged-utopia, I savored its proud, traditional smugness as I breathed deep the New Hampshire chill. I celebrated the change, I admit, even though I have personal reason to passionately hate the subordination of those in a weaker position, especially women.

Slowly, through seeing Dartmouth’s deeply entrenched institutions, especially the sports and fraternity power centers, I have been repulsed by this Dartmouth facet. I have become more and more convinced that there is something wrong, even if I can only approximate causes and its symptoms because the true reasons inscribed in the social interactions are often invisible and difficult to grasp.

There are many reasons to be proud of being a son or daughter (or other) of Dartmouth, and I have not regretted my decision to come here. But others, ghosts of our past, deserve to be firmly put to rest. I myself know the allure of some of the mythos and have heard much more now about the darker side of Dartmouth from those who have been hurt by it most.

For our own sake—and Dartmouth’s—we need to bring out the best in our college, and ruthlessly stamp out the worst. It is why we had to bring back Untamed, one of the strongest feminist voices on campus, and why we still must strive to cover these issues. And we will continue to do so, not as detractors or bomb-throwers against this place that has become our sanctuary and our home, but as those who love it and hate the weeds that choke and diminish it.