want to speak this afternoon in support of the claim in the motion before us that exclusionary single-sex social organizations are opposed to Dartmouth’s mission to foster a diverse, egalitarian, co-educational student culture.

Let me begin by pointing out that these organizations themselves are not as diverse as we want our community to be. The Committee on the Student Life Initiative, in January 2000, reported that while 69% of Dartmouth’s male students are white, 77% of fraternity members are, and, as far as I have been able to determine, this figure includes within it the members of our historically black fraternity; obviously, without Alpha Phi Alpha’s members being counted, the percentage of whites in the fraternity system would be even higher. And the sororities are even whiter still: while 67% of the overall female student population is white, 81% of sorority members are, and this is a percentage that again, as far as I have been able to determine, includes the members of our two historically black sororities and would, of course, would be higher still if they were not counted. The Committee on the Student Life Initiative also reported that members of exclusionary single-sex social organizations are more affluent than the rest of the campus: only 50% of fraternity members and 45% of sorority members receive financial aid, for example, versus 61% of non-affiliated students. To be sure, this information is now a little over a year old, and so somewhat out of date, but I cannot imagine this situation has changed significantly in the last fifteen months. Indeed, with regard to the later datum, I would note that fraternity and sorority members by necessity need to be more affluent than the rest of our students, because they need to be able to pay fraternity and sorority dues, which average, across the houses, $143.40 per term, with a range that runs from $60 to $300. These dues cannot be used for the purchase of alcohol, and funds for this purpose are collected by fraternities and sororities that do drink as a separate expense.

Now all of this whiteness and wealth, of course, bespeaks a world of privilege, and I want to make sure we understand just how privileged these organizations are. More important, I want to make sure we understand just how much privilege we as an institution grant to them. For example, the College will allow Greek organizations, along with undergraduate and senior societies, to collect membership dues through the College billing system — and note that this often means collecting money from students’ parents as part of the tuition bills they receive, not collecting money from the students themselves. This billing privilege, however, as far as I have been able to determine, is granted to no other organization on campus. Even more significantly, the College negotiates a group insurance policy on these social organizations’ behalf, so that they do not have to go out and seek insurance independently — and we must understand that this is an enormous financial boon we extend to them, since I am told that fraternities and sororities are considered by insurers the groups at sixth-highest risk among their client pool, just behind, you will be interested to know, the asbestos industry. The College also pays one professional and next year will pay a second to serve as full-time advisers to the Greek system, and this is not to mention the other administrators we compensate for spending significant time on Greek issues; also not to mention the consultants we brought to campus this month to advise Greek organizations about how to make themselves better. I dare say we could fund, at the least, a small department or program with these sorts of resources, and I might even venture to say that if we had available all the resources we have spent on supporting the fraternity and sorority system over time, we would be financially able to break ground on the new Life Sciences building tomorrow and to put in place a fully developed program of exciting, interesting, and viable social alternatives for our students.

Other privileges we extend to these organizations include allowing them access to alumni lists so they can identify and be in contact with previous members, even though access to these sorts of lists is otherwise very difficult and often legally impossible to obtain. We also allow them to serve alcohol in their facilities, a privilege not available to others, to a group of students, say, who wanted to have a party in a residence hall. Finally, and to me, most significantly, we allow these organizations the privilege to exclude, to say to other Dartmouth students who seek to join, “You cannot be a member of my club.”

I spoke on the floor of this faculty last year about these exclusionary privileges, stressing, first, how offensive it is to me personally that Dartmouth sanctions social organizations that are not open to all of its students, and, second, how I believe that a social system predicated on exclusionary privilege stands in an antithetical and, moreover, harmful relationship to our academic ideals of openness — our ideals, for example, that encourage our students to wander through the open stacks of our library, or to open the ORC and choose to take any course or pursue any major they wish, all in the service of fostering, in our classrooms and without, an open exchange of ideas. Today, fifteen months later, I would offer to you these same critiques, but I want to suggest that there are further problems inherent in the privilege fraternities and sororities have to exclude, in particular the problem of “othering.”

When a Dartmouth social organization says to a student who wants to join, “You cannot be a member of my club,” what is in effect being said is that, “You’re just not the kind of person we want to be a part of ‘us,’” which is by extension to say, “You are the kind of person who is an ‘other,” a part of ‘them.’” Now, as I have already intimated, I think this is a demeaning and wrong thing for Dartmouth students to be saying to one another, and I believe it is wrong that we as an institution sanction it. I want to suggest, however, that even more horrible in many ways is the fact that this mindset of “othering” does not go away after fraternity and sorority rush, when prospective members are told whether they can or cannot join. Rather, I believe this mindset can and often does translate itself into a more general “othering,” where all who are not a part of “us” can potentially become “them.” As often happens to the “other,” moreover, those who are “them” rather than “us” become objects of scorn and derision, and even objects of abuse, harassment, and attack. Because, for example, Chi Gam is “them” to the “us” of Phi Delt, it somehow became okay last year for “us” to try to burn “them” down. Or I would cite for you a document from Chi Gam that I was given access to last spring which proclaimed, among other things, that “there is only one house [Chi Gam] on [Frat] row [that would be ‘us’], the rest [that is, the ‘them’] are just gay bars.” I would be happy to share a copy of this document with any of you who would like to see it.

Finally, let me suggest the way in which this Chi Gam document points to one of the most dangerous aspects of the tendency to “other,” and this is the fact that those who are labelled as “them” in the “othering” process are all too often those who have traditionally been labelled “them” in our society: in the Chi Gam case, gay men and lesbians; but in other cases blacks, Latinos and Latinas, Asians, Native Americans, Jews, women. It is no accident, I would suggest, that is was racist and misogynistic slurs we heard yelled from the balcony of Psi U this winter
, or that women were brutally demeaned in the Zetemouth of which we have heard so much this spring. Rather, in these cases, I believe, the tendency to “other” that is embedded in the privilege to exclude quite naturally gave rise to attacks on some traditional groups of “others” in our society.

More generally, I would argue, the privilege of exclusivity commonly and often inevitably gives rise to speech and behaviors that further oppress traditionally discriminated-against groups in our community. In that way, among others, I believe exclusionary single-sex social organizations are opposed to Dartmouth’s mission to foster a diverse, egalitarian, co-educational culture for its students. I thus intend to vote in favor of the motion before us, and I hope you can do the same.

“You’re just not right”; “You would be happier elsewhere”; “You don’t fit”: we know this language. It is a language that, in our culture, has long served as code for discriminating, against blacks, against Latinos and Latinas, against Asians, against Native Americans, against Jews, against gay men and lesbians, against women. Like all code, the language is subtle, even covert, so covert, indeed, that I suspect most fraternities and sororities would recoil at the idea that this sort of language is used in discriminatory ways in their organizations. But I would challenge these organizations to listen to their language and examine their exclusionary principles carefully, and I would remind them, and you, of the data I cited earlier, that these organizations are significantly whiter than the rest of the Dartmouth campus.

I would also claim that the sorts of attitudes embedded in this discriminatory language does not go away after fraternity and sorority rush, after decisions are made about who is to be included and who excluded from membership. Rather, the white, upper-class, and —in the case of the large majority of our single-sex social organizations — male privilege that comes with the ability to exclude continues to manifest itself: in the racist and misogynistic slurs yelled from the balcony of Psi U this winter; in the misogynistic Zetemouth of which we have heard so much this spring; and in a homophobic document from Chi Gam that I was given access to last spring which proclaimed, among other things, that “there is only one house on [Frat] row, the rest are just gay bars.”

In short, I believe that in exclusionary organizations, the privilege of exclusivity inevitably gives rise to speech and behaviors that further oppress traditionally discriminated-against groups. In that way, among others, I believe they are antithetical to the fostering of a truly diverse, democratic student culture. I intend to vote in favor of the motion before us, and I hope you can do the same.

I wonder if the information on the whiteness of these organizations shows data for those groups that aren’t traditionally black. In other words, the numbers might not look that bad as they stand (77% vs. 69% isn’t great, but it doesn’t suggest virulent racism — whereas if a large number of the 22% of nonwhite students are guys in black houses, that changes things entirely).

I also wonder if there is a need to recognize that there are such houses and that the problems they raise are different? I’m not sure about this or about how to do this.

And also, I wonder about coming down harder on the single-sex issue and something like Matthew’s argument that these kinds of organization are inherited from Dartmouth’s pre-coeducation days and have impeded the path of coeducation by leaving social space primarily in the hands of all-male social organizations.