Dartmouth arrests

[dmouth11]

<p>Hit the nail on the head, Redroses. I think most upperclassmen at Dartmouth are keenly aware of the flaws of the Greek system. In spite of this, I also think most of us would not favor abolition.</p>

<p>I’d favor abolition, if it wouldn’t leave a gaping hole in campus social life. That isn’t to glorify what the Greek system does – one of the most popular recent posts on boredatbaker was something to the effect of “I’m just shocked that this snitching thing came down to drugs, instead of rape.” But there is really no other way for young people to hang out in a generally public place and drink, unless some liberalization of the law occurs.</p>

<p>It’s not really a coincidence I think that the golden age of the Greeks at Dartmouth was when the drinking age was lower. A lot of older professors have fond memories of attending social events at Greek houses and mingling with undergrads. I’m as wary of overly romanticizing the past as anyone else, but I do think allowing drinking out in the open neutralizes a lot of the worst tendencies of young people.</p>

<p>There are idiot young drinkers anywhere, regardless of the drinking age, but the laws here really drive the idiocy underground and make it worse; the Greek system compounds the problem by offering a natural home for underground idiocy, but abolishing the Greeks won’t fix that.</p>

<p>And putting aside the idiocy for a moment, the Greeks play an important role in giving us a place we can call home, both as students and alums. Unaffiliateds who visit after they graduate won’t really have a home to go to, and even while here, are more or less quietly excluded from large parts of the campus social scene, just because Greek houses must organize social events behind closed doors thanks to the drinking laws.</p>

<p>If Greek houses were a bit more like say residential colleges at Yale, and offered a holistic residential/bonding experience, I think they’d be a much more positive component of campus life. Of course, getting from here to there is difficult, and I won’t pretend I know how to accomplish that.</p>

<p>On the original topic of the SAE arrests, here is the latest from The Dartmouth (there are links to the Hanover Police affidavits, which I’m sure will be very interesting to everyone here): [TheDartmouth.com</a> | Six Greek organizations may face Police charges](<a href=“http://thedartmouth.com/2010/05/25/news/investigation]TheDartmouth.com”>http://thedartmouth.com/2010/05/25/news/investigation)</p>

[electronblue]

<p>

Reform the Greek system and stop drinking? I seriously doubt it. Just look at Williams if you need an example. Drive the drinking even more underground and make students more afraid to call for help for a student in distress? Probably.

</p>

<p>Yes, Williams has a big drinking scene open to all, but there is not the alcohol poisoning death problem that you are implying. People do call for help. And my kid there says she has never seen cocaine. I’m not saying it’s not there, just that people certainly don’t take over common areas doing drugs.</p>

[Consolation]

<p>Those who want to get a less speculation-fueled version of what happened can read the affadavits, which are now on line.</p>

<p>They certainly might curb a lot of the hyperbole surrounding brazen behavior in common areas, vandalism, “witness tampering” and so forth.</p>

<p>What really stuns me about them is the amount that Brian Shea claims to have drunk during the course of the night.</p>

[TheGFG]

<p>One facet of this unfortunate situation is the fact that fraternities are largely organized around an illegal activity: furnishing alcohol to minors. When you start out with a rotten core, an organization is going to eventually spiral out of control and undergo a collapse like in this case.</p>

<p>I have never been drunk or high in my life, and am no fan of the Greek system. At the same time, though, I really hate capricious authority wherever it may be found. Either decide you are going to enforce the laws and regulations as they’re written and do it uniformly and systematically, or decide you’re going to turn a blind eye. But what is unfair to immature young people is when the college administration, the police, or the frat house manager turn a blind eye to illegal activity for 364 days out of the year but then suddenly decide that they’re cracking down one day in May. Now the Hanover police seem to be conducting a massive campaign to clean up the Greek system by going after the biggest players. What’s worse is that there’s the suspicion that one motivation for this crack-down is that the town of Hanover has a budget problem and if they can prove certain types of activity, they can confiscate fraternity and sorority property and make some money. Yuck.</p>

[JHS]

<p>The GFG, do you mean to be suggesting that adults, including government officials, legislators, and college administrators, sometimes behave ambivalently and inconsistently in dealing with controversial topics? And that they might not determine all of their actions by sage, long-term policy analysis, occasionally giving in to transitory political pressures and budget concerns? </p>

<p>“I’m shocked, shocked!, to find that gambling is going on in this establishment!”</p>

[EMM1]

<p>"One facet of this unfortunate situation is the fact that fraternities are largely organized around an illegal activity: furnishing alcohol to minors. When you start out with a rotten core, an organization is going to eventually spiral out of control and undergo a collapse like in this case.:</p>

<p>Oh, c’mon. Kids drink. Kids smoke dope. Kids form their own social groups which by their nature exclude others. Yeah, fraternities and sororities institutionalize the latter. But I have never seen any evidence to suggest that any of these problems are worse at schools where fraternities are prominent than at other schools.</p>

<p>Bottom line. I suspect that many of us would think that it is overkill to turn in someone for drinking or smoking grass. We might think differently if the same person was repeatedly shooting heroin in a public area. Cocaine is somewhere in between.</p>

[TheGFG]

<p>EMMI, regardless of how any of us may feel about underage alcohol consumption, the fact remains that it is currently illegal to serve alcoholic beverages to students under the age of 21. Since one of the primary functions of a fraternity is to do just that, my point was that inevitably problems of this nature will arise. Heck, the frats have elaborate warning system in place to let everyone know quickly if cops are coming so they can hide their drinks, etc. It’s a short slide down the slippery slope for a kid to presume immunity from other drug use.</p>

<p>My other point, though, is that the reason fraternities are permitted to exist at all considering their primary purpose, is that society is ambivalent about alcohol and specifically underage drinking. Some adults like you, don’t think it’s a big deal if college students drink. Others think it’s a terrible problem that we should be rectifying. The result? The authorities let it go and let it go until there’s an accidental death or other tragedy, and then suddenly they come down on kids with a vengeance. I have a problem with that. A law is a law and should be enforced seriously. If the society doesn’t believe in the law enough to actually enforce it, then it should be repealed. But doing this sort of thing only hurts kids. While I think societal distaste for cocaine use is definitely stronger than for the use of alcohol by minors, you’re right–it’s not quite on the level of heroin either, so people have mixed feelings about private use. Hence the problem.</p>

[Hanna]

<p>“Even if it is your sister? How about your dad? Or your son?”</p>

<p>If I had no other way to stop the behavior from occurring in my living room, then yes. In practice, this would never happen, because I would be able to exclude family members from my house if they refused to stop snorting coke in my living room. I would turn to that solution first. This “snitch” couldn’t – it was a shared house.</p>

<p>The argument that the basement pool room is somehow private because it is only shared by brothers goes nowhere. It might have been private vis-a-vis the general public, but it was a shared area of the house, unlike a bedroom. The “snitch” was a brother and a resident and had a right to use that space.</p>

[TheGFG]

<p>But the basement pool room is where all the illegal drinking activity takes place too. Did Aubert ever call the cops about that?</p>

[Hanna]

<p>Who cares? Maybe he called because cocaine possession is a felony, and underage drinking is not. Maybe it was because cocaine bugged him, and booze doesn’t. Private citizens don’t usually have a duty to report – they can make their choices.</p>

[bluebayou]

<p>

Now the Hanover police seem to be conducting a massive campaign to clean up the Greek system by going after the biggest players. What’s worse is that there’s the suspicion that one motivation for this crack-down is that the town of Hanover has a budget problem…

</p>

<p>Incorrect conclusion, IMO. Hanover is a tiny town, and The College IS the town. There is nothing, I mean nothing, that goes on wrt The College that at least one Dean is not aware of/significantly involved in, or even the new Prez. The former President Wright tried to address the greek problem internally, and failed miserably. (Dartmouth11 – read up on Wright’s “Life” initiative from about 10 years ago…) Perhaps Pres. Kim is letting the Hanover Police “fix” the problem, while ostensibly staying out of the fray. It really is brilliant, and quite frankly the only way to change behavior. (Group hugs, slaps on the wrists and kumbaya’s aren’t working…)</p>

[nightchef]

<p>

Private citizens don’t usually have a duty to report – they can make their choices.

Exactly. And therefore they must take full moral responsibility for the consequences of their choices, and not retreat behind the law. “Hey, they were the ones breaking the law, so if I ruined their lives just for annoying me, that’s their problem” is pretty lame stuff.</p>

[JHS]

<p>I think it’s reasonably safe to conclude that this was part of a long, unhealthy relationship on both sides, and had little or nothing to do with principled responses to drug or alcohol laws or notions of fraternity “brotherhood”.</p>

<p>This is the WASPy equivalent of gangbangers – puffed-up, banty boys full of self-righteousness, self-importance, and entitlement.</p>

[Bay]

<p>Serving alcohol to minors can, in fact, be charged as a felony in New Hampshire, so you can’t hide behind the “midemeanor v. felony” rationalization for reporting one but not the other:</p>

<p>

If a Greek organization is found to have served alcohol to an underage individual, the organization can be tried as a corporation and can be charged with reckless conduct — a felony-level fine — for providing alcohol to those who are underage, according to a 1997 state Supreme Court decision regarding a fraternity at the University of New Hampshire.</p>

<p>With evidence that Greek organizations are supplying underage individuals with alcohol, the organization can be fined from $2,000 for a misdemeanor to $100,000 for a felony, according to Christopher O’Connor, a Grafton County prosecutor.

</p>

<p>The affidavits are interesting reading. Again, while their contents are allegations and not “facts,” it appears that the three “coke-heads” were engaged in their alleged activity at around 2:00 a.m., alone in the pool room, behind locked doors. So they are not as brazen as many would like to make them out to be. They were discovered only because Phil Aubart unlocked the door for a woman who forgot her coat, at which point he announced to others that the perpetrators were doing coke and he was calling S&S.</p>

[TheGFG]

<p>I believe it is morally wrong to allow one’s thoughts and behavior to be controlled or altered by anything other than reason and good conscience. Therefore, I am strongly opposed to both drinking in excess and drug use. Also, I believe fraternities are corrupt institutions with which one shouldn’t align oneself for the reasons cited in previous posts. I counseled my own son not to join one, and told him that if he chose to anyway, he’d have to earn his own money for the dues because I would not be part of supplying alcohol to minors. In sum, I am not in the slightest sympathetic toward drug use by these or any other college students.</p>

<p>However, I also believe that years ago adults decided to allow the establishment of largely prosecution-free havens of bad boy and bad girl behavior. For years they’ve turned a blind eye to underage drinking, sexual intimidation, and the like. As a result, the students have gotten cocky and careless. For that reason, I am bothered that these young people were caught in their bad behavior and will be punished severely while the authorities (their college “parents”) who knew perfectly well what was going on weekly in these houses, did nothing about it. They are equally guilty if not more so and will go scott free.</p>

[Hanna]

<p>“therefore they must take full moral responsibility for the consequences of their choices”</p>

<p>Do cokeheads have to do this, too? Or only the people who report them?</p>

[Bay]

<p>It would be interesting to know whether every fraternity member can unlock the pool room’s door from the outside, or whether only the House Manager (Aubart?) holds that key.</p>

[Bay]

<p>

Do cokeheads have to do this, too? Or only the people who report them?

</p>

<p>They both do, absolutely.</p>

<p>The “coke-heads,” while morally and legally responsible for their behavior, were also, as TheGFG so eloquently described, victims of our society. </p>

<p>It is my impression that humans in nearly every culture since the beginning of time have used mind-altering substances, and will continue to do so no matter what the consequences. Putting people in jail won’t stop it and will only ruin lives.</p>

[Hanna]

<p>Victims? Because they used coke? </p>

<p>I’m generally for decriminalization of drugs as a policy matter, but I don’t think that a system that criminalizes cocaine use “victimizes” highly educated, privileged people who have countless other options besides snorting coke and who are in a position to understand the consequences.</p>

<p>It’s hard for me to see people who deliberately walk off of a bridge as “victims” of gravity.</p>

[nightchef]

<p>The affidavits are indeed interesting. Shea’s gallantry toward Reyes is touching :eek:. Aubart comes across as every bit the officious jerk that the bare outlines of the story would suggest. Altogether, a pretty unappealing bunch of people. But they didn’t do anything bad enough to deserve the consequences they’re looking at.</p>

<p>

@Hanna

Do cokeheads have to do this, too? Or only the people who report them?

Everybody, of course. My point was that the fact that the “cokeheads” have broken the law doesn’t automatically make reporting them the right thing to do. (I like the way you try to categorize them as people that it’s OK to harm by using the “cokehead” label. I think I’ll start calling Aubart “the narc” for the same purpose.)</p>