Gresham said that after spending freshman year settling into college life, sophomore year rush can shake up the rhythm of familiar relationships. “I didn’t anticipate it being my thing, but I thought I’d rather give it a shot and see if I liked it than have this lingering thought in the back of my head like, ‘You’re missing out, and all of your friends are doing this fun thing!’” “I rushed because it was a big part of Dartmouth’s culture,” Gresham said, adding that she was relatively ambivalent about Greek life until she joined AXiD her sophomore fall. Whether feeling alienated by social expectations like Gresham and Kaj Johnson ’22, or simply unable to take on the time commitment like Guszkowski, some students decide to become inactive or officially “depledge” from the Greek houses they rush.įor Gresham, depledging from Alpha Xi Delta sorority was driven by the realization that joining a house was not a prerequisite for the deep connections many students hope to make in college. Though Greek life offers positive connections and genuine support networks for some, for others, a house is not always a home. “I think people come to Dartmouth and are scared that the only way to have a community is to join a Greek house,” said Guszkowski, who rushed and depledged from the gender-inclusive Greek house Alpha Theta. Though rush is voluntary and there are non-Greek social spaces on campus, students expressed that joining a Greek house can feel like a requirement for “fitting in” at Dartmouth. With over 60% of eligible students affiliated, there is an unspoken expectation that most students will eventually become a member of a fraternity, sorority or gender-inclusive Greek house. Some students, like Olivia Gresham ’22 and Gus Guszkowski ’22, report feeling as if Greek life is Dartmouth’s social scene. Greek life maintains a towering presence in Dartmouth’s social scene. He later helped create an education counseling program for wounded veterans that is now being offered through the American Council on Education.This article is featured in the 2021 Winter Carnival special issue.įor some Dartmouth students, Greek life is as quintessential to campus culture as freezing New Hampshire winters and rigorous academics.
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Marine, made a series of trips to military medical facilities to encourage wounded soldiers to continue their educations. In retirement, Wright said he hopes to continue his work with wounded U.S. Haldeman said trustees would discuss the search for Wright's successor at a meeting later this month. "Any measure one could use, Dartmouth is stronger than it's ever been." "It's been a remarkable run," Haldeman said. "His service to Dartmouth is perhaps unparalleled in the history of the college."Įd Haldeman, chairman of the college's board of trustees, said Wright has left his mark on every aspect of Dartmouth, from a larger faculty to new and better campus buildings. "For 40 years, he's put his heart and soul into Dartmouth, as a professor, as dean of the faculty, as president," said Todd Zywicki, a trustee who has criticized the administration. Still, even those who sometimes disagreed with Wright praised his work on behalf of Dartmouth, acknowledging that he had done much to keep the college competitive in the world of 21st-century higher education. "I think that we stumbled badly coming out of the box on that, and spent some time trying to recover, and never did that gracefully or well, quite frankly." "The problem with the whole Student Life Initiative is that we really set out to initiate a process, and there was a sense that we were announcing a result, a conclusion," Wright said Monday. At the time, Wright proclaimed that the deeply rooted fraternity and sorority system "as we know it will not survive these changes," but the fraternities and sororities remain the dominant social venues on campus.
And the Student Life Initiative, Wright's effort to reform Dartmouth's fraternity and sorority culture, met with backlash and ultimately had mixed results.Ī year after taking office, Wright announced an effort to expand Dartmouth's social scene beyond Greek life and make it more inclusive of all students. With those gains has come steady grumbling, however, from some alumni who accuse Wright of overemphasizing graduate studies and research and diluting alumni influence over how the school is run.