Philosophy
If you haven't read the Rolling Stone expose on fraternity life at Dartmouth, do. It paints a disgusting picture of what goes on in the fraternities of an elite liberal arts college.
You have organizations run by pre-adults with no oversight. The culture convinces the young people that they need to be in such an organization to have a good life -- on and beyond campus -- and thus sets them in a place to be taken advantage of by those in the in-group. Once inside, the reward structure is based on machismo and having a story beyond those now told. Because the structure is ossified, this inevitably leads to a ratcheting up where each new class needs to top the last year's class in terms of antisocial behavior. It gets worse and worse with no external check to keep it in balance.
This structure is not unique to Dartmouth. So, for those of us who work on campuses with robust Greek organizations that are not Dartmouth, how much can we infer about the workings of our Greek system from this peek into that of another college? Because of the code of silence within the fraternity world, we know little to nothing about what they do. We are arguing from a state of ignorance. We now have a data point from which we can make an argument by analogy. How much weight can we give to such an argument? How much can we infer about our non-Dartmouth Greek world from a peek into Dartmouth's? how unique will these be and how much a function of similar structural elements?
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Philosophy
Dartmouth, Fraternities, and Arguing from (near) Ignorance
If you haven't read the Rolling Stone expose on fraternity life at Dartmouth, do. It paints a disgusting picture of what goes on in the fraternities of an elite liberal arts college.
You have organizations run by pre-adults with no oversight. The culture convinces the young people that they need to be in such an organization to have a good life -- on and beyond campus -- and thus sets them in a place to be taken advantage of by those in the in-group. Once inside, the reward structure is based on machismo and having a story beyond those now told. Because the structure is ossified, this inevitably leads to a ratcheting up where each new class needs to top the last year's class in terms of antisocial behavior. It gets worse and worse with no external check to keep it in balance.
This structure is not unique to Dartmouth. So, for those of us who work on campuses with robust Greek organizations that are not Dartmouth, how much can we infer about the workings of our Greek system from this peek into that of another college? Because of the code of silence within the fraternity world, we know little to nothing about what they do. We are arguing from a state of ignorance. We now have a data point from which we can make an argument by analogy. How much weight can we give to such an argument? How much can we infer about our non-Dartmouth Greek world from a peek into Dartmouth's? how unique will these be and how much a function of similar structural elements?
- Can You Really Own A Position?
I've been thinking about the use of the verb to own with respect to an intellectual view. When a student is being wishy-washy about a proposition he or she is arguing for and clearly believes, I'll tell the student to "own the position." ...
- Is Addiction Itself Problematic?
I had lunch yesterday with my editors from Johns Hopkins University Press and one of them who ordered a cup of coffee was making light of her supposed caffeine addiction. It leads to the question whether such an addiction would be a problem. ...
- Group E-mail Vs. Spam
Is there a difference between sending an e-mail to a group of people and spam? Is the difference based on the number of people contacted? If so, where is the dividing line between contacting a bunch of folks and sending spam? Or is it...
- Compare And Contrast: Animal Farm And Animal House
Had an idea for a possible recurring theme, Compare and Contrast. So, let's see how it goes. Compare and contrast Animal Farm and Animal House. My take -- in both cases we see the cautionary tales about power and repressive regimes. When...
- Is There Progress In Art? Society?
I'm working through Max Weber's methodological essays and one of the points he argues is that social progress is a myth. Across the ideological spectrum of founding fathers of sociology, from Marx's communist view to Spenser's free...