have not in the past been a staunch defender of single-sex Greek houses. So it shouldn’t come as a shock that I do not wish to defend them now. Yet I would like to point out that single-sex organizations are not evil by virtue of their exclusivity alone; if they are evil it is a result of how and why they exclude. To assume that single-sex Greek houses are necessarily evil because they are exclusionary is to vastly oversimplify the issue.

I write in reaction to Professor Susan Ackerman’s statement before the faculty on May 14, 2000 in which she speaks about “problems inherent in the privilege fraternities and sororities have to exclude, in particular the problem of ‘othering’.” She describes a process whereby the othering that from the right to exclude translates into a stronger form that transforms others into “objects of scorn and derision, and even objects of abuse, harassment, and attack.” In an example Ackerman gives, members of one fraternity regard members of other fraternities and gays as inferior.

Certainly, this kind of destructive othering happens. I do not take issue with whether or not it takes place nor with whether or not any of the effects of othering that Ackerman identifies exist; they do. I do take issue with the unsupported leap she takes from the organization’s right of closure, or right to exclude, to its tendency to exclude outsiders destructively.

Exclusion is not in and of itself evil. If you define othering in this manner, as the sense of recognizing differences between you and not-you or we and they, it is not intrinsically wrong. Dartmouth College, after all, has the right to exclude based on academic achievement. Academic departments differentiate between honor students and non-honor students. Each of us informally excludes those we do not consider our friends from those we do consider our friends. In fact, there is no membership-neutral term in English. It is either “me” and “you/he/she/it”; or “we” and “all of you”; or “us” and “them.” Exclusion is built into our very language and into our psyches from the moment we become aware of the “self.” Are all of these forms of exclusion unjustified and wrong? I think most of us would say they are not.

Exclusion is not the same thing as destructive othering, nor does it necessarily lead to othering. The real problem with single-sex Greek organizations lies in how they exclude: by sex, formally, and by race and affluence, informally. These criterion are not morally justifiable for what these organizations claim to be.

The students who comprise these organizations were selected to attend this College (and others were excluded). Therefore, to remain part of the College, each individual and the organizations that these individuals comprise must conform (at least in action) to College rules and principles. These principles include, as Ackerman pointed out, a commitment to diversity of thought – within, of course, the College-defined game of tolerating diversity of thought. It’s a paradox of sorts, but one that pervades most, if not all, liberal democratic societies. The problem with single-sex Greek organizations, then, is not that they exclude, but that they exclude in ways that contradict the bigger, College-sanctioned rule of exclusion: the exclusion of intolerance.

The distinction between exclusion and destructive othering is an important one to make, I think, because simply condemning exclusion leaves the case against single-sex Greek organizations and their harmful effects, far too open to refutation. Rather, we should clarify what, precisely, is wrong with these organizations. I believe it is intolerance, on both an institutional and individual level, that lies at the heart of many harms attributed to the single-sex Greek system. And this realization leaves single-sex houses with some wiggle room: it is not their existence that is threatened, but the existence of institutionalized and morally arbitrary exclusion and what that perpetrates, that the College seems to be attempting to eradicate.

I, personally, can live with this kind of exclusion.