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Dartmouth in the Glare of Scrutiny on Drinking

Fraternities and sororities dominate the campus social scene and are a focus of the debate over drinking.Credit...Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

HANOVER, N.H. — It is a new school year, and there is a new president, Philip J. Hanlon, who no doubt would prefer to begin his tenure as the 18th president of Dartmouth College dealing with issues more lofty than binge drinking, sexual harassment and fraternity hazing.

But a string of embarrassing episodes are defining the early days of his presidency, a problem compounded by an unusual amount of administrative turnover at the college he graduated from in 1977. The unflattering attention may not be over: The Department of Education is investigating a civil rights complaint, one of several against elite schools around the country, alleging that Dartmouth has not met its duty to prevent and respond to sexual harassment.

The turmoil is particularly unwelcome at a place whose enviable academic reputation and bucolic New England setting have long coexisted with issues revolving around drinking and fraternity life. The Princeton Review guide to colleges lists Dartmouth as one of the nation’s heaviest beer-drinking schools, based on student surveys, and games of “beer pong” and Friday night parties in the dank basements of fraternity houses are longstanding rituals.

There is drinking at all colleges and disagreement about the extent of problems at Dartmouth, but what no one disputes is that fraternities dominate the social scene here, putting them at the center of the debates. About two-thirds of undergraduates join a fraternity or sorority, nearly double the rate of any other Ivy League school. Besides fraternity and sorority houses, there are few indoor spaces where students can congregate, on or off campus, a fact the administration has long acknowledged, making a point of including such places in new buildings.

“There are too many people who see anyone who criticizes the Greek system as the enemy, and too many people who see anyone who’s in the Greek system as the enemy,” said Katie Wheeler, a junior who belongs to a sorority and has both criticized and defended Dartmouth in her column in The Dartmouth, a student newspaper.

All of this is happening at a time of unusual ferment at the top with Dr. Hanlon, who was inaugurated on Sept. 20, just settling in, and other senior administrative posts also turning over in a way that left many students and faculty members saying the campus felt rudderless before his arrival.

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Meg Parson, near left, with Katherine Healy, said, “I honestly don’t think there’s more of a problem here than anywhere else, and I get kind of angry about all the bad publicity.”Credit...Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

The drinking problems have flared into view just as the reality might be changing, due largely to former President Jim Yong Kim, who set out to curb alcohol abuse and sexual assault. Under him, Dartmouth started designating students to remain sober at parties and help people who are drunk and vulnerable and counseling students who go to the health center for alcohol-related reasons. He also founded the National College Health Improvement Program, an alliance of colleges trying to curb binge drinking.

Dr. Hanlon, who previously was at the University of Michigan, cited signs of improvement, like a drop in the number of times ambulances are called for students with very high blood alcohol levels, to 31 in 2012-13, from 80 in 2010-11.

Questions of alcohol abuse, hazing and the treatment of women moved to center stage last year, when a student, Andrew Lohse, wrote an essay for the newspaper detailing horrific things he had seen and done as a fraternity brother. The article drew muted assent from some students, charges of exaggeration from others, and national media attention sprinkled with references to “Animal House,” the 1978 film based very loosely on the writer Chris Miller’s memories of his Dartmouth daze.

In June, the Alpha Delta fraternity — whose alumni include Dr. Hanlon and Mr. Miller — pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of serving alcohol to under-age people, and agreed to pay a fine, perform community service, and submit to court-imposed restrictions on its parties and use of alcohol.

Weeks later, a party sponsored by a fraternity and a sorority with a “Bloods and Crips” theme prompted complaints of callousness, and in September, a fire broke out in a fraternity house that is being investigated as a possible arson.

But the dispute that drew the most attention this year began in April, at an annual event for high school seniors who have been admitted to Dartmouth. A group of students pushed their way into the event, shouting about sexism, homophobia, racism and harassment at the college. On an anonymous message board for Dartmouth students, some posted vulgar insults about the protesters, rape jokes and even threats.

Some of the protesters were also involved in filing the civil rights complaint, which the government agreed over the summer to investigate. Similar charges have been leveled at several elite colleges in the past year, including Amherst and Swarthmore, but the protesters here were more confrontational, and their critics more virulent.

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Dartmouth’s new president, Philip J. Hanlon, in his campus office in Hanover, N.H., last week.Credit...Cheryl Senter for The New York Times

The administration drew fire for condemning the threats but not the protest. Some students traded charges about the arrogance of affluent, white-male privilege, versus hypersensitivity and political correctness run amok, while many others dismissed the whole affair as a battle between opposing fringes.

Katherine Healy, a sophomore, said of the protesters, “I think they had a fair point to make, but they did it the wrong way,” a view many others on campus echoed.

Her friend Meg Parson, also a sophomore, said, “I honestly don’t think there’s more of a problem here than anywhere else, and I get kind of angry about all the bad publicity.”

Trying to manage all of this has been an administration in transition. Dr. Kim stayed at Dartmouth for just three years, and left with only a few months’ notice to take the helm of the World Bank. Since then, the executive vice president, the provost who served as interim president after Dr. Kim, and the senior vice president have all left; searches for new officers are under way.

While there is little evidence about how racism, sexual assault or drinking at Dartmouth really compare with its peers, it is undeniably different in several ways beyond the popularity of the Greek system. Dartmouth has a large contingent of students from private high schools, about 45 percent of undergraduates, compared with 32 percent at Harvard, for example, and 38 percent at the University of Chicago.

With 4,200 undergraduates, Dartmouth is the smallest of the Ivy Leagues and was recently ranked first in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in undergraduate teaching. It is also the most remote by far, nestled in this town of just 11,000 people, bounded by forested hills and the Connecticut River.

So while any venerable school has its tribal rituals, identities and rivalries that are opaque to outsiders, Dartmouth is more insular than its bigger, more urban counterparts — and less used to the glare of scrutiny.

Dartmouth’s location “influences the character of the place in both positive and negative ways,” Dr. Hanlon said in an interview, calling it “a gift that very few places have.” He said he sees the Greek system as an asset, not an obstacle. And he asserted that there was no evidence that drinking is worse here than at peer institutions. “We know Dartmouth is not perfect,” he allowed. “We want to make it better.”

A correction was made on 
Oct. 3, 2013

An article on Wednesday about scrutiny of drinking at Dartmouth College misidentified the fraternity that pleaded guilty to serving alcohol to under-age people. It was Alpha Delta — not Alpha Delta Phi, the fraternity of which it was once a chapter.

How we handle corrections

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Dartmouth In the Glare Of Scrutiny On Drinking. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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