In Thursday’s Daily, Aaron Woell stated his approval of the plan by Dartmouth College to merge their fraternities and sororities into co-ed fraternities.

Not only is such a plan asinine, but it also serves as yet another example of how gender equality is being addressed in the least intelligent means possible.

As a member of a fraternity, I was taken aback when I heard the news that Dartmouth was planning this.

Single sex fraternities and sororities have existed for over 150 years, and the pointy-headed administrators at the college are making an extremely myopic decision based solely on pressures to maintain a politically correct atmosphere at an Ivy League school.

There is nothing wrong with men and women organizing themselves into fraternities and sororities.

Being a part of my fraternity has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

I learned lessons and developed friendships that will last me for a lifetime, and those experiences are by no means unique to myself.

Those experiences wouldn’t have been the same if my fraternity had been contaminated by the presence of women.

I had many close friends who were members of sororities, and their experiences would have been diminished by the presence of boorish men in their houses.

The closeness and special ties that develop in any traditional greek house are due in part to the fact that they are associating with their own gender.

Most women wouldn’t understand the male bonding that takes place in any fraternity, just as most men wouldn’t understand the female bonding that takes place in any sorority.

It isn’t wrong to want to associate with people of your own gender during your college years.

The idea has worked for more than 150 years, and I don’t see why we should change now.

Using fraternities and sororities as some kind of sexual mixing bowl is a bad idea.

If this foolish idea does become reality, it won’t solve any of the legal problems the college is trying to avoid.

The college says they are trying to alleviate the problems of binge drinking and hazing that they say are rampant.

In what way does co-ed fraternities solve that problem?

By mixing genders, the college has only added the potential problems of sexual harassment and sexual assault to the equation.

Dartmouth College is just the latest in a line of organizations to clumsily address the issue of gender equity.

The military recently allowed women to serve on combat ships and aircraft.

Still, though, women do not have to meet the same physical standards as men.

At times, standards are relaxed even further to keep some women in the service.

When some politicians have wanted to make the physical standards more stringent, women’s groups protested, saying in effect that women aren’t that equal.

Title IX, which governs gender equity in college sports, was a noble idea.

However, the law has been changed into a system of awkward ratios, complex formulas and unworkable quotas.

About a year ago, Iowa State was given a passing grade by the Justice Department yet said that the university was not fully compliant with Title IX because the number of female athletes didn’t equal the number of male athletes.

The feds said this despite the fact that ISU has 14 female intercollegiate sports while the men only have 11.

Gender equity is a problem in today’s world as yesterday’s wage study by the AFL-CIO proved.

That study said that women in Iowa earn significantly less than men do in similar occupations.

It’s a problem that has to be addressed but in smarter ways than what we’ve seen.

The administrators at Dartmouth think they have a solution, but in reality it’s just another bad idea.

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Robert Zeis

Alumnus

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