HANOVER, N.H. - When Jim Kim became president of Dartmouth College in 2009, he seemed like a good candidate to improve the school’s alcohol-soaked student culture. Arriving with a sterling resume in public health and a knack for cultivating tradition-bound alumni, he launched nationwide collaborative studies of campus drinking, earning praise for his careful, evidence-based approach.
Then came Andrew Lohse.
A senior on leave this semester, Lohse confessed in an opinion article in the Dartmouth student newspaper Jan. 25 that over the years, and under Kim’s nose, his brothers in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity had been cruelly hazing pledges. Among the drunken initiation rites: a slosh through a kiddy pool of apparently feculent sludge and a meal of an omelet with regurgitated filling.
Lohse first told the administration about hazing at Sigma Alpha Epsilon in fall 2010. But because he would not go on the record, Johnson said, administrators’ hands were tied. Police investigations of the fraternity that fall found nothing.
Almost immediately after Lohse’s column was published in January, fellow students began to question his credibility, noting that he has been arrested on drug and assault charges. (He would not comment for this report because he has an exclusive agreement as a source for Rolling Stone, which is expected to publish an investigation in a few weeks.)
But Lohse had many advocates among the faculty, who have voted overwhelmingly and repeatedly in the past to abolish single-sex Greek organizations....
Hazing is common at colleges and even high schools....
--more--"
Also see: Florida A&M Frog March
