Around The Ivies: Academic Rigor, Protests, and exposed lead

The quick and dirty about what's been going on around the Ancient Eight (and other schools too).

With spring -- it may not seem like it, but yes, last Friday marked the official first day of spring -- comes spring cleaning. And around the Ivies there has been some cleansing going on.

In January, Dartmouth President Phil Hanlon announced that the school would become more “academically rigorous.” In a panel held a few weeks ago, faculty members noted concern that students were able to engage in “high risk” drinking during the week “given the stresses of the academic calendar.” The spring term will mark the beginning of the hard alcohol ban at Dartmouth, and faculty members also support moving classes earlier, apparently so that students will not be able to stay out as late at their Greek houses. Not sure what moving classes earlier will do, but the alcohol ban might have some consequences -- students will be suspended for a whole term for just two offenses. Yikes. A professor expressed hope that these changes will encourage Greeks to return to the practices of the 1850s, where fraternities held debates rather than “late night drinking parties.” ... We’ll see.

Brown and Columbia continue to face controversy around administrative policies relating to sexual assault, in light of recent events. After the school’s charges were dropped against a student accused of sexual assault by a female student reportedly drugged with the date rape drug GHB at a Phi Kappa Psi fraternity party, Brown community members criticized the university, believing that the charges were wrongfully dropped because the accused was the son of a Corporation trustee. Students organized protests, and voiced their opinions on social media through hashtags like #MoneyTalksAtBrown and #GHBGetOutofRapeFree.

450 Columbia graduate students protested the university’s newly created sexual respect education program that all undergraduates and graduate students will be required to complete in order to graduate, by sending in a “letter of noncompliance” to administration.

Meanwhile, at Yale, there’s been some literal cleaning… sixty-nine dorm room had to be repainted because of dangerous levels of exposed lead. The issue was brought to the attention of school authorities by a student living in one of the hazardous rooms. Oops. Once again, we’re glad we’re not there.