During my undergraduate years at Dartmouth College, I was part of a very popular fraternity, Delta Tau Delta/Bones Gate. Today, I am a rather strict Judeo-Christian, and I often reflect on how my current values coincide with my college-day values. This can be especially tricky in a world with changing values and trends in technology and culture.

Obviously sociological memes like religion and sex endure for the sustenance and sophistication of the Homo s. sapiens species. Christ taught self-sacrifice as a sort of remedy against our more primal urges of self-gratification. How can we use Christ to monitor what direction our social environments should take?

During my undergrad years, our college administrators were under extreme pressure to bring Dartmouth “up to speed” with other national universities renowned for research and strict academic codes. Dartmouth was for a time criticized in the press for its backward fraternity-sorority system. This system promoted a date-rape culture, binge-drinking, racist exclusivity, and poor academic performance. Dartmouth’s administrators thought it prudent to change the social and hence the academic (the two often go hand-in-hand in isolated, private colleges) culture of the college.

This college time period I am referring to was set in the years 1998-2001 (I was a witness to this period from 1997-2000). My experience was sheltered, and I myself was aware of two cases of date rape and one case of racism which frightened me (I myself am Asian-Indian, and Dartmouth is predominantly white). I put these cases in the back of my mind and did my best to get along and graduate on time (I was a Cognitive Science major).

The plan of the Dartmouth administration was to curtail fraternity-sorority foundations and discourage membership. Sometimes it was even suggested that the real hope was to eradicate all fraternities and sororities altogether and use the houses for academic purposes or non-alcoholic, non-exclusive social spaces. Concurrently, the administration also sought to expand Dartmouth’s small-college, undergraduate-focused educational environment into a university-type research-focused school. This would mean that perhaps more professors would be involved with their own research rather than with their students’ lives. The near-elimination of the fraternity-sorority system at Dartmouth was vital to this vision of Dartmouth’s new future. This is because at Dartmouth, the social and academic space shared by students and professors were intricately linked to how the students were granted their own space. This was the tradition at Dartmouth, a neo-classical college reminiscent of the Old South.

In reference to the students, we were indeed granted beautiful mansions to do with as we pleased. We converted these mansions into fraternities and sororities (there were two or three houses out of twenty-four or so which were co-ed in membership). Given this free space to roam, we destroyed and plundered often with great immaturity and disrespect to the physical houses and to ourselves. This I think demeaned the valuable time professors were willing to spend with us since they lived in houses right on campus very close to the fraternity and sorority mansions.

Given this date-rape, primal culture at Dartmouth, what values were changing in society as a whole at the time and what values endured? Bill Clinton was still the President. Honestly, at an isolated college like Dartmouth, we undergraduates were more focused on the values within our own campus and were rather sheltered from the goings-on of the outside “real world” (a critique often brought up by the national press, much to the dismay of Dartmouth’s Trustees and alumni). We knew the Internet was becoming more and more important, and the economy was enjoying a boom. Films like “American Beauty” and “Gladiator” were huge, as were the DVD media and Sony Wega tvs on which they were presented.

If you look at the values of American society, they are often reflected in American college campuses. If 1998-2001 can be defined as a period of American optimism, technology proliferation, world peace, and economic prosperity, than such values would seep into any college or university. If you are watching your DVD of “Gladiator” in the year 2000, and you cry in some dramatic scene, chances are when you get to campus you will not deny this decent emotion.

I can watch “Gladiator” on a DVD or find a version on VHS (soon on Blu-ray disc). I want to be sure that regardless of the technological presentation, that the story comes through. If a film is shot with an analog camera or a digital HD camcorder, the film-makers are concerned with the stories presented. They may, of course, use their cameras to weave a story which is made by the technology itself. For example, the 1971 film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” tells a story that is built and not just enhanced by the technology of color-television. For this technique to work, the technology of color-television must lend itself to storytelling. Since we humans are the inventors of our own toys, and we love stories, almost any reliable piece of technology will reflect this interest.

In other words, if Director Ridley Scott is making a DVD-specific movie about the Roman Empire in the year 2000 A.D., both his camera and his mind should be devoted to enduring principles of storytelling and common sense.

Jesus Christ taught us important values and reminded us of enduring values. If we use Christ as a model teacher, we can determine what direction the backward Dartmouth College campus of 1998-2001 should take, since any college should serve American society. Christ’s values would apply as we make the translation between innovation and lifestyle in American society and innovation and lifestyle on American college campuses.

I believe Christ would teach moderation and mercy in dealing with fraternities and sororities, and it would fall upon the college students to handle this mercy maturely. This almost always works. To reduce date-rape by enhancing the academic atmosphere of the college (without shockingly changing the campus culture), Dartmouth could promote professor-led student discussions on faculty-written work which are published online and perhaps in a special academic journal. If this became popular, I know many frats which would feel more embarrassed to act like animals. Another idea would be to video-conference parties web-streamed from one or two (if not twenty-four or so) non-alcoholic social spaces. These web streams could make this type of non-alcoholic venue popular for students who are shunned by the fraternity system. To make the admission of more minority students run smoothly, Dartmouth could start out admitting elite minority students and then follow with a more inclusive approach. As the approach becomes less exclusive (by any man-made standard), any student should be granted the right to peaceably form a fraternity or sorority that can house itself in one of those beautiful frat mansions.

The basic idea here is, one which I believe Christ teaches, is that during any kind of evolution or physical or social change, animals, humans, or plants (etc.) require slow and delicate transformations. If a fraternity-based college has been famous in the press for over 200 years, during a time of turmoil, it must use its own resources to bring about healthy change at a healthy pace. If date-rape is promoted by a culture of spoiled, elite, wealthy students who want to act like animals, then this culture could be changed delicately with things that inspire, ironically, these students’ primal urges (like technology!).