Middlebury’s thinking about such organizations is quite explicit.  According to the online Handbook, College policy “prohibits student participation in or affiliation with single-gender fraternities or sororities.”  There are any number of reasons for this policy, but the most concrete rationale may be found in the history of fraternities at the College.  This is a complicated subject, and I have only a sliver of personal experience with it since my first year at Middlebury—1990 to 1991—was the last year of the fraternity system, which had been abolished by a vote of the Board of Trustees shortly before I arrived.  The chief problem with the fraternities is that they gave men primary control of highly desirable social space at a time when the drinking age had just been elevated to twenty-one and access to alcohol-oriented parties was limited.  Sound familiar?   Anyway, the catalyzing event for the demise of the fraternities took place in front of DU—now Parton Health Center—when fraternity brothers dangled a female manikin from a window, with a nasty expression scrawled upon the body.  This episode seemed to epitomize the gender inequities associated with the fraternities, and paved the way to the co-ed social house system we have today.

All of which makes this so-called rebirth of sorority culture a bit ironic.  We hear talk from time to time about the underground movements of DKE, but the idea that a sorority may now be enforcing a code of social exclusivity is a bit disconcerting.

The complexity of this issue is suggested by the title of the Handbook section that prohibits students from affiliating with fraternities or sororities: “Freedom of Association.”   Needless to say, this phrase highlights the rights and principles that lie behind an individual’s choice to join an organization.  However, the College places limits on this freedom to choose, and the courts have generally stood behind the right of private educational institutions to do so.  For instance, in 1991, DKE took Middlebury to court, arguing—after the College outlawed fraternities—that they had a right to exist on campus.  Ultimately, the court ruled in the College’s favor.

Where all this concern about the Phoenix group is headed is unclear, but I would like to invite comments from students who have an opinion about whether or how this new group and others like it are affecting social life at Middlebury.

But the research highlighted in the Inside Higher Ed article is worth noting for its difference from the thinking that has marked this debate in the past.  Whereas Bowen, Shulman, and others have suggested that athletes tend to underperform because their academic credentials are weaker coming in (they get an edge in admissions) or because they are rooted in an “athletic culture” and don’t care as much as they should about their academic work, Thomas S. Dee, an economist at Swarthmore, is now arguing that college athletes are vulnerable to “stereotype threat.” As Dee explains, stereotype threat “refers to the perceived risk of confirming, through one’s behavior or outcomes, negative stereotypes that are held about one’s social identity.  More specifically, its key conjecture is that the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype can create an anxiety that disrupts cognitive performance and influences outcomes and behaviors.”   In other words, student athletes who are anxious about being perceived as “dumb jocks” may unwittingly confirm that image when they are under pressure to perform well on tests or other academic assignments.  But tell them that the exam they are about to take is just as often aced by athletes as by non-athletes—blunt the threat of stereotype—and they do fine.

The glib response to this study is hard to resist: if we all banished the image of the dumb jock from our minds and stopped examining the phenomenon of athletes’ underperformance, then maybe the problem would just go away.  Of course, this simple solution is far more complex than it might seem.  Changing attitudes is no easy thing, and in this case, the athletes themselves internalize the stereotype; it is a matter of culture.  Then, too, there are other compelling explanations for the so-called underperformance of athletes at elite liberal arts colleges (and here I should note that some researchers have argued that the problem of underperformance is not as pronounced as some have argued it is), beginning with the relatively weaker academic credentials that athletic recruits may bring to college.

But the idea that stereotypes can negatively influence the attitudes of individuals who are targets of stereotypical thinking is a powerful concept.  In fact, the scholar most responsible for pioneering this concept, Claude Steele, was on campus in September talking about how stereotype threats can hamper the intellectual performance of minorities and women.  To think of athletes in this way, as having to overcome some of the same obstacles that these groups confront, is provocative to say the least.

Soon after getting my first iPod, I was so infatuated that I tried to describe its power:

Pop music provides us an emotional autobiography, an enduring record of what we felt at key moments in our lives, especially times of romance.  Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1996) and the movie based on that novel beautifully dramatize this chronicling power.  But the mp3 player, of which the iPod is the exemplar, tells a different kind of story.  Whereas Hornby’s hero obsessively rearranges his album collection to suit his mood and prepares mixed tapes to express himself to friends and mark special occasions, he remains stuck in the analogue age.  Not the iPod user.  Connected by USB cable and synchronization to his computer and a music library that can be expanded at will by “ripping” cds or by downloading individual songs and albums from the internet—he begins where many record collectors wanted to end up: with a “jukebox” (an old-fashioned name for a computer directory) that is designed to sort, organize, and create personalized “playlists.”  And he can carry it all away in a package slightly bigger than a cassette tape—virtually, life in the palm of a hand.

When I wrote that that, I felt like I was tapping into something new.  Now that iPod is old and I have some distance on that first love, I have moved to a new crush: the Squeezebox.

Made by Logitech, the Squeezebox is a small device, about the size of an envelope, that plugs into the back of my receiver/amplifier and wirelessly streams music from my computer to the stereo.  The effect is like like playing an iPod through a stereo system, except that the Squeezebox has access to all the music files on your computer, which for most people means more capacity. The Squeezebox also allows you to stream internet radio stations, as well as subscription services like satellite radio and Rhapsody.  The promise is a wholly digital music system, and the Squeezebox delivers, without much sacrifice in sound.

At the risk of turning this post into a full-blown infomercial, I will also say that the Squeezebox is reasonably priced.