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Funny pages
The deadline poet and author of "The Tummy Trilogy" picks five books that made him laugh.
By Calvin Trillin
[11/01/99]

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A massive tome on the silent era's greatest performers fails to come up with much that's fresh.
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The female dick
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[10/29/99]

Ivory Tower
After the apocalypse
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[10/29/99]

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"All Tomorrow's Parties" by William Gibson
In his newest novel, the cyberspace visionary stays one step ahead of the future.
By Frank Houston
[10/29/99]

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The problem started when a social chair from the co-hosting sorority e-mailed her sisters asking for help with the event. The e-mail message included an invitation to dress up "hawaiian style," along with somewhat puzzling references to "pinatas" and "volleyball with those teekee lamps." An idea to have an "american flag jello thing" was also floated in the message; that particular idea -- a patriotic tribute consisting of red, white and blue jello shots in the shape of an American flag -- had been initially suggested for the group's Fourth of July barbecue. "It's not 7/4," the message read, "but hell, hawaii is a state!"

The message found its way to Akamu, who sent it to his friend Omar Rashid, president of Lambda Upsilon Lambda. Rashid, in turn, composed his own e-mail and sent it off to the Coed Fraternity Sorority Council, the Greek system's governing body on campus. Rashid's message was much angrier, calling the party racist and bigoted, and he threatened to pull his own fraternity out of the CFSC if action was not taken against the two sponsoring houses.

That evening, tri-Delta president Alexandra Sophocles called Akamu. "We went for a really long walk and talked for about an hour and a half," he recalls. "I could tell she was really sorry about what happened, and wanted to do something to try to make things right."

Later that night, Sophocles and Akamu met with Alpha Chi president Kelley and the social chairs of the two houses. At 5:02 a.m., a campuswide e-mail went out apologizing for the planned party, and the two houses announced plans for a forum "about the misuse of culture and ethnicity on campus." Another racial incident at Dartmouth had been narrowly averted, it seemed, with all sides leaving happy.

And then the storm started.

When news of the controversy hit the campus and eventually the AP wires, hate mail poured in for Akamu and Rashid. "A lot of people were just swearing at me," says Akamu, who received more than 300 messages. "There were anonymous e-mails from bogus e-mail accounts saying, You better watch it, You better keep an eye out."

Rashid received similar messages. The controversy sparked a wave of editorials and "letters to the editor" to the Dartmouth, the campus' daily newspaper, many ridiculing Akamu's assertions and blasting the CFSC for giving in to Rashid's demands.

In the end, Alpha Chi got off scot-free, while the sorority received full sanctions from the CFSC judiciary committee. Rashid blames Dartmouth's long-standing "boys club" traditions -- the college didn't admit women until 1972 -- for the uneven sentencing. "They penalized the sorority and not the fraternity," he says, "because all the frat guys have each others' backs."

Largely lost in all the late-night sessions, online debates and irate editorials was the issue at the very heart of the controversy -- namely, why were people so offended by what was, in Dartmouth Review editor Steven Menashi's words, a "silly" and "harmless" frat party?

In fact, much of the confusion about the incident stemmed from the party announcement's ambiguous text. What does "dress up hawaiian style" mean, exactly? Menashi insisted that "hawaiian style" didn't mean dressing up like Hawaiians at all -- no grass skirts, no coconut bras -- but rather, dressing like "silly-looking American tourists with floral shirts and straw hats." Either way, the implication of dressing up "hawaiian style" meant wearing something a little goofy.

"It's because these stereotypes [are] all they know about Hawaii," says Akamu. "They actually think that's real, so they don't see what's wrong with it."

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