Here’s an excerpt from an exclusive interview with Frank Cunningham III’16 (Vice President of the Student Body) about the Moving Dartmouth Forward initiative.

The Dartmouth Review reports.

Inside the Moving Dartmouth Forward Steering Committee

TDR: After that, was it just a question of whether the Greek System should be retained and regulated or just outright abolished?

FC: Well, to be honest, the conversation got pushed to the side for a few months and then resurfaced again toward the end of the fall. That’s when The Daily Dartmouth article came. [I think] they knew that we were meeting around then [and wanted to make an impact with their piece]. The alumni were back on campus, everyone was paying attention, and ‘Abolish the Greek System’ comes out on the front page of The D. I initially didn’t pay it much attention, but as time went on and the faculty voted 116 to 13 to abolish the Greek system, I started to get worried. Keep in mind that two of three faculty members [on the Moving Dartmouth Forward Committee] participated in that vote and voted in favor of abolition. The third didn’t attend.

TDR: Do you think The Dartmouth’s editorial and the faculty vote had any impact on the discussion within the Committee?

FC: Yes. Abolition immediately moved to the forefront of the conversation when [it hadn’t really been] considered for the few weeks prior to that. After debating it for a while, the motion to get rid of the Greek system came up for a vote. Two of the faculty members on the Committee were throwing out all sorts of statistics and talking about how they [needed to support abolition because] they didn’t want students showing up [to class] hung over anymore. I lost my cool. I blew up in this meeting and told them they didn’t understand anything. I said, ‘You simply want to sit there and judge us based on…