MetaEzra on George Desdunes ’13 and The Greek System

While the details of last Friday’s tragic death of George Desdunes ’13 are still unclear, MetaEzra has published a thought-provoking post on the big picture issues of this incident. All of his speculations are likely to be big points of discussion in the coming weeks and months:

— Imagine that instead of Desdunes’s untimely death, he only was hospitalized. Would the fraternity still have been suspended for violation of University alcohol policy?

— Imagine that nothing afoul would have come out of SAE this past weekend. Would it still have been suspended for (pretty much assumed) violation of the University’s alcohol policy?

— Imagine that instead of letting the Greek system persist through the 50s and 60s, Cornell would have decommissioned the entire system like many other colleges did during that time (e.g.Williams) and instead developed small, co-educational living-leaning houses and co-ops. Would Desdunes still have died?

— Or alternatively, imagine that Cornell had developed a residential college experience for all underclassmen (freshman and sophomores) as part of Rawlings’s residential initiative, banning Greek system involvement until later on in a student’s academic career (much like Dartmouth). Would Desdunes still have died?

I’m not trying to point fingers, but it’s something to think about. Institutions matter. Culture matters. The environment we create for ourselves matters. And clearly we are all in some way responsible.