Response and correction appended

Their employment rate may not be perfect, but the girls of Sigma Delta's Dartmouth chapter have a 100% success rate at watching each other's backs. In response to our story on Dartmouth Sig Delt Jennifer Krimm's sad story of unemployment, a younger sister sent us an email entitled "better jen krimm pics."

this is what she really looks like- you guys found a horrible pic of her!!!!

she didn;t look like that in school and she doesn't look like that now.. maybe she did for like 5 seconds last year in Kuwait?

shallow @ D...

Not sure if that last line is supposed to be a nom de plume, a generalizing statement on Dartmouth priorities, or a proclamation of personal bias. Nonetheless, we thank the kind sister for providing this crucial piece of information, because without it, we'd have thought Jen was just another ugly, jobless hobo, when she is actually a pretty princess with shiny hair and nice skin. It's not her fault they don't have good makeup in Kazakhstan* or whatever.

* Krimm was in Qatar last year, not Kuwait. To her sister's credit, she spent time in Kuwait a few years ago, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two anonymous Dartmouth alums write in this week with a brilliant guide to the Hanover Greek scene. Don't go to Dartmouth? Read anyway, out of respect to the men and women whom history alleges invented beer pong. Yesterday: Fraternities.

Sororities

• Kappa: Dartmouth Kappas, for the most part, fit the national rep: popular, obviously pretty (a fine distinction between genuinely pretty), and dominantly blonde. Trademarks include: runny nostrils, visible ribs, and overblown sense of self-worth (one Kappa was quoted in the Dartmouth last year saying, "I'm so glad I'm a Kappa, because it's like being permanently in style.")  Nevertheless, Kappas are the social queens of campus. A contingent of NYC private school types usually fronts each class; that these girls are the more bearable of the lot says bundles about the relative merit of everyone else. Fun fact: Despite its hot-girl, "We eat carrots and date Heorots!" status, Kappa actually has the largest underground lesbian community of the sororities.  The women's soccer and hockey teams both have locks on the rush process, and so the girl-on-girl action quietly filters through year after year.  Makes for a dynamic bus ride come formal time.
• Tri Delt: Tri harder.  Every once in a while, a decent, socially adjusted girl slips through the ranks and ends up having to suffer the indignity of being associated with a bunch of cookie-cutters (literally and figuratively). But for the most part, Tri Delt is a personality graveyard. Most recently, Tri Delt was the subject of a campus-wide scandal after pledges were forced to perform faux stripteases on a bunch of Theta Delts. "At Tridelt we wear pearls/ribbons/Reeboks...we sometimes 'do lunch.' We're seriously awesome," notes a recent recruitment letter without a shred of irony. The walking embodiment of Jane Magazine, if it suffered from Down Syndrome.
• KDE: Party girls without any of the trendy Kappa coke cachet. KDEs equate female empowerment with trying to drink and cavort like a bunch of frat boys, despite the fact that no one takes them seriously. Sisters here have mastered the fine art of talking shit behind one another's backs while pretending everything's all peachy face-to-face. (At least the animosity is out in the open in Kappa.) Perhaps the most irritating sorority, if for no other reason than you can't attend a party without seeing a bunch of KDEs trying to suck the remaining foam out of a tapped keg like thristy dogs lapping at a dripping faucet.
• Sigma Delt: Deferred KDEs. Lots and lots of lesbians dressed up as "rowers" and "rugby players" and "swimmers." Have an activist, feminista vibe going on, which, when combined with the drunk girl-on-girl vibe, makes for a lively house right in the middle of Hanover Town proper.  The fun comes during rush, when innocent non-lesbian females are recruited in droves. Somehow, despite the overabundance of short hair and the palpable exuberance of having a new crop of girls in the room, no underclassman ever seems to pick up on the joke, unless she is already on Team Lesbian, in which case she's going to join the house anyway.  Not that any recruit ever has a problem with it, but the "Holy shit, I thought they were just good FRIENDS" bit is truly entertaining.
• Alpha Xi: Discarded Tri Delts.  Fun fact: they live in the former Beta fraternity house, which stopped being the Beta House when closed-circuit cameras (affectionately known as Beta-vision) used for broadcasting sexual exploits were discovered. This has absolutely nothing to do with Alpha Xi, but bears mentioning.
• Theta: A total mystery. Out on the scene as often as Pynchon and Salinger. Rumored to be kinda weird and slutty, though, which isn't an altogether bad reputation.
• Alpha Phi: Brand spankin' new, which means if you end up a sister here, you'd have been better off not rushing in the first place.