Dartmouth Frats Agree to Curb Student Drunkenness

HANOVER, May 7--After two weeks of violent protest and riot, Dartmouth's Interfraternity Council agreed today to faculty demands to take responsibility for control of drinking in fraternity houses.

But the Council still contests other faculty proposals limiting hours in which fraternities may serve liquor from noon to midnight, and setting up a system of liquor "licenses" revocable at the faculty's discretion.

A Council resolution dealing with the fraternity responsibility measure declared, "Fraternities will accept the responsibility for maintaining orderly conduct in regard to the consumption of alcohol in houses--disorderly conduct to be defined by the Interfraternity Council and the individual fraternities."

Moves to control fraternity drinking were first made early in the spring, when Dean Lloyd K. Neidlinger, who has since resigned, wrote to the Council demanding action. Later, he sat for several weeks in conference with the Council.

Then, on April 24 last, Neidlinger presented the Council with a set of proposals which in effect offered fraternities the choice of student responsibility for drinking, or control imposed by the faculty.

The Council accepted the principle of responsibility but hotly contested some of the dean's other proposals. Special targets were the hour limitations, the "licenses," and a rule forbidding drinking games.

The following Tuesday, 2,000 students staged a monster march on Neidlinger's house to protest the proposals. Egged on by fire-crackers, clashing cymbals, and cardboard torches, they forced the dean to retire back to his house after he had tried for several minutes to quiet them.

When half an hour later, he emerged again, they hissed and booed as he told them, "If college policy is over settled by this kind of mob violence, it will be time for a more stringent set of regulations than has been proposed."

No action has since been taken against the rioters.