Having a 1968 MA degree from Dalhousie University, I regularly receive that institution’s alumni magazine. The next issue may arrive in a plain brown paper wrapper. Of late, Dalhousie has generated crude and drooling Internet expression along the lines of the 1977 movie Slap Shot’s sex-obsessed “Mo” Wanchuk. But the movie was fiction, the skilled work of a talented writer exaggerating aspects of professional hockey culture. A better comparison for Dal’s Class of DDS (Doctor of Dental Surgery) 2015 Gentlemen on Facebook might be the real life self-defined cult of narcissistic toughness that led to the 1995 disbandment of Canada’s Airborne Regiment as an out of control national disgrace.
The Dalhousie affair remains overly cloaked in obscurity. How long this bilge had been going on and how widespread it had become is not clear. I read once that the group formed shortly after the class of 2015 entered the dental program, though I have not been able to verify this. But back in mid-December when one member of the group blew the whistle by disclosing its activities to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Mothercorp did a little digging. Seems last summer the Dalhousie Students Union had taken sexism complaints about the dental faculty to the university president. He acknowledged receiving such reports – and confirmed that nothing was done when no complainants were willing to be named.
The president’s response set the tone for the way Dalhousie has dealt with the later DDS story. As Welsh socialist Aneurin Bevan jeered in one of his more caustic criticisms, “… like an old man approaching a young bride: fascinated, sluggish and apprehensive.” The Halifax Chronicle Herald editorialized on Jan. 12 that welcome steps had been taken, but said bluntly, “… Dalhousie’s handling of this matter remains troubling and unsatisfactory.” I could not agree more. Dalhousie’s weak and ineffectual response constituted unwillingness to get a bad situation under control and stamp out an unwholesome sub-culture. The self-imposed paralysis was a refusal to look into something, which may be an institutional cancer. There may be nothing to the reports, or there may be. A publicly funded educational institution ought to find out. As with the Airborne, garbage does not go away when those running the show cannot or will not cope with the situation.
One public reaction has been “boys will be boys,” that such ravings are common stuff in male locker rooms. Depends which locker rooms the responders frequent, I suppose, but indeed some may consider the outpourings merely big talk by feverish young males who would wilt in actuality. Perhaps, but there is something called professional standards. People in certain lines of activity are held to high expectations as to character. I would be wary of dental students who drool about sexual assault and chloroforming female fellow students going on to enter that profession. As Colonel Williams demonstrated, high-technical expertise may be a shield behind which deviant attitudes are no mere fantasy.
Writer David Haas is a long term St. Albert resident.
