 Social fraternities at Dartmouth College grew out of a tradition of student literary societies that began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The first social fraternities were founded in 1842 and rapidly expanded to include the active participation of over half of the student body. Fraternities at Dartmouth built dedicated residence and meeting halls in the early 1900s and in the 1920s, and then struggled to survive the lean years of the 1930s. Dartmouth College was among the first institutions of higher education to desegregate fraternity houses in the 1950s, and was involved in the movement to create coeducational Greek houses in the 1970s. Sororities were introduced to campus in 1977. In the early 2000s, campus-wide debate focused on whether or not the Greek system at Dartmouth would become "substantially coeducational", but most houses retain single-sex membership policies.
