The ladies of Dartmouth’s Alpha Delta fraternity like a good branding every bit as much as O did and why not? Like O, they wish to show both passion and obedience to their house overlords… It’s the way of fraternities…

And now Dartmouth has decommissioned them or whatever you call it when universities decide they’ve had enough and they want a fraternity out. Now.

Branded! Scorned as the ones who brand. What do you do when you’re branded, and you’ve no house or land?

Well, you go crying to the Hanover New Hampshire Zoning Board of Adjustment is what you do. No one wants you – Dartmouth doesn’t want you, and Hanover doesn’t want you (“the loss of college recognition means that, under town zoning ordinances, the fraternity may no longer serve as a residence”) – but you want you, with all your long history of naughty naughty ways (the branding’s just Part One).

Last month, the presence of members in the house …spurred a violation notice from Hanover Zoning Administrator Judith Brotman, who informed the fraternity brothers they were no longer allowed to live in the building. In her April 23 letter, Brotman said that “at least 18 individuals” were still on the premises and that continued occupancy would draw a daily fine of $275.

“You typically don’t want so many people living in one building in a residential neighborhood,” Brotman said in an interview Tuesday afternoon. “It’s a health thing.”

As long as Dartmouth was around to clean up its vomit, as it were, Alpha Delta could continue to live in Hanover; without recognition from the school, its grand Greekdom becomes just another nameless faceless all-male cult, largely indistinguishable from the breastaurant-bred, branded boys of Waco.

In fact UD proposes that the Alpha Delta 18 join forces with the Waco 170. Once the AD 18 lose their appeal to the Zoning Board, they’re going to need protection as they hunker down in the only home they’ve ever known. The Cossacks are real well armed.