Thanks for your kind words, Charles.
Greeks will never give up on philanthropy, though. No matter how many rights as citizens and voters are taken away, we'll never put our philanthropies "on hold" for a semester, even if to prove a point. The money my chapter raises through
AnchorSplash supports schools for children who are visually impaired all over the country, not just in Athens. Those children, and especially the parents of those children, count on us.
What we CAN do, however, is stress to our individual chapters the importance of
1) good neighbor relations. There should never be cause for an independant living on "Greek Row" to stand up against greeks. We can do this by informing our neighbors before we hold large parties, by keeping our lawn immaculate (though on Milledge, I hardly think this is a problem) and by making cleanup after gamedays immediate - we could even invite neighbors to our barbeques.
2) lifetime membership. I was heartbroken at that meeting when so many of our civic leaders felt it would make me feel better by saying "I was in a fraternity in college." I'm sure they were, but they clearly missed the point that membership is for lifetime. We all know about the astounding percentage of greeks that hold office, but what good does that do when they "were greek in college" not greek for life? So impress on your collegiate members that their duty to their greek brothers and sisters does
not end when they receive a diploma. I would love to see an elected politician say that they are willing to work with greek organizations to train men and women how to be good neighbors rather than kicking them out of the neighborhood.
We are some of the brightest, most active students at our universities. Statistically we have amazing futures full of philanthopic and civic work. We give more money back to our alma maters than any other group and it's about time we start being treated as a treasure rather than trash by both the university and the community.