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It's hard to dispute some of the "facts" the University has issused. However, the facts that they give are only intended to back up a decision to eliminate the Greeks therefore they say nothing of the good things we were doing and will continue to do. Even members of the Alfred community have come out and said that they don't like this decison...it will hurt the community because we do a lot for the community!
Greeks only make up 10% of the current campus however we did 80-85% of the community service-more than the service organizations.
We recently went from seperate councils (Panhelenic and IFC) to one council (IGC) and had started to make changes. We wrote a new constitution, started a judicial board, started to change standards, pursued all Greek community service events and were preparing to raise academic standards.
Yes, we had a Greek advisor-we were not the only group he advised! Several times we were told we were not his only priority he had other student groups that he needed to attend to. Furthermore, there was a period of time that there was no advisor (I believe in 98).
The 4% interested in Greek life statistic came from incoming freshman not current freshman. If you ask the majority of us in my sorority if we were thinking of going Greek when we were seniors in high school we would have said no. Incoming freshman don't even know what they are going to major-how can they know if they are going to pledge?!
As for the GPA yes SOME houses were below the University average...not all! In fact my house was far above the University GPA. We have had 4 National Merit Scholars in my house alone in the past 4 years. 4 of 7 of our graduating seniors graduated w/at least cum laude status.
Almost every Greek is involved in another organization on campus (and trust me their are plenty-if not too many-other organizations on campus). We are editors of the school paper, exec. board members of business clubs, community service orgs., members and captians of sports teams, in greek honor socities etc. So to say that we are not leaders on the campus is a joke!
To put it point blank the University report ignores all the good things that we do so that their point is proved-we needed to be eliminated. It's hard for us to get our message out...we can't conduct a survey or a report to prove the other side-we don't have the money or time. All we can do is write to the University and to papers and that's what we have been doing. We held a rally this past weekend (Alumni weekend for the University)..it went really well but basically in the end the University said that what we wanted wasn't going to happen! And all we wanted was to have our voice heard, to be involved w/the decision of where we go from here.
The University did not attempt to work w/us. No one from the task force even visited our houses. Only a few houses had representatives that spoke to the task force. The whole picture of Greek life at Alfred was not presented and when asked why, the head of the task force responded-we didn't want a snap shot in time. Well how can you look at the state of Greek life w/o looking at the present?!
So I have no concrete facts to back up our side cause they weren't studied. It's a very frustrating situation. Up until a week ago you would have read on Alfred's website about how Greek life played such a crucial part of an Alfred education and provided many benefits. I guess they either didn't believe what was on their website or didn't bother to really look.
Sorry for rambling. I wish I could play w/statistics like the University has so that we could prove our point.
L&S
AKO 731
Hold Your Candle High!
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