Quote:
Originally posted by carnation
Excuse me? I am neither paranoid nor delusional. I have far more experience in the college arena than you have, having been a professor for 25 years and a college student through 3 degrees.
I would never paint all fraternity members as angels nor would I paint all independent men as angels. I would say they're about the same on the angelic ladder.
The reason I think that the letter is fake is that, as I mentioned, no rational mother is going to sit around and debate with herself as to whether it was rape. She'll take the daughter for medical help and/or go to the police but she won't sit around and compose a letter to Dear Abby and wait weeks for an answer.
Also, my years of working with languages and their patterns are running up a big red flag. No one who is currently the age to be a teen's mother is going to use the strangely "older" language that this letter writer is using. I call BS on this one.
And yes, such a situation could happen and has. However, this particular letter is poorly written and is full of credibility gaps. Look for it to turn up in some lame book that warns parents against letting their kids pledge...it'll come with a warning:"Dear Abby says the Greek life is dangerous!"
|
Nowhere in this thread did I say that I thought the letter was real -- in fact, if you would have read my responses you would have seen that I was one of the first to say that it probably wasn't for many of the reasons mentioned above.
However, the fact that the situation in question probably did not happen does not mean that it doesn't happen all the time, which is what I'm getting at, and that is obviously not something anyone can argue with.
As for the letter being anti-Greek -- there is no condemnation of fraternities or the guys in them anywhere in the letter. The only time the Greek system is even mentioned is that this event took place at a frat party. Sure, that's a little bit of a negative portrayal -- but guess what? It's not inaccurate.
Maybe if we're so concerned about our image as Greeks we should be working to lower the number of frat boys who rape and the number of sorority girls who get raped, rather than just trying to deny and cover up the fact that it happens more often than any of us would like to admit.