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"The person writing the article and the editor both need a refresher course in journalism."
Unfortunately, I believe they reflect EXACTLY what is being taught to student journalists today. Athletes, heterosexual males, fraternities...they're all bad. This is the template that they embrace and that shapes their world view. To be fair I suppose - hate to be fair about things I care about - most of the students who go into journalism are already pre-disposed to think this way, already inclined to be influenced by the "activists".
The truth is that greek membership declined in the 1990s from the boom of the 1980s, and jumped back up strongly again beginning about seven years ago. It's just not true that "interest hs dwindled" in the last decade; just the opposite is true.
Here's what probably happened. The original writer turned in a finished piece, minus the third and fourth paragraphs. An editor added those paragraphs to "provide balance". When it's positive about any of the "bad" groups and people, the activists insist it's necessary to "provide balance". I'll bet you anything those two paragraphs were added after the fact.
Once in awhile you see a thread with stidents asking how to overcome a hostile student newspaper. They make the mistake of thinking that reason matters. The people who write for the campus papers are not in fraternities and sororities, and are likely to be opposed politically to everything greeks support. The best way to deal with them is to accept the reality of incompatible differences, and either assign your own members to apply for positions at the paper, or unite the greek community in a campaign to put the paper out of business by starving them of advertising revenues. I saw the later done successfully on my own campus.
Down from my soapbox now.
Last edited by Firehouse; 09-06-2006 at 12:03 AM.
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