Quote:
Originally Posted by chopperdude
i think that at many schools, the greeks cause their own problems. if they do then it grows like a cancer and some schools feel the need to cut it out our may even figure if it is ignored it will just go away.
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I read an awful lot of student articles. I find the previously mentioned annual rants against Greek life, with the usual threadbare clichés ("paying for friends," "paying for parties," etc.), particularly distasteful. There is no legitimacy to these articles, and if you read them online, the comments after them are usually quite vehement in their condemnation of the message. Here's a great example:
http://www.mndaily.com/2009/10/04/le...out-greek-life
However, as chopperdude puts it, sometimes Greeks cause their own problems. The Greek community is held to a higher standard and is examined under a microscope, because it is a segment of the campus population that is definable, visible, and not horribly politically incorrect to scapegoat.
It's a tough issue because it does little good to get Greeks into the student newspaper and write nothing but fawning adoration for the fraternities and sororities, as that further degrades the legitimacy of anything written in the paper in the first place, and the whole discussion dissolves into "us vs. them."
In the case of Bissell's article (linked above), it doesn't really pose a threat to the continued existence of the Greeks. But when things do go wrong and there's a reason to write about it, the community needs to do what it can to reconcile the issue and to point out that the contributions made by Greeks far outweigh the detriments. Or, if they don't, they need to work on making sure that they do.
Hybrid Mode
