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In a somewhat similar situation, an independant newspaper on campus recently published a two-sided pro/con "debate" article on sororities. On one side, one non-greek junior girl felt she couldn't "escape" sororities on campus and on the rebuttal, the girl was a new member of TWO WEEKS. Needless to say, the girl with 3 years experience on campus seemed to have won.
What brought it to our chapter's attention was that in the Con Article the girl directly cited our chapter and another on campus (a historical "friend" to our national sorority, KKG and Pi Phi, if any of you are familiar with their history) saying that our two chapters would "never hang out"--or something a bit more stylized to that effect. Obviously, this was ridiculous. In fact, the author is in a lab with one of our sisters, who is roommates with a member of KKG (our university doesn't have Greek housing, so this practice is not at all uncommon).
Our Outgoing Chapter President wrote a wonderful rebuttal, and if it is posted online I would love to share it with you all. In fact, it is being read at our annual founder's day to our chapter & alumni.
In short- Greeks (in my experience, and most especially on our campus) contribute daily, weekly and in large sums and numbers of people and service hours to philanthropy and university value promotion on campus. They are most often Tour Guides, Members of elite honor societies, heads of huge events on campus such as our Special Olympics and yes, all Greek GPA (especially all sorority GPA) is higher than the university average and the gender averages respectively. Now, our CP was being much nicer and didn't cite numerical statistics, but I won't be. Haha.
In addition to the hours we put in to our own philanthropy, we always, always, support the 9 other sorority's philanthropic initiatives as well.
It is so easy for people to put a bad rap on sororities for the occasional incidences. However, as any of us who have had some contact with risk management know, it's so so easy for something to happen even when you try your best for it not to. Furthermore, non-greeks seem to avoid (or maybe don't participate at the rate of greeks) in our philanthropic initiatives. How, then, would they see all that we do to raise awareness and funds? I guess it's easy to peg some kid in a regular joe schmoe sweatshirt as just some average kid, but so easy to peg a girl in a sorority sweatshirt (often with her hair done & makeup on, many chapters discourage girls from wearing letters when they've had a "rough night" per se...) and think she's a typical sorority girl and presume to know everything about her...
I guess this topic just gets me worked up seeing as I guess I've been on both ends, and I love being Greek!!
C'est la Vie.
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