no more GC says nationals? - Page 2

FuzzieAlum · #16 11-12-2002, 02:28 PM

Hm ...

Our nationals doesn't have some committee whose job it is to police these boards and keep us in line. However, I do know that some people who read GC have enough influence up at HQ that if one of us AXDs was doing something ludicrous (revealing ritual, advocating many criminal activities), they could do something in the way of punishment. I mean, most of my sisters on here, you can figure out what chapter they're in, and with a first name and a pledge year, nationals can find out who you are.

But the larger point is - we talk to lots of people about Greek life, or to people who are aware of our affilifiation. So some people at work know I'm an AXD; am I forbidden to talk to them? So my boyfriend asks me how formal rush works, am I not supposed to answer? If you discuss a sensitive topic in class (abortion, drug legalization), are you supposed to lose participation points because Mu Mus "shouldn't talk about" those things in front of classmates who know your affiliation? Preposterous.

This message board is simply like all the other conversations in life where people know our affiliations. While certain avenues of conversation are forbidden (how you vote on members), for the most part we realize that the person is not speaking in a PR capacity on behalf of the organization. Now clearly if you're going to quote your national policy or ask for help on a chapter issue or something, you should check your facts, but if one Nu Nu says she really likes pink, we're not all therefore going to extrapolate that all Nu Nus are required to like pink! If you can say it to me in real life, you should be able to say it to me online.

And honestly, shouldn't a national assume the best of its members, although not naively? If you presuppose that your sisters are going to come on here and trash your reputation, that reveals a lack of faith in your sisters that is inappropriate, I think.

texas*princess · #17 11-12-2002, 08:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by UDZETA
Are they able to do this? What will happen if you do post on GC do they take your letters away? I hope this is not going to effect other GLO.

This situation is really sad and shouldn't affect any organizations

Tom Earp · #18 11-12-2002, 09:44 PM

This is a can of worms that KKG Directors should not be heading towards.

There is such a thing called the Freedom Of Speech Act.

This would be a dire mistake on their part to try to gag their members from a public forum such as greekchat!

I know that there are members of Int. Hdq. of LXA who have checked this site and nothing was or has been said about telling members not to post here!

If KKG follows through with this, this will give a black eye to the whole Greek Community for stupidity by an International Headquarters.

Dont you think that the media would have a hey day with this?

If they do not think that the women who affiliate with them have enough common sense to use good judgement, then why are they even a National Soroity and keep trying to gain membership?

I hope that someone finds out more about this and reports back to us! Hell the ACLU would love to see something like this!

Lets get more straight talk about this first and then go from there!

Thank your for this unpaid announcement from a fellow Greek!

pinkyphimu · #19 11-12-2002, 10:26 PM

um, wow. i guess that i would no longer affiliate with my glo if this were the case. i would always wonder what else they would try to tell me i can and can't say. if this really is true, i would also think that people wouldn't want to join fraternities or sororities if they had these types of restrictions. yes, i agree that we shouldn't be posting our ritual or whatever. i just can't believe that they would think that talking about greek life, the good points (and the bad points) of being a greek, the misc stuff that goes on.....would be bad for the sorority.

and what prevents someone from getting an account on gc and saying they were from a different glo? what will they do then?

and doesn't this perpetuate the stereotype of sororities and fraternities being "stuffy and elitist" organizations???

i am babbling, bc i am completely and totally in awe, and my day today was wayyyy to stressful to deal with this!

oh, and on a very scary note, what if glos started saying things like, you can't initiate people of different races or (in an example from another post) that if you kiss someone from another race in your living room, then you shouldn't be granted collegiate status in another chapter?????? where will the line stop????

justamom · #20 11-13-2002, 06:26 AM

Well, well, well... Just came across this and must say I am totally appalled! No offense to the individual members of said organization, but if someone told ME what I could or could not do in relationship to a community BB-well, it would make me so angry I'd probably do just the opposite! Actually, this borders on the ridiculous!

How can something like this be enforced? What power does KKG have over their alums? If AXO EVER set foot into the realm of dictating my personal communications (albeit on a public forum) I would laugh and quite honestly ask, "Who died and made YOU God?" Secretes and rituals aside, the free exchange of ideas and information is one of the CORNERSTONES of a Democracy! This isn't an example of "womanhood" it's more attune to a Mafia/Big Sister is watching you mentality that has no place in today's world. Get some spine and stand up for your rights as INDIVIDUALS!

How can people respect an organization that treats their members like brainless children who need their choices and actions dictated?
Yes, there have been posts by many people with their GLO attached that make ME uncomfortable, but good grief, no one in their right mind would take those statements as a blanket opinion of an entire group. Besides, it isn't my job to play censor to ANY individual, we do have Mods and even THEY have been accused of being over zealous.

Your HQs needs a reality check! I'm sure when they consider the possible ramifications from such an unwarranted decision, they will realize that their stance is unjustified as well an unenforceable. "Never win a battle, only to lose the war!" There are far more issues of concern to address than posting on a BB!!!!

Tom wrote-If KKG follows through with this, this will give a black eye to the whole Greek Community for stupidity by an International Headquarters. If they do not think that the women who affiliate with them have enough common sense to use good judgement, then why are they even a National Soroity and keep trying to gain membership?

curlygirly · #21 11-13-2002, 09:42 AM

very well said!! Thanks for your support!

Being that I have the "journalism-free-speech-first-amendment" state of mind, I haven't stopped posting or reading anything on GC!

(kdonline taught me well!)

Allie · #22 11-13-2002, 10:41 AM

Amen!

I wish all of our KKG member good luck with this disagreement. As stated above what about free speech? I'm sure you all took an oath not to divulge any secrets that only active members know, and also not to discuss ritual. Other than that it all lays in using common sese about what to discuss on these boards.

From what I have seen on GC and read on various boards, the KKG's here are wonderful ladies who represent their organization well. Best of luck with this situation and I hope to see some KKG posts!

~Allie

Eupolis · #23 11-13-2002, 12:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tom Earp
There is such a thing called the Freedom Of Speech Act.

No, there isn't -- at least, not that I know of. Private organizations are legally free to restrict the speech of their members. In fact, sometimes the organization has its own free speech right to do just that.

Sigh. I've been over this so often I have canned comments just waiting for it now.

Constitutional rights limit the sorts of things the government can do. The most salient example here, the First Amendment's free speech clause, limits the ways the government can restrict speech.

Constitutional rights do not limit private persons or organizations unless they act as government agents. This is why private educational institutions (especially those who accept no federal money) can limit speech and other things we consider to be constitutional rights in all sorts of ways that government-run educational institutions cannot. Sometimes, other laws (like the tax code, federal financial aid laws, or the Civil Rights Acts) try to help people enforce constitutional rights against private organizations, but standing alone, the Constitution is powerless against private organizations.

I don't know of any laws that apply to this situation, though if anyone can provide a citation to a law, I'd be curious to have a look.

It's still a terrible decision. There's no law against it that I know of, though.

Glitter650 · #24 11-13-2002, 01:34 PM

Eupolis,
You are right... there is NO freedom of speech in a private organization. The only people who can't limit our freedom of speech is the government. That is why songs are "bleeped" on the radio... because the RADIO station decides what to bleep. As long as the regulation on speech doesn't come from the government in anyway... it is completely legal. It is sad that KKG decided they needed to do this to their members seeing as how they weren't divulging ritual or saying ANYTHING that should make their Nationals upset or make anyone think anything bad about Kappa, in fact quite the opposite. I agree with the other people who have said the kappas on BC are outstanding ladies who reflect well on Kappa, as does almost everyone on this board.
I mean if you think about it, GC is a place where, most likely only the people who really CARE about their org., and greek life in general are going to take time to post. So it stands to reason that everyone here takes their orgs. values and the vows they made to the org. seriously and isn't going to act stupid.

Eupolis · #25 11-13-2002, 01:57 PM

I'll turn this around to put the on-topic stuff first.

Quote:

Originally posted by Glitter650

I mean if you think about it, GC is a place where, most likely only the people who really CARE about their org., and greek life in general are going to take time to post. So it stands to reason that everyone here takes their orgs. values and the vows they made to the org. seriously and isn't going to act stupid.

This is generally true around here. I guess that this particular case came up because someone in the Kappa organizational hierarchy (RDC? PDC? someone in there) did in fact see a Kappa post that she didn't like and that she thought represented the organization poorly. It was probably a knee-jerk reaction to an out-of-the-ordinary post, and the sort of thing that KDonline would at most simply have dealt with by a quick, "hey, you probably shouldn't do that" email.

That proves the point. People are going to make mistakes, they're going to have judgment errors. It's a lot better to have a way to limit and address those judgment errors than it is to entirely isolate the group from the forum.

A lot of people are saying that common sense is all that's needed. I'm not sure that's the best way of looking at it. What I like to think is that though people will sometimes make mistakes, we can learn and teach each other how not to make those mistakes. We can catch them quickly and deal with them in a way that leads to the growth of the individual rather than closing everyone off and preventing social growth.

I'd go into examples so as to make what I'm saying look less like I'm just picking pretty words out of the air, but I've got a meeting to go to. I've already written what's below, so I'll leave it in...

It's a little off topic, though!

Quote:

Originally posted by Glitter650
Eupolis,
You are right... there is NO freedom of speech in a private organization. The only people who can't limit our freedom of speech is the government. That is why songs are "bleeped" on the radio... because the RADIO station decides what to bleep. As long as the regulation on speech doesn't come from the government in anyway... it is completely legal.

The choice isn't so much theirs... The government requires radio to censor certain content at certain times of day. The First Amendment's free speech provisions aren't absolute, even against the government. There are lots of exceptions, and one of them is that the government can limit certain kinds of content in broadcast communication. A big case about this particular one is F.C.C v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), and you can find a PDF of it at http://1stam.umn.edu/archive/classic...h/438us726.pdf -- it censored a daytime broadcast of a version of George Carlin's "Seven Words" routine. Transcript at http://1stam.umn.edu/archive/primary/pacifica.pdf.

kdonline · #26 11-13-2002, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by curlygirly
very well said!! Thanks for your support!

Being that I have the "journalism-free-speech-first-amendment" state of mind, I haven't stopped posting or reading anything on GC!

(kdonline taught me well!)

LOLOL!

Too bad you weren't my student when we had that big anti-censorship protest at the Miami-Dade School Board building... THAT was fun! One of the highlights of my teaching career.. !

But the point of that protest is similar to what's going on now: what are they so afraid of?

Eupolis · #27 11-13-2002, 05:23 PM

I'm back from my appointment, so I'm going to expand a bit on this idea:

Quote:

Originally posted by Eupolis
What I like to think is that though people will sometimes make mistakes, we can learn and teach each other how not to make those mistakes. We can catch them quickly and deal with them in a way that leads to the growth of the individual rather than closing everyone off and preventing social growth.

Here's what I'm thinking. People are going to make some posts that are in bad judgment. Either they will just do something we'd all recognize as the result of a bad judgment call, or they'll do something that we'd consider to be a bad idea if we were in the same organization. Either way, the proper socially positive response is for a sister or brother (or other GC'er) to say, "Hey, you probably shouldn't have posted that; consider deleting it." Reasonable people may differ as to just when it's time to step in and say something like that. It's still an effective and socially positive method of policing ourselves. It's a completely natural way, too -- the same way we go about it when we're in person.

There may be a gut reaction among some GLOs that they'd really prefer to keep all of the debate about these sorts of things within the organization. One argument against that reaction is that the internet simply isn't going to let them do that. It's true. Another argument, though, is that there have always been public gaffes where people say embarrassing things; the solution has never been to gag them all. The solution is to say, "hey, you probably shouldn't have done that," and (if the situation demands it) to say publicly, "sorry, we want you to know that we don't necessarily agree with that," and to move on from there. The person who made the mistake has the opportunity along with others to learn from it. It's practically never the end of the world.

Kappa Kappa Gamma will hopefully realize that this natural way of handling social gaffes will work just fine here. They will probably want a policy that encourages it and that makes clear certain lines that should not be crossed. In the end, though, they have (1) to trust that the majority of their sisters' judgment calls will be just fine, and (2) to accept that when someone makes a mistake, it can usually be handled easily.

UFKappaGrL · #28 11-13-2002, 05:59 PM

Someone PMed me about this the other day... curlygirl and I are form the same chapter and have not heard anything about this... so until I hear something official I will continue posting also

Peaches-n-Cream · #29 11-13-2002, 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by UFKappaGrL
Someone PMed me about this the other day... curlygirl and I are form the same chapter and have not heard anything about this... so until I hear something official I will continue posting also

Good! If there no official word from Headquarters, keep on posting!

Eupolis, are you a lawyer? If not, you really should consider law school.

Eupolis · #30 11-13-2002, 07:02 PM

Oh, and one last thought to tack on to the end of what I wrote above:

Sometimes, yes, people make mistakes that can not be cleaned up as easily. But I think the sustained benefits that members and the organization receive if they can participate in forums like GreekChat outweigh the risks of irretrievable damage.

There.

And as an aside--
Cream, yes I am.

I'm a brand-new (not counting the three cases I handled as a student), not-yet-employed lawyer. The state of unemployment is why I can write this much here. I should have spent a little bit more time today on job-hunting stuff. Oh well. At least I got more leads today.

Edited because I can't count.