Last week, the entire nation exploded into a frenzy of bashing Greek life when The New York Times ran an article about the “reorganizing” of a chapter of Delta Zeta sorority at DePauw University. After years of negative perception on their campus and low recruitment numbers, the national headquarters of Delta Zeta interviewed every member of the sorority to assess their “dedication to recruitment.” The girls in the chapter were encouraged to dress their best for the interview. When it was all over, the Delta Zeta nationals picked only 12 girls to stay, and gave the remaining girls alumni status, effectively kicking them out of the sorority. The 23 girls who were kicked out were all overweight. The women of The View brought the issue to the forefront and made sure to emphasize every problem that they could find about sororities, highlighting the elitist image of Greek life.
The actions taken by this sorority are deplorable, disgusting and shocking to every member of the Greek community on this campus. Yet, this story will only help to reinforce the negative stereotypes that people have about Greek life. Fraternities and sororities seem to have an unavoidable negative stigma attached to them in the public eye. Regardless of where you go to school, you will find people willing to trash Greek life and everything it stands for. Even on our own campus, the 12 percent of Greeks see a lot of hate from the remainder of the student body. As a member and president of a fraternity, I want to know why my organization, which has done nothing but improve my life and my college experience, is hated by so many people. But more importantly, the Greek community wants to know how to fix that.
I’m not writing this to defend fraternities and sororities. I could throw out numbers about philanthropy or service hours, or talk about our values, famous alumni and the nearly endless connections that the organizations provide. None of these seem to matter in the public eye. And they shouldn’t. These acts of good will can’t and shouldn’t outweigh the number of problems fraternities and sororities seem to have. And we do have a lot of problems: alcoholism, drug use, eating disorders and sexual assault, just to name a few.
Just as damaging to our reputation is the perception of Greeks as spoiled, elitist rich kids who had to buy their friends. While the incident at DePauw seems to be the perfect of example of this, I can’t tell you how far that is from the truth. I joined my fraternity because I found friends that made College Park feel like home, and because they inspired me to do more with my college experience. There are 14 sororities and 21 fraternities on this campus, and while each one is different, I guarantee you their members feel the same way that I do.
What most people don’t understand is that Greek life is changing, and changing fast. The days of Animal House are long gone. Today’s Greek life is implementing new measures to ensure that houses live up to the values they were founded on. Our own campus is leading the way and has become a national standard of how Greek life should be. We have created 19 separate “Vision” standards that all houses are required to complete. Our members are on the forefront of expanding groups such as Terps Against Sexual Assault and others like it. Our houses, presidents and Inter-Fraternal Council members are winning national awards for their achievements. You would be hard pressed to find any other organizations on the campus so willing to work together to improve themselves, and to make sure that the incident at DePauw would never happen here.
If you’ve ever thought about going out for a fraternity or sorority, do it. If you’re smart, driven, creative and passionate about getting the most out of your time here, we are dying to meet you, even if it’s not rush week. Even if you think you’d never go Greek, like I once did, I recommend at least checking it out. My fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, is looking for more men of excellence and will be holding a mid-semester rush this week. Check us out at www.phipsiumd.com, or contact me if you want more information. You won’t regret it.
Matthew Oster is a junior government and politics major. He can be reached at oster316@umd.edu.
