In an article by Dylan Bagnasco Thursday he argued that Greek students, “feel as if they cannot survive socially without paying their dues to a fraternity or sorority.” As a Greek student I take offence to the judgmental and narrow-minded claims made in Bagnasco’s argument, more specifically in the claim that we are “literally paying” for friendship and the “incessant flow of social events.” I am the first person in my family that decided to go Greek and the reasons are not even close to having the dire urge to wear “Sperrys and those little things that let you wear sunglasses around your neck all day.”
Let me broaden the horizons of those who believe that Greek students only affiliate in order to make friends (or as some people believe, ‘pay for friends’). There is, in fact, a whole different world inside the sororities and fraternities that apparently some students have not heard about. I have not encountered one sorority or fraternity on campus whose objective is meeting people and providing social events for members only.
Students affiliated with a sorority or fraternity, just like many of the TCU students on campus are involved in a plethora of activities having nothing to do with their Greek life. Some of those include community service, KinderFrogs, Bible study, intramurals, proctored study hours, and the list goes on. Young women in my sorority and in other Greek organizations are involved in campus organizations including Student Government Association, Ignite, Best Buddies, TCU News Now and Neeley Fellows. Again, the list goes on.
I have met so many people at TCU from all walks of life and a majority of them are not affiliated with my sorority; some, are not affiliated with a sorority or fraternity. My freshman year I lived with a young woman who decided not to affiliate with a sorority and to this day she does not feel alienated or discriminated against for her decision. “Being in a sorority or fraternity doesn’t make someone off limits to those of us that aren’t,” said junior habilitation of the deaf and hard of hearing major Maddie Ross. “It also doesn’t define who we as people are, it’s simply something that you either choose to do, or choose not to do.”
Ross said that either way she would still be just as happy.
Why I do understand that the number of women that went through recruitment this year was a record, I am appalled that the women were singled out; “For this group, remaining independent would be absolutely absurd,” Bagnasco wrote.
The decision to only use women’s recruitment as an example of dependency is sexist language.
Categorizing the 797 women that went through sorority recruitment as being “dependent” is offensive. Unless you know every single one of those 797 women personally, no one has room to judge.
I too, “wish to be taken for what I am” and as a TCU student, I am. I hold a prominent position in the student media and worked hard for a 3.8 GPA last semester…what exactly is not independent about that? There are a lot of students (both affiliates and non affiliates) doing important things that make this university one of the best.
I, as a Greek student, do not feel superior or entitled on campus. Being in a sorority is a sense of pride, just like the sense of purple pride we feel by being a student at TCU, a member of SGA, or an athlete on the tennis team (just to name a few).
The Greek life at TCU is certainly not “breeding dependence and the clique mentality that we all hoped to be free from when we left college.” I have met some of the most gracious people at TCU and some of the not-so-nice ones, both non-affiliates and affiliates.
In college, unlike high school, you have the opportunity to meet new people almost every day and make as many friends as you wish no matter what campus organizations you are apart of. Ultimately, your college experience is exactly what you make it out to be.
