Tuesday, September 10, 2013

You wanted a response- here it is


This week, instead of keeping everyone up to date on the mess (in the best way possible) that is my life in Australia, I am instead choosing to respond to an article by request of the site owner. As those close to me know- when I become angry- you will be hearing about it. So here goes.

http://thrillcitync.com/paddles-and-privilege/


I am not sitting here saying that Greek life is for everyone or that there are not isolated incidents associated with it. Because there are. 

My problems (and I have many of them) with this article are the sweeping generalizations that are made about a group of kids that number in the thousands. From a journalistic standpoint, the generalizations made are as off limits as saying "Jewish people are rich," "football players are dumb," "Democrats are all flaming liberals," and the list goes on. This article contains a stream of observations that are being applied to 16 percent of UNC's campus, and the disclaimer about knowing some decent people in Greek life does not condone the statements that were made following the first paragraph. I would further like to mention that, as a female in Greek life, these statements are meant to embody me- as I am a part of the community that has just been grossly generalized.  

The responses I have for you, Ryan, are based upon my experience as a journalism student mixed with personal feelings of offense for the characteristics and mentalities that were just assigned to me as a female in the Greek system. 

Highlighted below are the lines I find most inappropriate and why: 

Through the influence of their alumni and their legacies, Greek societies confer upon already well-off students the privilege of still greater preferential treatment in the business world, in the classroom and in campus life in return for their agreement to bestow that same favoritism upon future members down the line.

Wake up. This is how the world works. Being a part of any group, whether it be an A cappella  group, a club, or a sports team, gives you access to alumni and former members that can help you out in the business world. The kids involved in Greek life are not using dirty tactics to get ahead. Networking through the resources available to you is what the advisors at our university would regard as "intelligent." Any member of UNC's business school or journalism school is doing the exact same thing with their respective alumni groups- is the next opinion based piece going to be on how those J-school kids are rotten cheaters for calling up a Carolina alumnus? Sorry for trying to get a job in an impossible market. 

Once a part of Greek life, sorority women are encouraged, implicitly and explicitly, to stay in good physical shape for the purpose of remaining attractive to fraternity men.

Not once have I ever heard of a sorority pressuring its members to lose weight. If this were the case- you'd think Pizza Tuesdays or "fried fridays" would have been disbanded long ago. I want to know where an utterly ridiculous statement like this comes from. The foods that sororities serve (while delicious) are made with more butter and grease than you could even imagine. Don't sit there and state that our sororities are pressuring us to lose weight for males while simultaneously feeding us 1500 calorie meals. 

It is nearly always men, not women, who control the supply of alcohol in situations where women are most vulnerable, and it is a significant number of those same men who aim to inebriate women for unsavory purposes. There is an expectation that alcohol can be exchanged for sex.

Statements like these make the writer of this article sound just as ignorant as the men that are "inebriating" women for unsavory purposes. I'm a junior in college- the guys at the fraternity parties I attend do not decide what I drink or how much I drink. Do not victimize women for being subjected to 50s gender roles and then turn around and make statements that insinuate that Greek college women can't and don't decide how much they drink. I can make decisions for myself, as can the women around me. 

Furthermore, the killer line of this whole article in my opinion, is that alcohol can be exchanged for sex and sex within the Greek system often seems to operate on a bartering system, one which creates artificially high demand for the affection of fraternity brothers.

I find it extremely inappropriate and highly offensive that this article makes commentaries about the sex lives of Greek females as a unit. Of all of the things to grossly stereotype- saying that the girls in our sorority system all A. even have sex in the first place. B. choose their partners based upon what fraternity they are in or C. will have sex with a guy in exchange for alcohol is a completely disgusting thing to insinuate about a group of young women. 

The effects of this oppression, generally speaking, have been the tacit acceptance of rape culture and the general objectification of women.

Another sweeping statement that has many social implications. To take an issue as large as rape and insinuate that it is common practice among the young men in fraternities at UNC is a serious accusation- opinion piece or not. Rape is not a problem that is isolated within the Greek community, and I am sorry but at the end of the day, 21 year old males are drunken idiots whether they are in a fraternity, on a sports team, or a GDI. I hang out with young men in all three groups, and in no way, shape, or form is there a "tacit acceptance for rape" between my male friends and I. This statement crosses the line, and it is no more applicable to Greek men than it is to other men of the same age. 

The main comeback to this article I have heard is that it is an opinion piece, and so the author is entitled to say whatever he wants. If the aim of this article was to get your Thrillcity site more hits, then congratulations. The job has been done. However, this one article has, in my eyes at least, completely discredited your site as a place to find journalistic material with any literary merit as this piece has just insinuated that "rape" is condoned by our entire Greek system among many other absurd things. 

I do not appreciate being told who I am and what I stand for as a member of the Greek system, and I am pretty sure I am not the exception in this. 

Until next time.

-F

4 comments:

  1. Farrell, I appreciate the thoughtful response to Henry's piece. And I do know that obviously many things said in regards to a population as big as UNC's Greek life are going to miss certain individuals. But generalizations are necessary for social commentary, which is all this piece is: Henry, admittedly a non-Greek, and his perspective as an outsider on the Greek life system. Again, the fact that many people not only agree, but feel that Henry nailed this subject, is a sign that perhaps you have a bigger problem with the student populace than Thrill City. Please consider that possibility. We will also be publishing a response column, 1700 words in fact, from an IFC fraternity president this week, to show that as with any subject as intense as this, there are different opinions. Thrill City, as Rohan Smith said last night, is primarily a platform for features and editorial pieces — people are going to express points of view, and like most op-eds, they won't be held to the scientific standards of a reporting piece, because they don't represent an objective viewpoint. They express a position, and people then (hopefully) debate that position. I think it would be much more worthwhile, rather than challenging everything he suggested in the piece (all of which I can assure you was instilled in him through numerous real-life occasions when these events took place with people he knows), to ask or look into why so many students at a school would agree with a piece like this. That's the bigger problem — that you hate this so much, and that so many people, men and women, said to me or Henry yesterday "this sums up my feelings perfectly." Can we at least agree that there's something wrong with that?

    I know many people in Greek life, and a number of them, while not exactly happy to be essentially lumped in with less savory people in the generalizations of this article, made it clear privately that they had found many of those generalizations to be true, by and large, in their experience. But because the article was not written against them or against their fraternity in particular, they were able to communicate that to me in a way that was not one of personal outrage. Please do not feel like Henry attacked you personally. If you do not fit within his experiences over the past two and a half years at UNC, I apologize, but many people do. He has the right to state them. You should be more upset with the men and women of the Greek system whose actions have placed these ideas in Henry's head — he didn't make them up on his own.

    Most importantly, any kind of worthwhile op-ed that you will see, anywhere, is going to have to make generalizations, often broad ones, to be effective in provoking conversation. I just went to the NYT Op-Ed section and immediately found this one at the top of the page, which makes sweeping generalizations about how young kids respond to male and female teachers differently: (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/opinion/one-classroom-two-genders.html?ref=opinion&_r=0). Surely we can't be certain how any individual kid will react differently in real life to a male or female teacher. The article is full of suggestions, assertions and assumptions, but ultimately, it presents some interesting thinking. And that's the point. Generalizations are necessary in any social commentary because they extrapolate statistics or anecdotal evidence (in this case anecdotal evidence) to a larger group than the writer or anyone else could empirically look at, in hopes of making a larger point.

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  2. And speaking on those generalizations, Greek life membership is not, and should not, be as sacred of a discussion topic as religion or ethnic background, as you suggested early on. There will never be a military GDI-Greek conflict like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Israeli or Lebanese people are such because they were BORN into those backgrounds, not because they made a decision to join a club in college. By suggesting that Greek life is an untouchable subject, you are making it harder for greek and non-greek students to come together, now and in the future, to talk about what is clearly a silent rift dividing the campus.

    Again, I think you should direct your frustration not at Thrill City for publishing these thoughts, but instead at the Greek/Non-Greek culture at UNC that has allowed a major portion of students and graduates of this school to ultimately view Greek life through a lens very similar to Henry's. The fact of the matter is, this school (and likely many other state flagship schools) is divided. Whether or not Henry's experiences and anecdotal evidence are representative of Pan-Hellenic and IFC Greek life at UNC in your experience, they are most definitely shared by many of your classmates. Don't shoot the messenger on this one.

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  3. Lastly, I would like to point out that you responded to Henry's "fact-less" column with no real facts of your own. You have both expressed opinions, and both are interesting in how different they are, but your opinions and experiences are no more legitimate than his, considering he was not trying to speak on behalf of Greek life, but speak as someone from the outside who has gained a certain outlook on it over time.

    - "favoritism down the line": you're not saying this isn't a fact of greek life, you're just disagreeing with Henry that this is any different from other campus-based networking opportunities.

    - "staying in shape": this is your experience in your sorority house and with friends in other sororities. it's your lived experience, just like henry's experience that multiple friends of his have been raped in frat houses. I'll accept your account of sorority meals and fitness as equally as I'll accept his friends' accounts of being raped in fraternities.

    - "alcohol exchanged for sex": you do not personally feel controlled by a male-dominant power dynamic. that's great. but this paragraph is hardly a factual, statistical denouncement of henry's assertion that cocktails and other greek life dating events come with expectations of "putting out," even between near strangers, in some cases that I've seen.

    - "tacit acceptance of rape culture": yes, this is a very serious claim. that probably has something to do with why henry felt it necessary to write this column in the first place. "rape culture," as it is commonly used today, does not mean a culture in which rape is happening left and right. It is one in which the conditions conducive to sexual assault and abuse are present and permissive, and many women have said this is how they feel when in fraternity house parties. again, you did not use any facts of your own to prove this assertion wrong either, just your own experience and opinion that you do not do these things.

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