Fraternities contribute more to campus than sports teams

Mr. Greenberg, I’m deeply sorry about the tragedy that has recently happened with your fraternity house getting removed from campus recognition (Kappa Alpha) but I would like to take some time to form a rebuttal on your recent article on fraternity life. (“”Fraternities need to shape up,”” April 1, 2009)

Although Kappa Alpha didn’t have any type of system for members that consistently screwed up, the majority of houses on this campus have some form of a board of conduct or some other organization within their fraternity to regulate on current members’ actions that make the fraternity look bad or, in special circumstances, kick out members that give their fraternities bad names.

My fraternity consistently logs over 500 hours of community service per semester every year as well as participates in damn near every philanthropy put on by campus organizations. I’m sorry your fraternity couldn’t live up to the same standards that other fraternities are held to.

Before you start general accusations about Greek Life, get your facts straight. Don’t categorize every fraternity in to a group of screw-ups and party-goers, because we are more than that. We not only know how to socialize and network, we know how to advance our education and excel in the real world.

So my question to you as well as the administration is “”why do sports organizations get special treatment over the greek community (which most likely 99 percent of the time produces better contributions to society than sports players)?””

Why do people that play sports not have the consequences that people that participate in the greek community have? I think the answer lies in money and the potential revenue that is brought to this campus. The administration is more willing to look the other way when revenue is brought in for some type of sporting event than if some community service is done through a greek community.

If you were to look into the graduation rate of sports clubs or teams compared to the greek community, maybe more people would realize that it is more important to help educate (students)involved in sports than worry about the events that the greek community throws. Overall our GPAs are better and our contributions to the community are far greater than anything that can be said about all of the sports teams/clubs combined.

John Dehn

accounting junior