Dear Editor,
I think we can all agree that the room draw lottery system is flawed. Seniors get cheated out of the good rooms that they’ve been waiting to live in for the preceding three years by juniors and sophomores, with no regards to seniority. While the author of the article makes great points regarding this respect for seniority, as well as rewarding GPA, one of Ms. Walburg’s major arguments is flawed and needs to be addressed. This isn’t intended to be rude or abrasive, but the amount of ignorance on this campus about Greek life, and in this case Greek housing, needs to be confronted.
Walburg starts off by briefly mentioning how our Greek organizations give back to the community, yet doesn’t recognize the extent of this matter. In reality, a major part of Greek life is philanthropy. Greeks raise and donate thousands of dollars each semester towards raising awareness and supporting national charities, which support the fights for breast cancer, arthritis, domestic violence, prostate cancer, muscular dystrophy, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and suicide prevention. The time and effort put into organizing events to give back is a major commitment on the part of Greeks, and that should never be down played or devalued.
Greeks also have the responsibilily of attending multiple events on campus and meeting a GPA requirement. We are under pressure from our college, our national headquarters, as well as our peers who criticize and fail to recognize what Greek life is really about.
My next contention with this piece was the surprising accusation that the sororities at WC were kicked out of Minta for, “trashing the place and being loud and obnoxious.” If this were so, why would the administration award our behavior by allowing us to live on the Western Shore? This simply doesn’t make sense. If the sororities were wrecking Minta, our housing directors would’ve punished us and taken away our privilege of specialized housing. Rumors such as these are what fuels the misconceptions of Greek Life exhibited by some students here.
On a similar note, the sororities who live on the Western Shore live there with the understanding that they must abide by all WC rules, as well as those mandated by nationals. Failure to do so will result in the organization losing its privilege to have specialized housing.
The biggest reason why Greek organizations at Washington College receive specialized housing is that we pay significantly large fees to nationals every semester for “potential housing.” I think that I can speak for the Greek body as a whole when saying that if we had it our way, we would prefer to live in a house built for the Greek organization. In fact, the national headquarters of most, if not all, Greek chapters on this campus have the funds and ability to build us houses. In fact, they have offered to do just this. The problem lies in the fact that WC will not allow Greek organizations to live in their own house off-campus.
If the college allowed for Greek organizations to build their own houses with their own national funding, it would benefit WC as a whole. Three Western Shore houses, or 48 open rooms, would be open for upperclassmen to live in. With the ever-growing population of our student body, every room counts. This would slightly alleviate the issue of WC increasing the student body before providing sufficient housing. Also, if this were made possible, WC would save a lot of money by allowing national headquarters to fund the construction of these houses. This is a very logical way to cut the cost of solving our living situation on this campus.
The real issue, I believe, is the fact that WC is increasing the student body before providing sufficient housing and facilities. Every student of the WC community has the right to speak out about the flaws in our system, because without a proactive public, change would never come about. Still, we must all be smart about this multi-faceted issue and not place blame where it has been unjustly placed. We Greeks agree that there has to be a solution here, and as a group that is well-versed in supporting causes we care about, we are all for working together with the rest of our college to find an answer that benefits everyone.
– Anna Burress ‘13 and Brandie Costello ‘13
April 8, 2011
Volume LXXXI Issue 21