Letters To the Editor: Students Respond to Roomdraw Article, Defend Greek Life Housing On Campus

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to the article “The Drawbacks of Roomdraw: Housing process needs reform” by E. Walburg which ran in the March 25, 2011 issue of the Elm. I agree with you on many points that you brought up about the need to reform room draw. However, I did not agree with the comments made about the sororities and the ignorance with which you seem to get your information.

I am a proud member of Alpha Omicron Pi and I can tell you honestly that no sorority on this campus gets any sort of preferential treatment when it comes to housing. We are allowed one western shore house (4 suites) and one Harford suite. At the most we can only guarantee sorority housing for 23 of our 60 sisters. This means that less than half of our sisters get to live together. As for your comment of our sisters “spilling out” into other suites, we do not get any sort of special treatment when this happens. If we are not able to be placed into sorority housing we get a number and wait in line just like everyone else. Our suitemates just so happen to also be our sisters.
You make it sound like Carl Crowe grants us endless housing opportunities. I don’t know where you are getting your information from but that is simply not true. As for the comment of sororities being kicked out of Minta Martin for being “loud and obnoxious” you have absolutely no evidence to back up your claim, which is bad reporting on your part.

Now on to your next point, your suggestion of buying an off-campus house is a good idea, so good even that we have already thought of it ourselves as AOII currently rents two houses off campus. While your idea is a good one it is just not practical as the only means of sorority housing. An off campus house will not fit all 60 of my sisters. One of our houses fits six and the other only four. Finally, I cannot speak for the other sororities, but I know next year there will be no sophomores living in Allegany. We are making an effort to comply with this campus policy.
As a chapter we do many philanthropic deeds for the community and for the school. We organize the 5k in honor of our late sister, Jasmine Queen, in order to raise money for her scholarship fund, host basketball and volleyball tournaments to raise money for Arthritis research, host “AOII in the face,” and participate in many other community service projects. Most recently, we participated in the Backpack program, which provides under-privileged Kent County school children with backpacks and healthy snacks. I think for the amount of work we do on this campus we deserve to be able to house a few of our sisters.

AOII is such a big part of my life and I can’t imagine going to Washington College and not being a part of this organization. Ask a sister in any one of the three sororities and I am sure they will agree with me on everything I have stated in this letter. Please be more conscientious next time you are writing an article and get your facts straight before printing.

– Kaitlin Moran ‘13

April 8, 2011
Volume LXXXI Issue 21

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *