Greeks should be endorsed

By Michael Maxwell

I only have about 450 words to work with, so I'm going to cut to the chase: The university should acknowledge the greek chapters instead of treating them like the "crazy uncle" of the Santa Clara family. Before you overlook the next 420 words of this column, let me throw in this point: I myself am not a member of the greek system.

The school had its reasons for suspending the greek system, but I'm going to ignore those for now because I can name many other organizations on campus that engage in similar tomfoolery. Should the Ruff Riders be punished if members tailgate before a game and get a little tipsy? They aren't. Should fraternities be punished if an unofficial party is thrown at Yellow or Sig Pi?

What matters is that the sororities alone raise more than $30,000 a year for charities, and the fraternities do their part as well. Imagine how much more money Delta Gamma would raise if they could use the Malley pool for free, or if Alpha Phi could use the Brass Rail for Star Search. At a bare minimum, the ability to advertise these events on campus would bring more students to support the cause.

This is the part of the column where you slam the paper down and exclaim "but I don't want the greek system run by Santa Clara!" I couldn't agree more. Since getting kicked off the Santa Clara island, the greek chapters have had to rely on the rigorous bylaws of their national organizations, and even so have still enjoyed growth in membership, not to mention the creation of a completely new sorority. The greeks need the school about as much as TheFacebook needs a group for underprivileged left-handed albinos.

I've had the unfortunate pleasure of butting up against the school's "what greek system?" policy while trying to plan a rape education presentation for the fraternities. This is crippling for the Santa Clara community because statistics show that fraternities and athletes are the two groups most likely to commit a sexual assault crime. We can present to the athletes and any other group of influence at Santa Clara, but pigs will fly before the administration will let us present to a fraternity.

I'm not the only one hitting this wall: A shirt with the Santa Clara neighborhood on the back couldn't show the Theta or Sig Pi houses. The Bronco Bash had fewer attendants because the greeks couldn't wear shirts promoting themselves. The Peer Health Educators had to use unofficial channels to present to the sororities. If the school had the wisdom to see that the greeks were hurting Santa Clara, surely they can see their pacifist attitude isn't helpful either.

* Michael Maxwell's column appears once a month. He can be reached at mmaxwell@scu.edu.