Last month, The New York Times featured an article concerning the persecutory operations of the Delta Zeta sorority at DePauw University in Indiana. Last week, the Technician ran an article of it’s own about the incident at DePauw, which took place last December.
Seeing as DePauw is consistently ranked as the number-one college for Greek life in the nation, I find it nonplussing that the incident has not received more publicity than it has. In December of last year, DZ evicted twenty-three members of its DePauw chapter in what DZ has, interestingly enough, termed on their Web site as a “chapter reorganization process.”
About such a process, The New York Times article reports, “the women the sorority allowed to stay were all slender and conventionally pretty. Those evicted included some overweight women and several minority members.”
A statement released from DZ national headquarters maintains that in regards to the eviction process, “Sorority officials only considered each woman’s commitment to Delta Zeta’s recruitment plans — no other factor was considered.”
In that case, it is a profound coincidence that those deemed worthy of membership in the sorority were all of a certain appearance and those evicted of another.
In the Technician last week, NCSU DZ President Katie Paige said, “DZ National would never discriminate against different races, religions, ethnicity or body types.”
Apparently, for the DePauw DZ chapter that is easier said than done.
In fact, I believe that this type of activity most certainly occurs at many other universities around the country, though frequently on a lesser scale. Regardless of magnitude, such persecutory activity is entirely inappropriate and thoroughly deserving of condemnation.
DePauw University, excluding DZ, would appear to agree with the previous statement based on its actions since the “reorganization process.”
As of last week, DePauw decided to evict the entire DZ chapter from its university.President Robert G. Bottoms is quoted in The New York Times as affirming the eviction decision: “We at DePauw believe that the values of our university and those of the national Delta Zeta sorority are incompatible.”
Robert P. Hershberger, chairman of DePauw’s modern languages department, also supported the decision to evict the sorority. The New York Times quoted Hershberger as stating, “This was the right thing to do. I doubt there will be many people here upset about this.”
As if DZ’s actual eviction of certain students, or certain types of students, was not disgustingly immature itself, The New York Times reported that the sorority posted critical statements of the evicted DePauw girls and certain DePauw faculty that later supported them.
Therefore, when DZ’s specious apology includes statements such as “It was never our intention to disparage or hurt any of our members during this chapter reorganization process,” I cannot help but find them supremely superficial.
Rachel Pappas, a junior and former member of DZ at DePauw University, said in The New York Times of the apology, “It’s like a thief who’s sorry that he got caught, rather than for what he did.”
I could not have said it any better myself.
Before I go any further in assessing a proper criticism of DZ’s actions, I feel it necessary to state that I am not opposed to all fraternities or sororities. I believe that they are valuable as traditional components of collegiate operations. Moreover, Greek communities on university campuses provide invaluable philanthropic opportunity and productive commune social bindings.
I also believe that not all members of all sororities or fraternities hold the same views that those at DePauw University do or did. Therefore, it is entirely inappropriate to assert all “brothers” and “sisters” as guilty by association.
However, the prevalence of such persecutory behavior is nothing new to human history. It is found in our cultural roots and social genes that are then transfused from generation to generation.
Thus, I assert that the leaders of such a despicable “reorganization process” of DZ at DePauw are not deserving of total blame. Rather, I believe that society as a whole is proportionately responsible for imposing upon and creating within them such misconstrued ideals based apparently upon appearance, which consequently leads to potentially persecutory behavior as we have seen at DePauw.
In no way, however, does this excuse the repulsive leadership behavior of DZ’s chapter at DePauw. I have no intention of doing so because they are guilty as charged.
It is distressing and depressing to see how immature “mature” people can often be.
E-mail Warren your thoughts on the “chapter reorganization” at [email protected].
