To the Editor:
So I read Hemant Joshi's editorial "A Day In The Life" on Monday, May 14th, and I think I understand the gist of it. Stereotypes are bad because they allow Hemant Joshi to reduce various cultural groups to a series of second-rate Tom Wolfe caricatures.
I've heard this argument quite a bit in defense of the Greek system. Fraternity members who try desperately to describe their persecution with that golden analog of hatred and oppression they picked up in a World Cultures requirement. "Dude! You can't 'essentialize' me. How can you say all Greeks drink and boot and try and paw at non-consenting Tri-Delts? That's like saying just cause I come from Sumatra and wear a loincloth, I must be good with rubber. Lame!"
This kind of comparison with real world discrimination is exactly why college is only a four year experience. For only a sniveling, whiny, earnest undergraduate would ever look to compare the fraternal lifestyle and its demise with such weighty global troubles as racism, bigotry and sexism.
You choose to be in a fraternity under the aegis of Mom and Dad's trust funds (not to mention federal financing for most). That makes you fair game. Just like Hemant Joshi's characters chose to be rednecks, hippie peace-creeps, and stock brokers (albeit stockbrokers who very un-mimetically drink only one martini in the course of the working day).
And isn't it interesting how members of Greek houses will celebrate lowbrow depictions of their behavior in Chris Farley vehicles, or proudly remind friends and family back home that Dartmouth was the inspiration for "Animal House." But when it comes to antagonistic editorials or an opposed popular opinion, the rest of us are just being unfair and "stereotypical."
