This is a response to the article, “Sorority member speaks out about election.”
Let me just express that I, a member of a Greek organization, a fellow Panhellenic woman and a UF student, endorse Beatrice Diehl in her actions 100 percent. To my dismay, when I expressed this sentiment to members of my Greek organization, I was met with disgust and was disregarded.
First, I would like to point out that in her opinions on the issue, Diehl used no slang and did not defame any members of her organization. For this, I respect her and her right to express her opinion (though it may be contrary to her organization’s interests).
Second, Diehl has been a paying member of her sorority during her entire four years of college. She has been financially dedicated to this organization and its upkeep, so it would be an interesting assertion that she has been “unsisterly” after expressing her own opinion, on her own time and of her own accord.
Was the act “unsisterly,” or was it an act that asserted her status as a human being — one who has every right to express her opinion? At what point do we stop and ask ourselves: To what extent does an organization have to enforce its beliefs on its members?
Let me respond by saying that the extent to which any organization exerts itself over an individual, particularly in cases where that expression is not offensive to any specific facet of another (as pertaining to race, creed or color) should be nonexistent in nongovernmental entities.
Yes, the bureaucracy is a necessity for its capacity to deal with many people and organize different issues necessary for modern-day living, but what position or right does an organization that caters to the social needs (at best) and the core values (at its most detrimental) of its members have?
Absolutely none.
Thus, the crime here is not one of being “unsisterly.” The offense committed far surpasses any kind of value that has been morphed by the members of Panhellenic organizations to serve their own special interests.
The greatest offense committed won’t be by any one organization. It will be by its members, who accept this demonstration of absurdity and turn their heads away in a refusal to acknowledge, with the compensation of acceptance from their “sisters,” the most gross and public infraction of justice that any respectable group of organizations could be witness to — a restriction of the right to express oneself.
Olivia Newan is a philosophy sophomore at UF. She is a member of Zeta Tau Alpha.
