Your Voice by Frances Starn

For all of new executive editor Matt Mantica’s words promising a brighter journalistic future for The Daily Pennsylvanian, the cover article by Stephanie Barron, “When Greek Life Goes Astray,” was an extremely disappointing example of journalism that is, in Mantica’s words, “done well” with a “tremendous ability to do good.”

As a former leader of a Greek organization on campus, I recognize and am continuing to understand my implication in an archaic system of misogyny, racism and classism. In no way do I believe that criticisms of the Greek system at Penn should not be published or discussed. We must interrogate all aspects of Greek life and how their foundations in misogyny and racism, such as those described in the article, continue to inform our present. For example, how the difference in the intense oversight and regulations that the Panhellenic sororities experience from the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life during recruitment is a remnant of paternalistic institutional oversight over collegiate women, while fraternities have much less supervision over their often debaucherous rushing process. Or, how despite an understood feeling on campus that the Panhellenic and Interfraternity Councils are whitewashed, there are no easily accessible online statistics on the racial and socioeconomic makeup of these organizations. These are the specific and concrete issues that we can and should address.

Barron’s article, however, reads as unfinished and incomplete, in no way dealing with the issue’s sensitivity and complexity. With limited actual reporting that feels like the result of spending 15 minutes searching the DP’s archives, it fails to establish any sort of real conclusions or criticisms outside of the racist history of Greek organizations.

While it is critical that we as a campus have hard conversations about the histories that have shaped our campus, we also need to think about how articles such as this one fail to create a meaningful dialogue around the issue of race, fraternities and Penn as a whole. We must have a productive discussion about positive change, one that will admittedly be colored by anger and resentment, but not defined by it. Good journalism can certainly, as Mantica says, “take down those systems that formerly upheld such destructive aspects of community and society.” In this spirit, I challenge the DP to step up their journalism to move beyond dramatic, sensational articles that barely scratch the surface of these issues and to write articles that do more than cause a slew of angry and anonymous internet comments that build walls against true and significant change.

Frances Starn

C‘15

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