Lately in campus news, there has been a lot of talk regarding happiness and overall student demeanor. From taking part in activities that the school offers to racism, there has been an entire spread of issues. Here in the greek community we like to believe that we ourselves are partly immune to some of the campus gripes due to our slightly closed structure and our heritage.
Last week an article ran in The Poly that put one of our greek chapters into a bad light with the entire campus. The chapter was named because of an alleged incident of racism toward another student. This issue should not be taken lightly. The greek community here at RPI is unlike many of the other college campuses with greek life—we actually have diversity. Our school is a very diverse place with many people coming from overseas, and from all types of backgrounds. The greek community is just an extension of this diversity. This incident named a particular chapter and the campus as a whole as a problem, but I feel that this incident should be looked at merely as one person and not an entire chapter or system that has gone awry.
In other news around campus, our President Shirley Ann Jackson wrote an article concerning community service around Troy and beyond. She names some very great work that deserves to be mentioned and honored. I am disheartened by the fact that there is a great amount of work being done that she failed to mention, though; the work being done currently by the Rensselaer greek community. The greeks, as a community, do more community service in terms of hours than any other group on campus. This year in November we have our community service month. At the end of it there will be a banquet held for those who reached a certain amount of community service ‘points.’ Aside from the month of November, there has been work going on all year round with greeks taking part. We have chapters help at schools, volunteer hours staffing food shelves and soup kitchens, rake leaves, raise money for charities, and numerous other activities. This work should be looked at as something that RPI’s greek community can do and is doing for the Troy community and we hope that this will be remembered by those involved in the many talks going on between local Troy residents and their greek neighbors.
