OP-ED: Tarleton Greeks getting Residential hall row

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Joseph Kamin, Sports Editor

For the fall 2017 semester, Tarleton State University will offer on-campus housing for students involved in Greek life. The Centennial Residence Hall will be set aside for any Greek student who is a sophomore or higher. Most people who are involved in a Greek organization have wanted separate housing, but this is not how it needs to be done for us.

The first reason why this will not work is because Greeks will not “grow closer together” from this experience. In a typical dorm setting, you don’t really know the people who are above or below you; in some cases, you don’t even know the people right next to you. And this
is good! Because whenever my upstairs neighbor is being annoying, it isn’t “the fraternity or sorority above me” it is just my upstairs neighbor being loud.

And in cases where you have to report someone else for being loud during study times, past quite hours or just any other complaint, its not “oh that person below me did,” its “oh that fraternity or sorority below me reported me for playing music to loud.” While these are obvious extremes, they are things that will happen.

And I just question how would this be different from living in a normal dorm. My freshman year in Heritage, a large majority of my hall went Greek. I went Lambda Chi Alpha; my roommate went Kappa Delta Rho. The people across from me went Phi Mu. The girls to my left went Alpha Gamma Delta and the people across from them were Delta Phi Epsilon. If my hall was a majority Greek, how is Centennial different? Will there be separate doors for each organization?

Residential Leaders are also an issue for Greek housing; will they be Greek, non Greek or mixed? If the RL’s are not Greek, they might not be accustomed to the activity level of Greek students.

Homecoming week is a perfect example; fraternities and sororities are out into late hours of the night trying to perfect their float or yell practice. Rush week for sororities is another good example. Sometimes girls are out until four or five in the morning, so for a week, half of the dorm might not even be there until five in the morning. Will RL’s be getting special training to be taught how to deal with events and things of this nature?

If the RL’s are Greek, who will get assigned to who? Will you be your own organization’s RL? And if you are, what happens when my fraternity needs four RL’s and there is only one Lambda Chi RL? Does that mean that three of us will get the job simply because were in this organization and housing NEEDS us?

But, in contrast, if your residents are in other organizations, what happens when an organization has to report another organization? If the party in question got reported feels like the situation was wrongly reported or mishandled, then a majority of that organization, might hold a grudge against that other organization, which ties back into Greek unity.

Another issue is that this only applies to a very small audience: sophomores. Freshman will not be able to live in Centennial because of how late rush week is. I feel like I can speak for a majority of sophomores when I say that we don’t want to live in a dorm another year. So this is very specific to sophomores.

But what happens when there are nine guys that want to live here, but each room only holds two. So will the ninth person live by himself? Will he be in a room with someone in a different Greek organization? If he lives by himself, who will pay for the other half of the room that isn’t being used? And what happens when a smaller organization only has four sophomores interested in doing this? They’d take up two rooms. All four of those students could live in Integrity in one room; they’d have separate sleeping spaces and a larger room.

And if Greek organizations will have doors separating each organization, how would you separate two rooms? What would happen the next semester when they have eight members wanting to live here?

And the opposite can happen, what if they only have two people doing this? How would one door be separate from all the other Greeks? They’d have to live in someone else’s hall. What would happen when Greek students would not fill up Greek housing, would people outside Greek life be put in the dorm to fill in the empty beds? If so, then its not exclusively Greek housing anymore.

Most fraternity or sorority houses at other schools have rooms for meetings. But in Centennial, there is not room for any bigger organizations. Several fraternities would be able to have their meetings, but no sorority would be able to. There is no meeting room in Centennial that could hold over 130 sorority girls.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg. Several other issues such as sexual assault, alcohol and fights also need to be taken into account.

Greek housing is a very complicated issue; I understand that everyone in the Student Engagement office has worked very hard on this and I feel like I can speak for a majority of the Greeks when I say we want this. Greek housing would be an amazing addition to Tarleton. However, throwing Greek students in an old dorm isn’t the way that this needs to be done. Greek students are thankful that we’re finally discussing this, but afraid that if we pass up on this now, it might not be brought up again.