Give them a break.
There's more to fraternities than drinking and throwing loud parties. A lot more, actually - philanthropies, gaining social and leadership skills and forming a brotherhood.
As you can see in our Page 1 story, most of the University Police Department runs to fraternity houses aren't for alcohol-related offenses. They're for vandalism - often from other members of the greek community.
In our online exclusive, you can read more about the greek community's five-year strategic plan of improvement, and highlights and awards from the past year. For example, three more chapters were accredited last school year, and the Interfraternity Council reported a 31 percent membership increase since Fall 2007.
Greek members can also boast an overall GPA higher than the all-campus average for the 12th consecutive semester.
We're not here to applaud or denounce greek life. They're our constituents just like everybody else. We're just saying it's worth looking beyond the stereotype.
A lot of student groups have clich+â-¬s associated with them. We're the news junkies contained in the Art and Journalism Building with a camera attached to our hip. Architecture students are said to sleep on cots in the building at the corner of McKinley and Neely avenues, and theatre majors are known for always wanting to rehearse lines when you're trying to study in the library.
We're all known for something, and we hope it's for the better parts of what we do. So let's remember the greeks for some of their philanthropy, and maybe for their good humor, too. Even though it got them in trouble, the story of throwing paint on a fraternity's front step was pretty gutsy.
Our front-page story mentions that these houses are easy targets, in part because they're not really personal property. They are property owned by the university, just like the residence halls. As tempting as it might be to trash these homes east of campus, or trash-talk them for that matter, we have to refrain.
We'll admit, we were surprised that so few citations were made for drinking violations. Actually, this bunch might be tamer than regular college students - in part because of all the hoops they have to jump through in order to host a party.
We applaud them for that. We hope they'll continue to challenge the stereotype - and as students, we should, too.
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