I learned a long time ago that when fraternity members try to insist that they don't receive the recognition they deserve and that everyone is out to get them, people don't listen to them. It has to do with a particular policy of open-mindedness, one with which I've never been entirely comfortable. The practices of fraternities are well-known, and so are the habits and goings-on, even if universities tend, by and large, and largely for political reasons, to "overlook" them.

I won't argue whether this habit of universities, or the things that go on in fraternities, is either good or bad; they are, and people think of them what they will. But an editorial that appeared in The Tartan last week overlooks a particularly grievous blight on the face of this University and its housing policy.

Sororities.

Don't let them fool you with their successful philanthropy events and their pretty hairdos. These organizations have discriminated against Carnegie Mellon men since their first chapters formed in the early 20^th century. Since becoming entrenched at our University, they have yet to allow a single male to room with them, yet continue to abide by a Pennsylvania law that limits the number of women who may live under one roof. Were they to allow even one potentially very happy man to dwell platonically among them, they might open much-needed housing to the University and its students; yet they selfishly refrain.

Furthermore, these organizations are veritable training grounds for future generations of successful athletes, actresses, engineers, business executives, and senators; their very existence threatens the ability of fraternities to set the women's rights movement back one hundred years through such popular on campus events as the "End Women's Suffrage" parade and their annual celebration of "don't let women get ahead in life or be treated as equals to men" day (celebrated every April 1si).

Of course, I'm being sarcastic. There's no obscure Pennsylvania law limiting the number of women who can live in one house, there's no such thing as "don't let women get ahead in life or be treated as equals to men" day, to my knowledge, and sororities aren't predicated on segregation anymore than fraternities are. But we'll get to that later; first, let's discuss the problem of fraternity housing, since that seemed to be at issue in the recent editorial.

The problem of fraternity housing is easily solved: give them back the houses they once had, many years ago before the University demanded they all live on campus in University housing (making, let's note, a separate and unequal agreement with them). If this is such a rallying point, why not take it directly to Housing Services? Go to bat for equal rights and retrieve for those horribly backwards fraternities their off-campus residences; and let them take their medieval ways with them. And if the University claims they still want all the fraternities on campus?

Perhaps a settlement might be negotiated whereby the fraternities are designated "special interest" housing; those don't have to be co-ed. This might suit their interests better anyway, since special interest housing isn't policed nearly as frequently for things like alcohol at parties as the fraternities are.

The real problem is that the people who are out to get fraternities won't listen to them. The fraternities have heard their side: we're boorish, brainless, lacking in morals, and secretly misogynistic. But let's not forget that the organization in which this piece about fraternities recently appeared was itself recently steered away from disaster, towards which it had been heading because of some very derogatory cartoons about women and blacks.

Is it possible that in any random sampling, you're going to find boorish and brainless people, lacking in morals and secretly misogynistic? Could it be that even on the other side, since it appears that we're drawing lines, people are capable of saying very bad things that they meant to be taken jokingly? And what about the recent arrival of the anti-semite Malik Zulu Shabazz on campus, invited to speak by SPIRIT, the campus multi-cultural organization? Perhaps these issues of racism and inequality in the history of fraternities that were recounted in the recent editorial are some with which we are still struggling today.

So fraternities have a history of intolerance; but doesn't the recent editorial, which must come across to fraternity members as a poorly-argued piece of slander, admit to harboring its own intolerance of fraternities, organizations who have strived, consciously or not, with the infusion of fresh blood and fresh ideas from year to year, to amend the injustices and oversights of their predecessors? Nowadays, fraternities are organizations in which college-aged men can come together at their college or university and have a good time together, regardless of race, color, or creed; women have their own organizations, sororities, for the same purpose. Should we dismantle every men's and women's club across the country because, in our drive to eliminate "separate but equal," we've forgotten that the real "separate but equal" we want to dismantle is the ideology?

If men want to form a club for their friends, and women want to do the same, how does this say about either group that their feelings towards one another in any way lack the respect that civil and women's rights movements have fought for so long to achieve? It almost seems a step backward, an attempt to stir up an unnecessary cultural conflagration, to challenge people for organizing around particular non-threatening commonalities (for example, "college men") or interests (for example, "forging strong bonds of friendship with other college men"), claiming their organizations are predicated on segregation or inequality, when in fact considerations of equality had nothing to do with, or no longer have anything to do with, the rationale behind these organizations.

To use some shorter, simpler words, there's a big difference between making a point and just provoking a reaction; the recent Tartan editorial attempted to do the former and ended up doing the latter.

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