Growing up as a Native Hawaiian, something that always drove me insane was the inability people had to separate the identification of an ethnicity and residency. Many people in the state of Hawaii misidentified themselves as Hawaiian based on their state residency, which is a misnomer and a frustration to the true ethnic group of aboriginals. Furthermore, this same mislabeled population plagued my childhood with endless mockeries of cultural pageantry, taking sacred images and turning them into sacrilegious knockoffs, putting a price tag on a culture that did not even belong to them. Through painful recollections of my childhood, I know first hand what it feels like to have your cultural identity stolen, altered and rubbed in your face.

As a child, I had to deal with exploitation of my culture for the economic and social benefit of people outside my ethnicity. My grandparents’ generation faced so many cultural difficulties that many of them hid their ethnic backgrounds until the cultural renaissance that happened when my parents’ generation was just exiting its teen years. In reflection upon my own personal experiences, attempting to compare the greek community to ethnic Greeks is nothing more to me than a stereotypical rant.

The pride I have for Iowa State’s sororities and fraternities is immense. In contrast to many of the other people on either side of the never-ending battle between greeks and non-greeks, I have been on both sides of the issue. While this definitely has given me the opportunity to choose the situation I feel works best for me, it also gives me the validation to make comments about any of the groups because I have experienced them all. No amount of actual research can give you the same validation as actual participation. A student who is not in a university greek-letter society can tell you as much valid information about campus greek life as a man can tell you about the pains of childbirth.

Something that is often overlooked is an additional greek council, that National Pan Hellenic Council, which helps to govern our campus’ traditionally African-American fraternities and sororities, in addition to a traditionally Latina sorority. This organization is not ignored by the chapters of the greek community, and neither should it be ignored by people outside of the community. The questioning of the political correctness of only certain campus organizations makes it seem that the argument is not one of being proper, but just an excuse to bring slander to the community of students who reside in fraternity and sorority chapter houses.

Many professional organizations on campus use, and questionably mispronounce, the Greek alphabet for the names of their groups. The alleged issue of being politically correct should be applied to the business, psychology and engineering societies, just to name a few, who use the similar Greek letter symbolism. The motto of my fraternity, Alethia Kai Logos, Greek for “the truth and the word,” is what yields the initials that make up the letters of our name. The same instance is true for many other chapters. In time, the term “Greek-letter societies” was shortened to “greeks.”

Mere education could be beneficial for everyone. Many members of sororities and fraternities have spent at least a semester living on campus before moving into their chapter houses, and they become acclimated to the rift on campus that exists due to someone’s possible affiliation.

The age-old and largest stereotype of exclusion and elitism is nothing short of irrationalism. Fraternity and sorority membership is open to anyone, and is as available as university housing. Since chapters are not immune to laws, they can only take as many members as they are legally allowed to have. If I were as irrational, I could say those in the Department of Residence were a bunch of elitists when they rejected my top three choices for housing and placed me in a building I didn’t even list in my order of preference.

It is unreasonable and ridiculous to assume that the social behaviors of fraternity men and sorority women bring forth a stereotype of alcoholism for ethnic Greeks. The single instance of cultural use that I can think of would be a toga party, which is in itself a college-party stereotype and not something exclusive to sororities and fraternities. The greek community on campus makes no claims or attempts at Greek cultural symbolism. As a member of a campus fraternity who has actually witnessed his own culture mocked and pillaged, the ridiculous assumption that greek-affiliated university students attempt to steal the culture of ethnic Greeks is offensive to me.

Cultural identity problems are serious issues and shouldn’t be used as a scapegoat for stereotyping.