The responsible Greek.

I'm a Mexican citizen studying in a U.S. university.
And I'm Greek.

The fraternal bond of days of yore is strong in me. Or if I'm to be "real" I'd say that my organization which was founded in 1850 to provide a forum for free speech and radical ideas now provides a safe haven. A brotherhood.

Sure, you can go ahead and read the anthropological studies of Peggy Reeves but let's skip that for a second. Let's get a first hand account on being a responsible Greek.

The media enjoys vilifying the Greeks. It's true, we mess up. A lot. But I happen to believe that a lot of where that comes from is not the fact that people in Greek organizations are inherently evil or mess up on a more regular basis. My best friends, girls and guys are all Greek. It's their association that makes them a bigger target. Because we are part of something larger than ourselves, we can be targeted as something bigger than ourselves.

A brother charged with rape is immediately affected, both in reputation and state of mind. A brother charged with rape, according to the way the media likes to write about it, is also representative of a raping fraternity. A dirty organization with a predisposition for sexual violence. And this is only ALLEGED rape. Isn't our justice system based on the idea: innocent until proven guilty?

If an unsuspecting John Doe commits the rape then it makes it onto the paper for a couple of days and nothing else is said about it. Why? because this one individual had no easily discernible ties?

Are we being punished for believing in a fraternal community. A family away from home? Targeted.

But we are not the victims. Not only the victim at least. We are proactive about it, we start 1 in 4 organizations (a group that speaks and educates on sexual violence), we hold philanthropy events for worthy causes. We volunteer as fraternities in mentorship programs and we bring our fair share of school spirit to sporting events.

I, like a lot of Greeks, wear my letters proudly.

Let's simply talk about everything that happens and value its relevance based on the facts and not on the associations - however tangential they may be.