Sexual assault more serious than acknowledged

Editor:

The brothers of Alpha Phi Omega want to express our deepest thanks for express-ing your views about our most recent goodwill event. Our one wish is that the next time that you feel the need to express your opinion, you should perhaps get your facts right. As you are probably not aware, the majority of Alpha Phi Omega also participates in the social Greek life at Alma College. We sincerely appreciate Sigma Chi’s participation in our campaign to end sexual assault (tell Rob thanks). Our advice to you would be that the next time you are going to write an opinion article about an event, you may want to consider actually staying and participating in the before mentioned event.

Should you find the guilt-drenched rapist that you described, we would love to have him participate in our next program. As you seem to be woefully unaware, the majority of rapists do not admit to the crime that they committed, and for some unknown reason, seem to genuinely think that they did nothing wrong. Perhaps the tunnel vision that you have demonstrated would dissuade future brothers from pledging into the Greek community more than a purely innocent film.

As we could have told you, should you have contacted our organization with your concerns, no males at the event were non-Greek or considering recruitment, but thank you for making the entire campus aware. If anything furthers the negative perception of the Greek community on campus, it is your ill-informed article. Rather than focusing negatively on an organization that was trying to bring light to an underdiscussed topic, perhaps you should use your writing talent to focus the campus attention on organizations and or individuals that perpetuate sexual assault.

As a Greek organization that participates in recruitment and initiations, Alpha Phi Omega nationwide is aware of the stereotype placed on Greek organizations, but makes the sincerest effort to not further that stereotype. As a Greek organization we were concerned that we had offended others in the Greek community. However, upon investigation amongst the Sigma Chi brothers, we were told that your view was not shared. We would recommend that you make a greater effort to separate your personal beliefs from your fraternity in your next letter. I am sorry that you have the perception of “Greeks as drunken misogynistic rapists”, we however, did not share that view. We are confused how you could begin to portray our attempt at ad-dressing an unrelated issue as “anti-Greek propaganda”, but apparently you are able to do so. We as an organization will take your complaint, which is the only one that we have received, into consideration when preparing our next event. However, we will also be considering the numerous positive responses that we received, to our faces.

Should you have any further concerns that we did not address feel free to contact Becky Feuerstein at extension 8162. She will be happy to assist you with any information, including the name of our organization.

The Brothers of Alpha Phi Omega

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