T
he fraternity is an institution
almost
as
long-standing
as American universities
themselves. The very first can be
traced back to 1776 when the Phi
Beta Kappa society was founded at
the College of William & Mary in
Williamsburg, Va. Since then, Greek
life has grown astronomically, with
over 9 million members nationally.
Many politically and financially
successful individuals often publicly
reminisce
about
their
college
days spent in Greek life, and those
currently involved in such institutions
will defend their chapters with fierce
loyalty.
To their credit, sororities and
fraternities have been known to
provide a strong sense of community
to emerging college students and to
devote themselves to philanthropic
endeavors. However, in recent years,
it has become glaringly apparent that
Greek life is getting out of hand with
potentially dire consequences. With
reports of deadly hazing, dangerous
levels
of
alcohol
consumption,
increased instances of sexual assault
and stories of racist incidents within
chapters, Greek life is under intense
scrutiny.
Major universities across the
nation have taken steps to control
this image, either by suspending,
banning or regulating the activities of
fraternities and sororities. However,
as universities work to mitigate the
criticisms of Greek life, it is reasonable
to question the purpose of the
Greek system as a whole. As colleges
continue to increase non-Greek life
related student organizations, as
the internet develops new outlets
to connect current students with
alumni and as horrific stories of
Greek life reality come to light, it is
clear that the original purpose of such
organizations is now obsolete.
There are abundant examples of
Greek life gone wrong that illuminate
how the disadvantages associated
with such organizations far outweigh
any potential benefits. Fraternities
certainly bear the brunt of this image.
While pop culture representation
perpetuates an Animal House-type
lifestyle of partying and drinking with
reckless abandon, the true reality is
much darker.
Take, for example, the February
2017 death of 19-year-old Timothy
Piazza. Piazza, a pledge at the Beta
Theta Pi fraternity at Pennsylvania
State University, fell down a flight
of stairs after an evening of heavy
drinking during a hazing event. He
was carried, unconscious, to a couch
by his fraternity brothers after the fall,
clearly in need of medical attention.
Instead, the other members slapped,
punched and poured beer on him. He
laid unconscious for 12 hours before
emergency medical care was called,
and Piazza died soon thereafter.
In response to Piazza’s death,
his parents pressed charges against
several members of the Penn State
chapter of Beta Theta Pi, and the
president of the university vowed to
increase punishment for instances
of hazing. Yet, it is not difficult to
find instances of hazing with dire
consequences. Matthew Carrington
died of hypothermia and water
intoxication in the basement of the
Chi Tau fraternity house when he
was doused with cold water while
forced to drink five gallons of water
as part of a hazing ritual at California
State University in 2005. Four student
pledges in total died as a result of
hazing in 2017 alone.
Yet, on the campuses of fraternities
where such tragedies have occurred,
these names are barely remembered.
When a young pledge dies at the
hands of fraternity members, there
is typically a period of fierce outrage,
condemnation of the programs,
suspension of the fraternity chapter,
and then everyone involved begins to
resume their typical lives — not even
noticing that the same practices occur
frequently after the fact.
Beyond
the
deaths
resulting
from hazing or excessive alcohol
consumption,
fraternities
have
frequently found themselves involved
in scandals of another nature.
Research shows that fraternity men
are three times more likely to commit
sexual assault than their non-Greek
life
affiliated
peers.
Conversely,
membership in a sorority is considered
a risk factor for sexual assault, with
some reports demonstrating up to
74 percent of college sexual assault
victims are sorority members.
There have been several public
instances of fraternities and their
issues with sexual assault. In 2010,
fraternity men at prestigious Yale
University were recorded chanting
the pro-rape phrase “No means yes,
yes means anal” around campus.
Matthew
Peterson,
a
fraternity
brother at Georgia Institute of
Technology, circulated an email
around his fraternity containing a
manual titled “Luring your rapebait.”
At many universities, young women
are instructed on which fraternities
are safe and which to avoid because of
their reputations of sexual assault.
Sexual assault is just one of the
many issues plaguing fraternities
today. As most fraternities nationwide
are almost entirely comprised of
white members, fraternity culture
has become deeply intertwined
with racism. The University of
Michigan made headlines in 2013
when the Theta Xi fraternity
planned a social event titled “Hood
Ratchet Thursday,” capitalizing on
racial stereotypes of Black people
and appropriating them to a largely
white audience. In 2015, University
of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon
brothers were recorded singing
a fraternity song including the
following lyric: “There will never be
a (expletive) in SAE.” This chant was
allegedly taught across chapters of the
fraternity. In April 2018, California
Polytechnic University suspended all
Greek life after photos circulated of
white fraternity members appearing
in blackface.
While
the
negative
aspects
of fraternity life have long been
exposed, the practices of sororities
are often equally problematic. Three
George
Washington
University
students were expelled from Alpha
Phi after they posted a picture with
a racist caption comparing African
Americans to monkeys. Harley
Barber, a former member of Alpha
Phi was expelled from the University
of Alabama in 2018 after posting two
racist rant videos to her secondary
Instagram account.
Compounding the racial issues,
sororities have long had issues
pertaining to image and what the
ideal sorority girl should “look”
like. This problem was once again
highlighted this past September by
the so-called “Beta Delta Letter,”
published by an anonymous former
sorority recruitment chair for the
University of Michigan chapter.
In this letter, the author details
the methods by which the PNMs,
or potential new members, of the
sorority were rated on a scale from
one to 10, largely based on whether or
not their physical appearance fit the
conventional beauty standards of a
“top tier” sorority. Once deeper in the
recruitment process, the recruitment
chairs resorted to ranking their
fellow sorority sisters on the same
scale, determining who would be
best apt to recruit the most desirable
pledges. Once said pledges were
officially recruited, a PowerPoint
presentation was sent to fraternities
with their names and faces only, with
no other personal information.
If I were to include all or even most
of the publicly known controversies
associated with Greek life, this article
would be nearly endless. The truth is,
these are issues that arise constantly,
and very few of us are surprised
when we hear them. A tragedy or
instance of egregious sexism or
racism is uncovered, individuals
are reprimanded or chapters are
suspended, and similar circumstances
occur again elsewhere. The steps
taken in the past to remedy these
affairs are not working. As important
as Greek life is to social life on college
campuses and to individuals involved,
it is clear that it is now antiquated,
resulting in senseless tragedies from
which universities must disaffiliate.
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, October 11, 2018
Emma Chang
Ben Charlson
Joel Danilewitz
Samantha Goldstein
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram
Jeremy Kaplan
Lucas Maiman
Magdalena Mihaylova
Ellery Rosenzweig
Jason Rowland
Anu Roy-Chaudhury
Alex Satola
Ali Safawi
Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger
DAYTON HARE
Managing Editor
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
tothedaily@michigandaily.com
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.
ALEXA ST. JOHN
Editor in Chief
ANU ROY-CHAUDHURY AND
ASHLEY ZHANG
Editorial Page Editors
Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily’s Editorial Board.
All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.
EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS
KIANNA MARQUEZ | COLUMN
Water we doing?
T
he water filter in the
Chemistry
Building
was
still broken today, leaving its
attached drinking fountain completely
unusable. I think to myself, “For a city
that has a knack for self-sustenance,
isn’t that kind of disappointing?”
Resources
both
tangible
and
intangible are plentiful here in Ann
Arbor, so it’s always striking when I
see it slacking.
In 2014, the EPA required cities to
test their water systems for a series of
chemicals. Ann Arbor complied and
found the high rates of PFAS. PFAS
are essentially man-made chemicals
that are difficult to break down in
any setting. As expected, exposure to
these chemicals has adverse health
effects, such as damage to the immune
system, cancer, birth defects and
thyroid hormone disruption. Our
health can be jeopardized by these
chemicals and there’s no doubt that
the quality of our grass, ponds, trees,
hills and air is at stake as well.
It’s not in our control — nor should
it necessarily be our responsibility —
to maintain the prevalence of these
chemicals in the environment around
us. This type of professionalism and
protection should come from the
industries that use and contain these
chemicals:
manufacturing
plants
and landfills. The city of Ann Arbor
discovered the chemicals due to runoff
from these types of urban settings,
and the reason we didn’t know they
were there in the first place is because
our local manufacturing plants and
landfill maintenance teams do not
prioritize informing the city about
the risks that can result from the work
they do, or even worse, they are not
even aware of how their work can
produce these threatening chemicals.
I understand that the information
we
collectively
have
regarding
the hazards of PFAS is somewhat
minimal because it’s a relatively new
chemical that’s in the beginning stages
of study. However, I don’t understand
how industry has proceeded to use
or produce it without considering
its potential harmful consequences.
We should have industrial centers
that put quality of life at the forefront
of their work. It’s not enough to find
solutions to the issues we create for
ourselves; those who have the ability
to make decisions for household
items production and for maintaining
our infrastructure need to think
about preventing an issue before it
even happens. This is a worldwide
phenomenon,
one
almost
an
impossible one to change at this point,
I know that. Despite this, we deserve
a healthy life for ourselves and the
organisms in our ecosystems, and I am
more than willing to come together in
this step toward bringing attention to
our society’s workings that threaten
well-being.
Ann Arbor officials have asked
for $850,000 from the City Council
to upgrade the filtration system of
its water treatment plant to reduce
the risk of contamination in its
filtered drinking water. Using new
technology to execute this goal, the
water treatment plant staff will fully
fund this attempt to restore the quality
of the river, as it should. Currently,
the city has resumed testing and
has measured its drinking water at
conditions that already exceed the
standards of the EPA, Michigan
Department
of
Environmental
Quality,and several other centers for
disease control.
However,
water
treatment
manager Brian Steglitz predicts even
better conditions after new filters
are added, stating, “PFOS/PFOA
levels in the drinking water will be
reliably below 10-ppt.” He and the
water treatment plant staff are urged
the decision to be made this month
about the amount of money that the
city will allow for this restoration. It’s
imperative that we use the resources
we have to allow ourselves to perform
the best we can. There are cities
that are unable to concentrate their
efforts into a particular sector that is
struggling to maintain a consistent
output, especially if its people have
little to no actual care for it, because
they are preoccupied with the issues
of other more prominent sectors.
But I know that the city I just
described is not Ann Arbor. I am
proud to live in a city and attend a
university that cares now more than
ever before about the impact of its
actions on the quality of our local
environment. I valued being raised in
a community that values quality and
is mindful of making itself available
and adaptable so that everything and
everyone can coexist. People in this
city don’t deserve to be scolded for its
shortcomings that occur when other
corporations or government bodies
function with ignorance, so I am
teeming with urgency for this city. I
want it to do better in the ways that
it can. I want people to take it upon
themselves to fix the disparity we
have in front us between abundant
capability and subpar output. Be
determined to fix what’s irreparable.
Demand more from each other. Give
us the clean water that should be easily
accessible and treatable here out of all
places. Invest in the water filter.
The plight of Greek life
The on-demand gig work of survival
ALANNA BERGER | COLUMN
Kianna Marquez can be reached at
kmarquez@umich.edu.
A
mid all the news that
dominated the media
last week, Amazon also
made the headlines.
After
months
of
pressure, it raised the
minimum wage of its
U.S. employees to $15
an hour.
You would think
this marked at least
one
happy
ending
following
the
amalgam of events
occurring last week.
Instead,
Amazon’s
decision only reveals the bubble
of indifference in which big
tech companies are wrapping
themselves.
While
Amazon
raised their hourly pay by $1, it
also decided to cut their yearly
bonuses, making its workers
lose at least $1,400 dollars a
year, as estimated by one of
its workers. Still, this is only
part of Amazon’s story, a story
that conceals the struggles of a
subset of its workers.
Part of my research at one
of the labs in the Electrical
Engineering
and
Computer
Science
Department
is
collecting data on how people
perceive similarities between
words. I was told to set up a
task on Amazon’s Mechanical
Turk, an online platform that
researchers use to collect data
from people which are later used
in creating artificial intelligence
models. Or, the way Amazon
likes to put it, a “marketplace”
that allows the use of “human
intelligence” in solving tasks
that computers are currently
unable to do. This was my first
time using anything remotely
similar to MTurk. The process,
though,
was
misleadingly
easy. Selecting the number of
cents to pay each respondent,
getting 500 responses in less
than 8 hours and immediately
rejecting 200 respondents for
unsatisfactory
answers
was
strangely straightforward for
something that affected 500
people. After all, those cents
were someone’s food for the
day. After all, I had rejected
200 people, who would never
receive those cents.
While I was looking through
the comments section filled
by MTurkers (that’s how we
call Amazon MTurk workers)
I noticed how many of the
comments
were
a
simple
“Thanks!” or “I really enjoyed
taking this survey.” I started
wondering about the people
filling in the answers to my
word similarity task. My eyes
glided toward the answers they
had
provided
on
their demographics.
The
majority
was
middle
class,
educated
people,
known to use MTurk
to
supplement
their earnings, but
there was another
predominant group.
One
filled
with
people who were part
of the lower middle
class or even living in poverty.
Still, I couldn’t stop there.
Those few comments filled
with human gratitude had built
a small bridge between those
MTurkers and me. “My job just
fell through …” was among the
first titles I saw on Reddit’s
forum dedicated to discussions
between MTurkers. It was
written by a person who had
just moved to a new city, had
lost their job, had no degree
and was suffering from anxiety,
asking if working on MTurk
could provide enough money
to survive for the next three to
four weeks. The first answer the
person received said a couple
of years ago MTurk provided
users with enough money for
minimum survival but that was
no longer a possibility. The rest
of the posts were of a similar
nature: people desperate to
earn enough money for survival
through MTurk and responses
from those saying that Amazon
was no longer providing that
possibility.
A 2016 Pew Research found
5 percent of workers earning
money from MTurk used the
platform because there was no
other available work in their
area. Imagine having a full-time
job where your performance is
constantly monitored. Where
there is a clock timing the
amount of time you spend on
each task that you have, a clock
that stops whenever you go to
the bathroom, take lunch or
start daydreaming in front of
your computer. At the end of the
day, your pay is based not on the
8 hours spent at the office, but
rather the number of minutes
completely focused on your
work. Imagine on top of that,
for every mistake you make on
your tasks your manager takes
away a certain percentage of
your money. Imagining this
doesn’t even fully encapsulate
the life of an MTurker trying to
survive the gig economy.
The reason why my survey
was completed by the time I
woke up on that next day? It’s
because people who use MTurk
to support themselves often
wake up at 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. to
fight for the highest-paying
tasks. The reason why people
are
finding
it
increasingly
hard to earn money through
MTurk?
It’s
because
the
numbers
of
MTurkers
is
growing. It’s because, based
on a Pew Research estimation
by 2027 nearly one in three
Americans
might
transition
to online platforms to support
themselves with on demand gig
work.
MTurk is the perfect model
for
keeping
the
world
of
researchers
separated
from
that of the workers. Broadly
put, it is the perfect model for
separating the educated and
the uneducated, through the
power of technology.
The bubble of indifference
in which tech companies are
wrapping themselves? It’s a
bubble that helps them set
their eyes on the future, to
the detriment of the present.
People
working
in
the
technology world are investing
money into creating benevolent
Artificial Intelligence, fearing
that future AI might get out of
hand. People working in the
technology world are paying
their employees so little that
they are forcing them to rely
on food stamps. They are
scared about the possibility of a
future where AI will take over
our jobs, while forgetting that
the way we are building these
AI technologies is by taking
advantage of people desperate
to make a few cents.
As
a
student,
I
try
to
understand
this
world
of
competing
needs.
Where
the
clear
negative
impact
big
technology
companies
can have, and my carefully
tailored résumé to these same
companies have to coexist. In a
similar manner, tech companies
have to start caring about both
building the future generation
of benevolent AI technologies
and their employees and gig-
workers. The answer to these
two
conundrums?
That
is
something that neither Amazon
or I have figured out yet.
Anamaria Cuza can be reached at
anacuza@umich.edu.
ANAMARIA CRUZA | COLUMN
Alanna Berger can be reached at
balanna@umich.edu.
JILLIAN LI | CONTACT JILLIAN AT UNIQUNAME@UMICH.EDU
ANAMARIA
CRUZA