Roundup gets rowdy

Roundup at UT. if you're from Texas, you've heard of it, been to it, or know people who have. It's basically one massive party for all the fraternities at UT. Picture massive amounts of people, incredible performers, and neon fanny packs everywhere. everybody in Greek life goes there, and often high schoolers who know they're not only headed to Austin the following year but also into Greek life attend. sometimes even fellow Greeks from other schools in Texas attend. As you can imagine, all these people (mostly intoxicated) can cause issues. According to the Daily Texan, this past year there were reports of a woman getting assaulted and apparently racist intentions behind it. The article also references other racist incidences that have occurred in the past. This was definitely something new to me. I had always viewed it as one big party, although now it's evident that even things with the purest intentions can end up bad. As a Greek community we cannot tolerate this behavior. If we expect the community outside Greek life to respect us, we must not allow things like this to occur. Eventually the administration will cut down on any and all events which could produce these types of offenses.

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2011/04/13/racial-conflicts-tarnish-history-roundup


some pictures from roundup this past year

bystander effect

So in college, there have been various times when i know myself, as well as my friends and sisters have all been bystanders. Luckily, nothing serious has happened because of it. there was a time, however, in high school where something more serious occurred. My junior year i was hanging out with a bunch of my friends on my soccer team and we were all drinking having a good time. Eventually, people started separating off and going to different places. I went to my boyfriends house with a couple of my friends and some of the other girls went to another party. Everything was going fine until i went to check my phone upstairs and i had about 10 missed calls, all from various people.  One of whom was my ex-best friend. We had a falling out over a series of things, including her boyfriend at the time and i didn't really want to talk to her. so i didn't call her back

About 25 minutes later, i got a call from her boyfriend and picked it up. He was freaking out and screaming and telling me that something was wrong with erin (my ex-friend). All he kept saying was he thought she was unconscious and didnt' know what to do. So i told one of my teammates that wasn't drinking and she drove us to where they were. When we got there he was holding erin, and i have never seen anything scarier in my entire life, she really and truly looked dead. We took her to a guy friends car and me and another friend jumped in the back with erin. We took off for the hospital at speeds i don't even want to think about. Cops tried to pull us over twice, but realized we weren't stopping for anything and they gave up. We finally got to the hospital and rushed her inside to the emergency room. More and more people kept showing up at the hospital, including erin's mom, whom i had to call. she was hysterical and screaming at me and telling me it was somehow my fault. Luckily, another one of the soccer moms was there to calm her down. While waiting i got the full story.

One of the seniors on the team had gotten erin some Everclear for the evening (it's legal in texas). However, Erin decided to drink almost half the bottle by herself. While she continued to get more and more drunk, none of the people she was with stopped her. I can imagine she was beyond belligerent, and at no point did anybody she was with stopped her. I'm assuming this is mostly because none of them had really drank before, so they didn't know how to handle it. Regardless, it was stupid of them to do absolutely nothing. Just like it was stupid of me to ignore all those phone calls. had i picked up earlier, maybe i could have changed the outcome of the night. Erin ended up having alcohol poisoning and she was released from the hospital the next morning. Unfortunately for her, gossip travels fast at our school, and by the following monday EVERYBODY knew and was talking about her. I felt awful. She was also grounded for 8 months. Her mom made her apologize to anybody involved, although i think many of us should have apologized to her. Me and erin never solved our previous issues, and to this day we still aren't friends/don't talk about what happened that night.

As far as the greek community, i think my experience definitely taught me to always be watching out for people. I certainly like to have a good time when i go out, but my sisters' safety is my number one priority. I will always make sure somebody is walked home, not by themselves, etc. Honestly in serious situations, you really do "sober up quick." Luckily for me, my best friends are my sisters, and i know they ALWAYS have my back, and would do anything to help me out. however, i know thats not the case for anybody, and that is a serious issue that must be addressed within the Greek Community.

Oath

So our blog prompt this past week seemed simple enough. After all, it was only one word. however, this one word holds a lot of meaning, especially to somebody who has taken an oath. As discussed in class, there are not that many times in your life when you take an oath. Confirmation, pledging a fraternity or sorority, and marriage are some that i can think of. These are very serious promises you make to uphold a set of values

For a fraternity or sorority, these pledges are often made without full knowledge of what they're doing. Initiation is often a hectic and confusing process, and new members aren't sure exactly what they're promising. Looking back, i know i promised to be a good citizen and sister and to help others follow this same path. However, i wish it was more clear as to what we were promising. I know we can't divulge the secrets of our initiation before the process, but i wish we could find some way to better prepare our new members so they understand the full extent of what they were promising. Perhaps this would help once they girls became active.

Citizenship

Well this is certainly not the easiest blog to do. The others have been pretty simple, and the answers just came to me. This one, however, i had to actually think about. i know, how horrible. 


How are you (individually) displaying citizenship within the fraternity/sorority community? 
- When i think about displaying citizenship within the greek community, i try and think about what i've done to help the greek community as an individual. Things like attending other fraternities and sororities events and greek-wide events all help promote greek unity. I try my best to never talk badly about greek life to those who aren't in it. This will hopefully keep the greek community in a good light.


How does your chapter display citizenship within the fraternity/sorority community? What does this look like?
-this is a bit harder to think about. As a whole, we try and get all our girls to attend things such as speakers, philanthropy events, etc. but it is really hard to get a chapter of 95 girls focused on one thing at a time. This is definitely something we are looking to improve in our chapter right now.


How does the fraternity/sorority community display citizenship within the greater university community.  
-We as a greek community constantly talk about bettering our image and improving relations within the university community. but there is no way that we are effective at this. Ask any "non-greek" and they will sit there for hours and talk about the crazy parties they went to as freshman, seeing people walking in weird costumes during greek week, and being obnoxious at the O. As fun as all this stuff is, they don't have the benefit of seeing all the other stuff we do. The philanthropies, the service days, the sisterhoods/brotherhoods. If i weren't greek, and all i saw were the things that focused around drinking, i would think we "paid for our friends" too. This is a serious problem that we must aim to fix if we ever hope to become a more rounded greek community and university.