“OMG! What A Weekend!” A False Image of Colgate

To the Editor:

I have yet to find any purpose in the article entitled, “OMG! What a Weekend,” which was published on November 12. This article, in my opinion, was a waste of paper. Next time that one wishes to write a commentary on female students and their behaviors at Colgate, I suggest that the author actually talk to some of them before he write such inaccurate assumptions and then allow such fallacious claims to be published for 2,750 students to read.

Two weeks ago, The Maroon-News included a four page feature article on the prevalence of eating disorders at Colgate. Their goal was to raise levels of awareness on this issue and to increase sensitivity amongst the student body. In the very first paragraph of the aforementioned article, the author made an insensitive comment about a girl who was suffering from anorexia. The author insulted the efforts that The Maroon-News staff had made in their dedication to this issue by trivializing this grave and serious illness, and undoubtedly offended the one out of every three women on our campus who have either suffered from an eating disorder or will suffer from an eating disorder at some point in her life.

The article also contains a negative portrayal of a Beta fraternity member. In your article, the fictitious female character that you were writing about was led into a bathroom stall at the Palace last Saturday night by one particular Beta member. Unfortunately for you, it turns out that the men in the Beta fraternity were too busy this past weekend to spend any time in a bathroom stall at the Palace. They were holding an auction at their home that raised 6,000 dollars so that children in Madison County could go to summer camp. I would like to personally commend the author for spending his spare time passing judgments about a group of students who are using their spare time to raise money for disadvantaged children.

Furthermore, the article makes several assumptions about the financial status of Colgate students. Before one assumes that the females on this campus are irresponsibly using their parent’s credit cards, one should know that more than half of our student body receives financial aid from the University so that they can receive this valuable education. We don’t spend all of our time at the mall buying Juicy Couture clothing. For the record, most of us at Colgate do not have housekeepers. In fact, I don’t know of one person who actually does. Even if a student’s family did hire a housekeeper, I would assume that most of us would be respectful of their nationality, their language, and their culture. Each and every student on this campus was accepted into Colgate for a reason, so please do not insult us with such an illegitimate and offensive representation of our intelligence.