As one of the many commentary editors on the Maroon-News staff, I have the pleasure of reading Thomas Hedges’ articles every week. I would first like to commend him on the sheer amount of guts he has for simply writing the articles in the first place.  I say the same for the Maroon-News for taking the risk in publishing his articles. Hedges and the Maroon-News have been receiving a lot of flak for his articles. I can appreciate that he’s trying to create awareness of the various issues that exist within the Colgate community. However, in terms of creating real change, I think what the articles have done is stimulate the exact opposite effect.

I encourage all of our readers to read the articles entitled “The Darker Side of Greek Life” and “Sexploitation at Colgate” and the comments posted online about them. In many ways, Hedges has only widened the gap between those who adhere to these cultural qualities and those who choose not to partake in them. After reading the majority of these comments, I have noticed three types of comments: those that are against your opinions, those that honor them and those that attack you and the Maroon-News personally. This is representative of the dichotomy that exists on campus and how it seems to just keep growing when the issues are brought to the forefront of discussion. Defamation of others’ opinions and beliefs is no way to solve a problem. You cannot beat an issue to a pulp until it magically disappears. There are better and more effective ways of changing that which you believe is wrong.

My suggestion to Hedges, and to the rest of the Colgate community, is that if any change is to be made, it must be done internally. If he believes there is such a big problem with the fraternity system on campus, why not join a frat and strive to make it a better environment? While I realize that he has personal reasons for not joining a frat, I think that it would be more effective to stimulate change as an insider than making an attack on the Greek system in general as an outsider. Much of the same goes for the hook-up culture. If males hold all the sexual power at this school, what has he been doing as a male student to change that? Instead of going after those that take part of the hook-up culture, maybe he could subtly change the opinions of his friends. The same goes for his female friends: rally them to your cause and maybe the voice will grow. I realize these suggestions are idealized but in many ways, actions such as these could have more power than Hedges’ articles.

I know it sounds very cliché of me to say this, but we are a community here at Colgate. We each play a role in shaping the way it is, stemming from the way we develop ourselves within it. Hedges obviously believes there are a lot of ways we can make Colgate a better place, but those ideas have been masked in the articulation and the delivery. He can take what I have written with a grain of salt if he wishes.

This is just the opinion of one person. I would like to say, though, if articles of this nature continue and they receive the same reaction as the previous two, he will begin to lose his grip on the campus’ interest and he will never be able to alter the things that he finds offensive.