Established 1826 — Oldest College Newspaper West of the Alleghenies

Editorial board shouldn’t decide what’s in good taste

TO THE EDITOR:

After reading the Miami Student, something a small minority of those of us on campus attempt to do on a bi-weekly basis. I am always left with an empty feeling, one that could best be described as disappointment. It seems that the editorial board can't help but publish an asinine opinion once every four issues or so.

From the idiotic assertion that it's everyone else's business which fraternities are disciplined and why; to the most recent tripe about how comedy is only comedy if it's sacrilegious. That sexually suggestive house names are in any way "worse" than implying being high in a house of worship. I suggest that if the editors of our vaunted and long established school newspaper want to try to dictate style to us unwashed non journalism majors, that they make such a section in the pages. It certainly would be a better use of paper than the same old student submitted op-eds that parrot the views espoused by the sociology departments and any field of study ending in studies.

First on the subject of fraternities, this paper has made their open hostility towards men's Greek life all too clear. They view fraternities as exclusionary clubs dripping with privilege and microagressions. All too often I hear gripes about how "their daddies handed them everything" and yet the vast majority of those gripers come not from the STEM fields or FSB but from such vaunted and high paying majors as Early Childhood Education and Drama *jazz hands*. These are the same political neophytes rooting so hard for Bernie Sanders to walk across water and erase the student loan debt for their worthless diplomas.

The truth is those high paying majors are big tents, the study of economics cares not what color skin you have, what gender you are or where your sexual proclivities lie. The same is true for most fraternities on campus less the gender part, exclusivity used to be a positive term, an aspirational term, not just one of "discrimination." I digress, the point is that these are private organizations with dues paying members. No one at the paper or anyone else for that matter owns shares of SAE, or sits on the board of the parent company that owns Phi Delta Theta. So on that front, kindly butt out.

As far as the house names bit is concerned this at least partially extends back to the other one, as I feel that at the very least some of this animosity is because of the hand in hand tradition of fraternities and annex houses. But as the editorial board made so clear, the main marching orders seem to be coming from the Women's and Gender Studies department, as the only houses loudly objected to were those where the joke landed at the feet (or elsewhere) of the female gender.

As I remember hearing from a member of Greek life that shall remain unnamed, there used to be a house that went by the name "Trail of Beers," insensitive, probably, funny to some, yes. The point is that comedy is not written in stone, the only rule is there are no rules. What's in good taste is not up to any one person, or editorial board, to decide.

Benjamin Sharff

sharffbp@miamioh.edu