From: pshuang@athena.mit.edu (Ping-Shun Huang)
Newsgroups: soc.college
Subject: Generalizations (was: Fraternities)
Date: 17 Apr 92 00:19:13 GMT
Article-I.D.: W20-575-.PSHUANG.92Apr16201906
Distribution: soc
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

[This is long. I'd like to make a meta-comment here, which is that
people should quote just enough to make sure the statements they are
responding to have some context, and no more.]

I wanted to make a comment on some things which has been mentioned by
several people. Someone pointed out that if you were to tell an
insurance company that despite being a male under the age of 21, you
were not as likely to get involved in a car accident as *OTHER* males
under the age of 21, they are likely to laugh at you; I agree with this
assessment. It was also mentioned that statistically, it seems that
fraternity members are more likely to rape than the general college male
population as whole. I would probably agree with this as well.

 ** My main point is: should we model our interactions with other people
on the same basis that insurance companies deal with their clients? e.g.
an insurance company usually takes the attitude that: "We don't care
that you're a person with your own mind and soul, all you are to us are
these things on a sheet of paper, numbers and labels.  Because you fall
within this category as indicated by these particular numbers and
labels, we're going to charge you ten times as much, we don't care that
you're actually a very careful driver, because we are not set up to do
that because we handle 10,000,000 people." A fairly common stance seems
to be that since statistically fraternity members are more likely to be
this and that, then we should feel justified in being prejudiced.

 ** Whoever brought up the statistics might have considered mentioning
that whenever you sub-sample, especially if the sub-sample is very small
(and even an entire Greek system at an university is a small sub-sample,
much less just a single fraternity chapter, or a single fraternity
brother), you may get a population which differs very greatly in
characteristics from the entire group. I think, as with the general
college population, fraternity members have a very high standard
deviation from whatever means are calculated for the group overall.

 ** What would I like to see? For people to judge any given individual
for who that individual is. If you meet someone and they act like an
asshole, then by all means treat them accordingly regardless of whether
that person is a member of a fraternity or not. If you're a woman at a
party and someone wants to take you somewhere, decide from his behavior
and demeanor if you trust him any farther than you can throw him. Let
who the individual is guide what you think of him.

 ** I find it interesting that one of my professors in a Women's Studies
class was incredibly prejudiced about someone from a social fraternity
who was in the class, even though one of the strongest points in that
class was that feminism espoused treating individuals on their own
merits and demerits, and not their gender. He was quiet and unassuming,
polite, not rude or chauvinistic in behavior that I could see during
that term. Yet whenever she wanted to make any disparaging remarks about
men (an attitude which I had some problems with, but that's a separate
issue from my point) she made it a point to address it to him and
solicit his opinion in a condescending way. I don't believe this was
justified and hypocritical on her part.

When I wear the Greek letters "Alpha Phi Omega" on my clothing and meet
someone for the first time, I believe that they form up different
expectations of what kind of person I am than if they had met me while I
wasn't wearing sewn-on patches of differently-colored cloth.  But I am
still the same person. I suppose I might understand if I wore a shirt
that had a specific explicit message, like: "Vote for the KKK, Just say
Yes to David Duke", or "Anti-seminitism: it's only common sense".

There are certain campuses (I can name at least two: University of
California at Santa Cruz and Clark University) where APO brothers feel
threatened when they wear their letters. Why? Even if in your
experience, persons belonging to certain groups are more likely to
depend on welfare, or be loud and obnoxious, or be more likely to
sexually harass others, why is it OK to generalize to the group for
fraternities, but not acceptable to make similar generalizations on the
divisions of gender, race, religion, or sexual orientation? (OK, at
least I believe making such generalizations on the basis of any of those
is not acceptable, you may or may not disagree.)

 ** Stop all this flamage, which I do not believe to be accomplishing
anything, except to raise people's tempers and generate ad hominem
attacks in public. I suppose if you're enjoying the flaming, then you'll
continue infinitum, though.

 ** For background: I am a first-generation Asian majoring in Computer
Science at MIT. While I am proud to be a brother in Alpha Phi Omega, a
National Service Fraternity, we are not part of the established Greek
system by choice (e.g. no house, no IFC representation, etc.) I speak
for myself using first-hand observations.

---
Yours in Leadership/Fellowship/Service,
Ping Huang, AX chapter of APO @ M.I.T. (pshuang@athena.mit.edu)

--
Above text where applicable is (c) Copyleft 1991, all rights deserved by:
UNIX:/etc/ping instantiated (Ping Huang) [INTERNET: pshuang@athena.mit.edu]