Dear SMU Community:

I come to you all at another trying moment in our campus’s history. Yesterday, police reports revealed that a SMU student was assaulted by a group of SMU students in a fraternity house over the weekend. As many of you may know, despite my relative distance from the chapter in my last semester at SMU, that fraternity house was my own and the alleged assailants members of my chapter.

Now I won’t speak to the act itself since I am neither Sig Ep’s spokesman nor fully comfortable with the facts myself. I will, however, speak to something that has been gnawing away at me for months on end. And that is the state of community here at Southern Methodist University.

Now I’m a pretty calm guy – I don’t like to show my stresses and I generally refuse to put my burdens on others. But I’ll be honest with you, throughout this year addressing the various physical and sexual assaults, allegations of hazing and failures to respect diversity on this campus has taken a bit of a toll on my otherwise even-keeled demeanor.

We’ve been told since forever that college is the best four years of our lives – live it up! Get wild, go crazy! Drinking until you puke is normal. Waking up in a stranger’s bed is cool. Coursework is a distraction. I’m having my fun, rules, lives, and futures be damned.

Now I’m no saint. Never have been, never claimed to be. Furthermore, many, indeed likely the vast majority of you, would not agree with the prevailing sentiment I just outlined. But here’s the thing people – these expectations of college life exist. Their repercussions are clear. We have a student population that, from drinking to drug use to sexual activity, has largely removed self-respect and personal responsibility from the actions they take towards themselves and others.

We can spend the rest of our lives pursuing clearer policies and best practices from an administrative level. But the faulty connotations of what a worthy and meaningful community looks like, if not combated with truth from student to student, will continue to lead to the problems that have plagued our university throughout the year.

Since this is now verifiably a speech, I suppose I’ll go ahead and quote someone famous. English philosopher Edmund Burke once said that “all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

As I stand here before you, one semester left in my SMU career, job search looming, future uncertain, it is easy for me to desire the world’s simplest and most dangerous of solutions – postponing an inevitable conclusion. But instead, through the fight and slog, I ask you to join with me, not to speak idly or to spin our wheels in things that ultimately do not matter, but rather ardently pursue a student community that seeks honor and responsibility rather than petty and meaningless distraction.

True education is more than the net sum of all assignments completed and notes taken. It goes to the very morals and values that inform your every decision. As we look to the future, I ask that you all not only keep that thought in mind, but demand a similar commitment from every student on this campus.
Thank you and, as ever, Pony Up.

Alex Mace
Student Body President