Frats rush freshmen in dorms! If that headline were ever to grace the pages of The Daily Campus, we’d likely receive a bevy of phone calls and e-mails from the four corners of campus. Well, maybe just four phone calls, period.
The first would be from the Interfraternity Council. We are not “frat” boys, they’d complain. Instead of following the Animal House tradition of beer-guzzling and skirt-chasing, our greek houses participate in service activities, scholarship and leadership. We, here at SMU, prefer the term “fraternity.”
Next message. Here’s the Panhellenic Council. Oh my God! They can’t believe we used the word “rush” in our paper. Greek women are not as elite and petty as the typical university rush. For our information, the correct word is “recruitment!”
Next message. The Office of Student Life wants to know why we haven’t learned that we don’t use the word “freshman” on campus. We don’t want our incoming students to feel unwelcome or uncomfortable with all the derogatory baggage that the term carries around. The correct expression is “first-year.”
Next Message. This is Eddie Hull calling from the Office of Resident Life and Student Housing. From now on, we’d prefer it if you could avoid the term “dorm” in the paper. In the strictest sense, a dorm is just a place to live. Our halls on the Hilltop are much more than that. We prefer the term “residence hall.”
This campus is constantly tripping over its own terminology. There seems to be a generally accepted belief among the administration of various campus offices and organizations that the quickest way to change perceptions is to change the word.
No matter what we officially call our incoming students and their places of living, does altering a term really have any affect on dismantling college stereotypes? Probably not.
But that doesn’t mean they’re not worth tripping over on occasion. Each time a conversation in the dorm – rather residence halls is interrupted for correction, attention is drawn to the differences (even if they are contrived) between stereotype and SMU reality. And as long as we’re thinking about those intended differences, we’ve already become more sensitive to the issue.
