Column:

Put down your beer and volunteer

By Sean Nahlik

Published Feb. 16, 2009

They prance down the street sporting Ugg boots and tights, each carrying a bag bearing their Greek mark: Gamma Kung Fu or Apple Pi or whatever. But I am not only mocking today. I am going to remind all (of the stupid, stereotypical) sorority sisters how they've fucked up miserably. Sisterhood? If matching outfits count, you're set.

For one, the cutesy, moronic manner needs to go. Banding together as sisters, you combine experiences, knowledge and common sense to grow into mature women who are sophisticated, intellectual and proud. Instead, you have entire Facebook albums full of pictures of girls fake-drinking out of empty liquor bottles, grinding on various inanimate objects and generally looking like idiots. That's what it's about? Getting wasted, documenting it and then repeat? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Set an example. Freak out the fraternity boys with news that you don't drink because you'd rather do something constructive, such as making memories you'll actually remember the next day. This won't get you laid, but maybe the fraternities will clean up their acts (see: apocalypse) and try to impress you. Girls can stop crying about being used by dumb boys who moved on because they found a new drunken vixen.

You have to get on your hands and knees and work (you'll be sober, don't worry) to better the community and people around you. And we've reached my second point the stereotypes seem to miss. Groups are formed with common ideas in the hope they can strengthen themselves while improving the world around them. Teaching your initiates the proper technique to do a keg stand or the extended rules of beer pong is again, dead wrong. Motivation, respecting yourself and above all, having real pride for you and your fellow sisters should be the ultimate goal. Volunteer more than what's required. Enjoy those study hours you are forced to do. Remember that you are in college to learn. Drive past the highway you cleaned up with your friends (and had a blast doing because you were nearly killed, fooled around with broken glass and had real, silly fun) and think how you made a difference. The bunnies appreciate the lack of death due to plastic consumption. Dead bunnies are sad. We don't like dead bunnies. If you do, that's another topic altogether.

In college, you have to read. Scary I know, but try it. You might learn something. When I see people whose Facebook profiles read "Favorite books: I dOn'T rEaD lOl," I gag. Again, stop acting like idiots. Burn those Cosmos. Pick up a Discover or Time magazine and scare the crap out of a guy when you know how the Large Hadron Collider works.

This whole group-dynamic fostering power through sisterhood thing sounds like a theme or something. Keep reading.

What should you take from all of this? I'd like to propose a positive image. Tanning lotion sales have plummeted. Classy, witty girls strut across campus. Girls would kill to be them, not because they're scattered among fraternity houses in varying states of dementia but because they're respected. And not for putting out, but for pushing away, saying, "In your dreams!" and leaving the boys bewildered. Aretha Franklin was not wrong for wanting respect, and these girls have earned it. They don't talk about the hottest house or what fraternity has the biggest dicks but discuss the news, politics and life.

Make the dream a reality. Your founders are rolling in their graves.