Going Greek

From the first time i came to visit SMU during my Easter break in 2006, all I was told was that going Greek was no big deal. My tour guide said that while he is not Greek, he is stil invited to all of the parties and almost all of his friends were Greek. After experiencing the activities of rush and hearing about pledgeship, i dont see how that is possible.

During any Greek pledgeship, they pledges schedule is crammed full with everything from mixers with other sororities twice a week to fraternity activities almost every day. It seems that if you are not in a fraternity already or pledging to be in one, your social life is alomost non-existant. I only know of two people who are not pledging a fraternity or sorority, and they hate it. There is never anything to do during the week, and only sometimes is there any activities open to everyone during the weekend. If SMU wants to shake their reputation as a "Greek Only" University and the nationally know "pig run" for sororities, then SMU needs to offer more activities and be open to more suggestions about changing the social life.

SMU's Corrupt Parking

Honestly, whats the deal with all the of parking tickets? I understand that they are trying to inforce what the SMU handbook and Park N' Pony tell us, but it is starting to get rediculous. At the start of the semseter there was already very little parking, but since there has been added construction, there is even fewer place to park. Being a male, i think that we have it worse off than everyone else. Faculty have their own spots and female students get to park wherever they like. I understand the chivalry thing and that we cant park behind thew dorms during the week but parking inforcement has become too power hungry with the way they are inforcing the law. One of my female friends had to drive me to the hospital a few weeks ago, and parked my car behind McElvany when she got back. When i got back to my dorm the next day, i saw a yellow ticket on my windshield. When i went to tell the Park N' Pony about what had happened they said there was nothing they could do. Given the circumstances of the parking this year with all of the construction and activities, there should be no parking tickets given out for stupid little things such as parking in Meadows overnight or parking behind the dorms during the week. With all this limited parking they should at least make parking cheaper if not repay all of the people who got rediculous parking tickets.

Wet vs. Dry Campus

What is the big deal with adding a bar to campus? While some might think this will add to the alcohol abuse on campus, i believe that it will reduce the amount of alcohol related crimes. While visiting colleges before i finally settled on SMU, i realized that all of the colleges i was visiting had at least one bar on campus, and the shocking thing about it was that these were all Jesuit schools. Schools such as Xavier University in Cincinnati and Marquette University in Milwaukee all had bars on their campus. If the campus did not have a bar already established, they were working on plans to build a bar. Notre Dame is one of these schools. To me it seems that if we add a bar on campus it would decrease the number of accidents and alcohol related driving incidents. Rather than go out to Side Bar or M Street and risk driving back home from Greenville, many students would chose to walk to the bar on campus. With the Giddy-Up service running at night, this is a win-win situation. Students who are of age can drink on campus without having to worry about driving to and from a bar, and if they drink to much they can get a ride back to their place of residence.