Question of the Week exposes misinformation
To the Editor,
I would like to express my concern for the Question of the Week in the September 27 edition of The Free Press. I have been a member of Alpha Xi Delta Women’s Fraternity for the past two years and I am currently president. Over my past five years at USM I have seen many changes in Greek Life, but one thing that has not changed is the small population of USM students we represent. It is then understandable that when choosing five students at random, that not one of them would be in a Sorority or Fraternity. However I would like to point out that four of the five students were freshmen and given that it is the Fall Semester, they are most likely first semester freshman. Currently, none of the Greek Organizations on campus can ask a first semester freshman to join, nor do I feel that many first semester freshman have had sufficient time to draw conclusions about the Sororities or Fraternities here at USM.
If you had asked me the same question I would have said “I am an Alpha Xi Delta and without a doubt, joining was the best decision I have ever made. It has not only given me the opportunity to meet some of my best friends but also to become a leader on campus. I am now also involved in the Accounting & Finance Society as treasurer, as well as being a member of the Leadership Development Board.”
I recommend that in the future the Question of the Week be researched before it is asked to ensure that false assumptions are not made as a result.
Thank you,
Kerrin Ayn Lucas
Senior Accounting Major
President, Alpha Xi Delta
Editor’s Note: This next letter from Mlle. Meriting-Sana was submitted by a family member of one of our staff members. The claims were found to be baseless, but we have included the letter for your entertainment.
USM and UMF need to find peace
To the Editor:
It has recently come to my attention that a rather alarming animosity has sprung up between the University of Southern Maine and the University of Maine at Farmington. I was quite perplexed as to how this happened since the two schools have shared an amiable relationship in the past. After some research, I determined the starting point of this “intercollegiate war” to be something so horrific, something so ghastly and deplorable, that it would make a grown scholar cry. Since the beginning of the spring semester of 2003, UMF students have been borrowing books from the USM campus on interlibrary loans and disguising them as books belonging to UMF. Determined to get to the bottom of this perfidious pilfering, the USM library staff queried into the disappearances of these sacred summaries of sentience. The mystery was soon resolved.
To cover their tracks, UMF students began disguising the stolen items. They transmogrified the texts so completely that even the handbook heisters lost track of what was stolen.
Thus began a series of struggles between the two campuses. The schools now mask a boiling enmity beneath the surface of the supposed nonchalance. Guerilla soldiers disguised as students intermittently attempt to plunder, pillage and otherwise undermine the enemy campus. One confrontation went to the extreme of feeding the opponent from the campus dining facilities. It makes me shudder to think of what happens even now behind these seemingly normal college scenes.
Why can’t we put our differences aside, throw down the cafeteria food and begin again? Yesterday was a dark hour, but the sun shines brightly on a new tomorrow. Come together over the tattered remnants of “War and Peace.” Walk into the dawn of a new day as compatriots in this world of uncensored evils.
~ Mlle. Meriting-Sana, E.G.