[10040] in APO-L
oh gosh, another toast song though
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Patti Alutto)
Sun Nov 6 19:10:15 1994
Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 19:07:32 -0500
Reply-To: Patti Alutto <palutto@INDIANA.EDU>
From: Patti Alutto <palutto@INDIANA.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L%PURCCVM.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
I have been a diehard "don't change the Toast Song" person since I
pledged over five years ago, but now I'm beginning to see the other side
much more clearly. I had a thought for an alternate proposal that I'd
like you all to think about.
Most of the fuss I've heard has to do with the proposed words - for
example, I got sick and tired of hearing that third verse sung everwhere
at the last convention. Since my chapter sings the song at the end of
every meeting, I really didn't see a point to adding another verse.
My idea is that at some convention the fraternity decide NOT what the
change will be (if any), but that there WILL be a change. Let us decide
that we want to commit to a gender neutral Toast Song, and then give
everyone two years to think about it. At the convention after our
commitment to alter the TS, let every Region submit its one or two best
alternatives and let the national delegates vote on which one will be
chosen. Assuming that we have made the decision to change and set the
next convention as the deadline, then one will have to be picked. I
realize that this is irrelevant for this convention, but I think the
underlying debate of whether we want to make ourselves more PC is the
real issue just now.
While I have no desire to bend to the world of PCism, I can see that many
people are put off by the references to men only in the TS. We have
decided not to restrict anyone because of their race, gender, etc., but
we should really walk the talk if we're going to be that loud about it.
And to the person who made a comment about sororities not changing to be
gender neutral, there are reasons for that (no men allowed, for one, so
it's not an issue). But you may be interested in noting that many
sororities were originally formed as women's fraternities (many still
carry that name legally) but did not then have any references to men.
The word "sorority" is a relatively recent creation to help make
distinctions, but the fact remains that the word "fraternity" was
originally used to refer to a society, not a MALE society per se.
Brotherhood is only so narrowly defined in english and a few other
languages, and refers to any gender in many others. Don't go pinning
expectations on people simply because you feel they should interpret the
english language the exact way you do. There is enough ambiguity to
allow differences of opinion when it comes to meaning.
In Brotherhood,
Patti
Mu Chapter, Indiana University (the one in Indiana)
