By Allen Miller

In response to Katie Engelhart’s article, “Hey There, Sister,” Opinion, Nov. 13.

By Katie O’Neill and Alison Ewing

The Greek social scene is often the only part of Greek life in which non-Greeks participate. When the only place Panhellenic women are spotted is at fraternity parties it’s easy to see where stereotypes originate. Our social lives are only the tip of the iceberg; the unseen lives of sorority women include raising thousands of dollars for philanthropy, leading Girl Scout troops, tutoring elementary school children, studying with sisters in the library, editing campus publications, running huge student organizations and governing ourselves.

By Brendan Mahan

As someone who supports broad civil liberties, I find the recent passage of state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage deeply disturbing. And I find our continued reliance on the government to control marriage somewhat bizarre. I see no reason to think that marriage is an area where the government has particular competence or where individuals particularly lack it. People are perfectly capable of defining the terms of their relationships in other contexts, and the fact that marriage is a relationship of great personal significance suggests it should have less governmental control, not more.

Scott Eckern is the artistic director of the California Musical Theater. Or at least he was. As artistic director, Scott has worked with many in the LGBT community and even has a lesbian sister. Whatever their orientation, Scott showed love and respect to whoever he worked with.

However, Scott also favored Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California, and to that end he donated $1000 to the campaign. Now this money was Scott’s personal money. He never insisted that his views represented the California Musical Theater, and he never imposed his personal beliefs on anyone before or after the donation.

It’s a dark, VILLIANOUS, humid night in the Commons. But perched in our ivy-coated brick fortress, The Sun editors are having a typical (read: debauched) Thursday night behind their computer monitors, red pens and broken printers. And yes, we’re playing beer pong. And yes, you guessed it, we started a frat (Sigma Upsilon Nu). After all, who wouldn’t after this week, the frattiest of the year at Cornell by far. Both Panhel and IFC HEROICALLY elected their new exec boards, and we’re psyched to start a new era right along with the rest of the VILLIANOUSLY rush-crazed (dry or wet, we don’t care) Greek community. P.S., sorry if we messed up your scrap book — we feel your pain — we at Sigma Upsilon Nu scrapbook too, let’s compare at tea time?

“Nice shoes. Wanna fuck?” A stranger greets me on a Collegetown street corner. I grimace and keep walking. Suddenly, a second unfamiliar male — an accomplice to the first — leaps out from the shadows. Whipping out a digital camera, he captures my disgust before the two run away into the night. On the phone with my sister, I stare after them in dismay.

But something about having my little sister as an aural witness to the transgression got me all hot and bothered. So, when I saw the little assholes run into Collegetown Pizza, I decided I needed to give her a lesson in self-assertiveness.

Mustering all the maturity and poise I had in me, I stomped across the street to articulate my grave sense of grievance.

“Hey, shitheads. Who do you think you are?”

Okay, so the mandatory intro is that last week millions of people celebrated Barack Obama’s victory. My former students in Egypt sent me emails saying, “Congratulations for the best election.” My partner, celebrating in New York City, was accosted on the street by a bawling man who proclaimed, “It was a vote by the people and their voice was heard — their voice was heard!”

And indeed the voice — and the celebration of millions of voices all over the world — was a raucous one. The significance of an Obama presidency can not be over-emphasized. But I can’t help thinking of what else the people voted for. The sound of those Californian voices who voted yes on Proposition 8 keep ringing in my head and drowning out the exuberant ones.

Ever since that historic moment when God instructed Abraham, the founding patriarch of Judaism and the ancient Israelites, to circumcise himself as a sign of their covenant, Jews have been at the forefront of wooing the ladies. It’s not our fault that, as a collective people, we get more action than a sorority house toilet after dinnertime. It’s in our genes.

By now we’re all aware that Change has swept the nation, but more importantly the last few weeks have brought great change in my life. I’m fully prepared to acknowledge the historic quality of the election, but I bombed my LSAT, I’m getting a job, and I’m moving to New York for a few years. America elected a black liberal president, and I lost my right to get married in my home state of California. I don’t know what is wreaking more havoc on my inner thighs — the LSAT or Prop 8. I’m not going to law school next year, and I’m not getting married. To be fair, I don’t have a promising candidate for husband at the moment, but I’d at least like to maintain the option of getting drunk in L.A. and marrying a call boy.

“Sorry, this is probably wrong but . . .”

“Sorry, I’m not sure if this is what you mean . . .”

“Oh! Sorry!”

If you have heard any of those phrases lately, chances are they came out of a woman’s mouth. A lot of women at Cornell, myself included, are too quick to apologize. Ever since I noticed it, I try to check myself before I say sorry. What am I sorry for? Often I should instead be saying excuse me, or nothing at all. After diminishing my use of the S-word, I have noticed considerable improvements in my overall self-esteem and a stronger sense of self. This does not exactly put me alongside the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt and Pink in the big leagues of female self-confidence, but it’s a start.