I recently read an article in The Lanthorn that a Miss Butcher wrote entitled “Study find sorority pledges more likely to develop eating disorders.” This article, although well written and factual, paints a negative view of Greek life at GVSU. The article only contains one small section with a response from a sorority woman on campus, and that is not enough. This article will cause all women on campus who are unaffiliated to shy away from sorority life. There was no information in the article about the statistics regarding GVSU and eating disorders, therefore to put this article in our newspaper is unfair to not only the women of Greek life, but to all the potential future members of sororities. While discussing this article with my non-affiliated friend Mike, he made a very good point that when they state in the article that there was an increase in body shame and self objectification, they don’t specify if it was an increase based on a secondary test (where the people who were surveyed rated these things higher than the first time) or if it was just simply because less participants completed the rushing process, so the percentage of those who had these issues was higher because of a smaller pool of subjects. This article out right attacks sorority women, and isn’t even clear in its information. All the sororities on campus work extremely hard to promote a positive body image and break down stereotypes; and having one single article like this could tear down everything we’ve worked for. As a member of a sorority, I can honestly say that sorority life has helped improve my body image immensely. The first 18 years of my life I had a very negative view of myself. All the media propaganda and models and magazines never helped growing up either. However, when I joined my sorority, things began to change. I began to have support in ways I never dreamed, and got to learn from beautiful, confident women every day. I know that on days I’m feeling down about my body image, I have 60 sisters to tell me how beautiful I am. Although this article may be true for other campuses, it is definitely not true for ours. I hope all the unaffiliated women at GVSU realize just how different and innovative our campus is.

Stephanie Koprince & Michael Rajnicek