Every Friday, the Daily Texan editorial board publishes a selection of tweets and online comments culled from the Daily Texan website and the various Daily Texan Twitter accounts, along with direct submissions from readers.
Submissions can be sent to [email protected].
“It’s human nature to gravitate toward people who look like you and have the same background as you. This goes back to the dawn of mankind. This mindset is not something that will change radically in our lifetimes or in our childrens’ lifetimes. We do have a cultural diversity on campus we should be proud of. But you can’t force people to socialize with certain groups; it will only breed resentment.”
—Online commenter "Jamie" in response to columnist Nick Spiller’s column “Integration won’t happen on the UT campus unless off-campus Greek organizations integrate first.”
“Although I agree with [the] general sentiment of Spiller’s column, as a member of a South Asian fraternity I have a few things to say. … The reason why offshoot South Asian fraternities have started and gained popularity within their respective communities is not because all brown people want to hang out with each other … the fact is most of us don’t want to join a Greek life that we feel might be alienating or is out-of-touch with how we were raised. That is not a knock on IFC, these are just the facts. All of us still have many white/black friends but don’t want to actively associate with fraternities, many of which pressure themselves to conform to a faux Southern aesthetic — and by implication pressure themselves to remain largely white for reputation’s sake. The same goes true for sororities. …
That being said, the general sentiment that fraternities should pride themselves on representing the cream of crop is something I do agree with. However, this inherently means that you have to accept non-whites at times.”
—Online commenter "Plinko" in response to the same column.
“It’s hard to ignore the segregation on campus, but the fact remains that as progressive as UT wants to be, we have to remember that campus is still a microcosm of the state in general, and regardless of liberal attempts, our state is still not ‘progressive’ or inclusive by any means, as a whole.
Personally speaking, I have interacted with many of the multi-cultural groups you mentioned, as I am part of one myself. Many of these students I found were similar to me in that we had come from the bigger cities in Texas, which tend to have extremely diverse high schools. One fellow commenter shared my same sentiments when they said that they went to a very diverse school, only to come to UT and feel out of place all over again. It is not a cool feeling to be used to having all kinds of friends and then come to a University as segregated as UT. The easiest move to make when you feel out of place is to take the safe route and find a place that makes you comfortable, whether it be a South Asian fraternity/sorority, the sabado gigante “Latino welcome event” to UT, or the Malcolm X lounge area. … I could have never joined an IFC frat in an attempt to diversify my own viewpoints, because every brown person that I saw on campus that was in one seemed to look and act just like every other guy in their house. That just wasn’t something that interested me. Unfortunately most of Texas is not as diverse as UT would like to think it is, and campus inclusion is not something that will be changed easily.”
—Online commenter “Multi-cultural Greek” in response to the same column.
