Well done. You’ve staggered your way through another fall semester. This one happens to be my last—I’ve also had a last Orientation Week at Cornell, last Halloween at Cornell and a last time I spill coffee on myself on a Tuesday in November at Cornell. Fond memories, I'm making. While I’m on a sentimental kick, I’ll share some life lessons I’ve learned from the Opinion Section in 2008:

1) Dilbert brought a lot to the table last semester. I realize that now. But Dilbert is gone and there is nothing any of us can do about it, except pretend that Doonesbury and Maintaining are funny.

2) If I’m enjoying a delicious Trillium breakfast sandwich, there is a 100 percent chance that The Sun will feature an explicitly sexual article dribbling with body fluids, and an 85 percent chance that I will accidentally skim the most descriptive sentence of all.

3) I’m not important enough to have business cards.

4) The Cornell Daily Sun is plotting the complete destruction of the Greek system. Which brings us to the bee that is presently in my bonnet.

Avert your eyes, Panhellenic. I’m going rogue.

As a member of the Greek system who has gone through sorority Recruitment as a Potential New Member, sorority sister and Recruitment Counselor, I was interested by Katie Engelhart’s Nov. 13 article, “Hey There, Sister,” which chronicled her reasons for deactivating from Greek life. Engelhart’s complaints about the stringent restrictions of her chapter, the rules imposed by the Panhellenic Council — which Panhellenic leaders Katie O’Neill ’09 and Alison Ewing ’10 addressed in a Nov. 18 letter — and the sexism that sometimes confronts Greek women, are concerns that should be considered by sorority leaders.

But Engelhart’s article signaled the start of open season on Cornell Greek life, and the cheap shots kept on coming.

The low point was two Nov. 20 articles that The Sun published as opposing viewpoints.

In her piece, Kathleen McDermott observed that, “The problems with the system aren’t really visible in the individual sorority woman. The problems are visible in the group effect.” That’s for sure. I’m fine when I’m by myself, but when I get together with two or more of my sisters — boy-o. They say, “You look too full of self-esteem, we need to skank you up.” Then they coat me in glitter and take away most of my clothes, and we all totter over to the nearest fraternity party for the express purpose of getting Roofied.

Give me a break, lady.

I live with an architect on Solar Decathlon, a Science of Earth Systems major in ROTC and a volleyball-playing ILR-ie who works as a campus tour guide. All strong, brilliant and hilarious women with different ambitions, interests and friends — all members of the Cornell University Panhellenic community. And yet, these women were reduced to one sneered, collective “you” by McDermott — a single army of vapid clones.

McDermott assigned Cornell sorority women a stereotype: “75 percent of your skin exposed, pretty damn drunk, not demeaning toe-crunching stilettos, but sexually empowering toe-crunching stilettos,” and then challenged them to “change your image.” But it is precisely that: an image, not a reality. And this “image,” this paragon of the automaton sorority slut, is difficult to destroy when people like McDermott are so keen on perpetuating it.

All of this would be tolerable, if it were not for the article The Sun promoted as a rebuttal.

Luis-François de Lencquesaing’s attempt to show the light side of Greek life by describing an intramural hockey game traded McDermott's allegations of drunkenness, conformity and promiscuity for charm, cuteness and cuddles. In short, de Lencquesaing managed to make Cornell Greek women look like a bunch of ice-skating cupcakes. Astonishingly intelligent, ice skating cupcakes.

In describing sorority women as either titillating or endearing, both writers assume that I joined the Greek system to flirt and flit about for the amusement of men. I did not.

Nor did I join to segregate myself from the rest of campus as McDermott claims. My aim and my experience have been exactly the opposite. If I had not joined the Greek system, I doubt I would ever have had the privilege of meeting such a broad cross-section of the Cornell community — non-Greek and Greek alike.

Carolyn Byrne is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at cbyrne@cornellsun.com. Byrne It Down appears alternate Tuesdays.