Reflections Of Shame

re scout #32:

``am i a weirdo? :(``

Allow me to patronize you a little my dear. You haven`t reached that exalted state...yet. For now you are in that zone politely(again) referred to as `misfit`.....enjoy it while it lasts :)

re slink #33:

``i have as much right to a seizure as the next neurotic.``

Thanks for clearing that up. May I suggest you choose someone else you are on more intimate terms with when the urge to pontificate overwhelms you again...or is it how we break the ice these days? ;)

later

-sac

sac...

politeness sholiteness, thats a term i`m completely comfortable with. as for the sudden homily spasm..i stand by it. i have as much right to a seizure as the next neurotic.

shandana

sac #31,

Am I a weirdo? :(

re slink #26:

Wow...what did i do to deserve that homily? Fortuantely there are very few cliques of one in this world. They are politely referred to as `weirdos`.

later

-sac

Re: bahmad # 24

Sorry...

There is no causal link between dating and marriage and peole have been known to get married after the first date or after many years.

As to your second question; that is hard to say. On one hand Greeks do consitute a signficant portion of the American society - from business to politics to social Hollywood types. My fraternity was Sigma Nu and some of our alums were Harrison Ford, James Dean, Lloyd Bentsen - vice presidental candidate, LaVell Edwards the coach of the BYU football team; Scott Sleighmaker owner of Tony Roma, a resturant chain and a bunch of state and federal representatives.

On the other hand, the Greeks are not the mirror to the general society. In all honesty, I would say that a more perspective based answer would be that the Greeks, due to their networking, end up in leadership positions, and are important, but I do not think that they really can influence the structure of the society. Like everyone else, they are the creatures of that society too! :)

Hope this helps!

Ciao!

Re Cherayam #

Thanks! The topic of sorority girls changing boyfriends is a fun one! I am not going to offer you a generalized answer, but each sorority house has a defining trait and depending which house your girlfriends came from would answer your question. Let me you an example. Delta Delta Delta, Tri Delts on my campus, as they were known had the best looking girls and the Tri Delt House was also a brothel and the girls would get a percentage of their house dues off depending on their ``monthly score card``. Scout would love this one, but in the fraternity we used to call our house payments/dues as ``friendship dues``.

You know that Eagles song: The Greeks want no freeks! :) I used to play that song during rush! :)

Re: Sac # 25

Networking is an important part of being a Greek and it was my Greek contacts that landed me my job with the US Congress! The sad part is that it is party image that is most closely associated with the Greeks. The Greek old boy/girl network is really helpful in getting that first job without any experience!

Re: Slink # 26

Thanks! Temporal gave me your email, but the cyber monster seems to have gobbled it...do you think that you can send it me at ferozk@hotmail.com?

For the record, I have no guilt :)

When are we seeing another article from you on the Chowk? :)

Ciao!

Re: Saira Riaz #19

“Secondly,a girl wearing a sexy mini skirt chilled every male blood and intended to enjoy all sorts of pleasure a party could offer.She was like “an open invitation”to every body,so how can you expect innocence from her,may be she invented a story for some purpose.”

Dear Saira,

Mini skirt is a very common outfit in western culture and so is an intoxicated woman wearing a mini skirt. You should rethink your above statement and your position in this matter.

I was away for a week, and pleasantly surprised to see that we are totally in a different kind of discussion, miles away from our usual Indo-Pak wars. Here is my two cents: Feroz you have answers in your own reply #12, If the guy shows a pattern of sexual promiscuity, then he probably has done it. Then you should be free of any guilt.

Just one more thing, my US university experience as graduate student is totally what Scout has mentioned in her post since PGs are generally not associated with any fraternity/sorority. However, I have couple of American girlfriends who were extremely promiscuous, changing boyfriends like outfits, although intellectually both were very deep indeed. I never could relate their otherwise depth in all the subject matters with their sexual misconduct. One of them now is a quite renowned professor in one of the good schools at upstate New York, although going through a miserable marriage life since I last heard of her. I guess, it may have something to do with this sorority life in their early ages, when fabric of moral conduct had to be woven.

Cheers

cheraym

sac...

sex, alcohol and networking make strange bedfellows. the college experience should leave you independent, more mature, and a little bit more street smart about the ways of the world. frats etc teach you to interact in a contrived environment, and not as an individual but as a member of a larger unit. isn`t half the point of leaving home to come back able to be able to face the world without it? go to college, exchange one form of bondage for another..no thanks. like scout said.. be your own clique.

saira riaz..

`` if a girl is wearing a mini-skirt`` blah blah blah.
whats wrong with you?

feroz...

bravo! a well written, sincere attempt at catharsis. in the light of later events, i can understand your being pulled back to this one disaster that seemed to herald it all. you did the right thing, of course, as for dealing with guilt....you dont have to feel guilty about this..what else is on your mind?

dear feroz:

My first impulse after reading your article was `Much ado about nothing` but then better sense prevailed.I think most of us who have gone to school here can relate at least one experience that in some away or another really examined our values and morality and all that good stuff in stern detail.I wonder if it has anything to do with entering adulthood. The same things that tend to outrage us when we are younger are now considered mere foibles of human nature.

As for some people dismissing fraternities and sororities being the work of the devil, they serve as very powerful networking tools not only in college but way beyond after that.Maybe being partners in crime(and I am speaking only metaphorically here) carries a greater bonding power than most of us realize.Getting drunk and the ensuing sexual activity is as much a part of college life as econ 101.For those events to be misconstrued by either side in certain instances is a natural outcome and you happened to be caught in the crossfire.Please don`t let the American tendency to find a culprit no matter what disturb your otherwise self-assured persona :)

later

-sac

Dear Feroz:

Without being personal, I would like to know if their is any expected link between dating and marriage. If no, I have no more question. If yes, how many years of dating is needed to know if the other dating partner is a compatible match?

Again without causing any violence to you, do you think that the sad and untimely death of your brothers is in any way linked with the way our society (including the state) is structured?

In my questions, I am not trying to be judgmental though I am just inquisitive. If you feel any discomfort in answering my questions, please neglect them.

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad

My advice to the author is to shed guilt for that which he bears no responsibility or for that which it is beyond his power to make amends or improvement.

The whole thing is an appalling indictment of the ``education`` system. I shudder to think of the number of people who are scarred from this one incident. Not just the author, but I`m sure many of his frat. brothers probably feel the same. Then there is the girl, the girl`s friends, whoever knows the perpetrator and may be troubled with doubts, and on and on.

One is supposed to emerge from college in healthy young adulthood, ready to take on the world, with most of one`s idealism intact, with a healthy trust in the integrity and reliability of the people around one, and a great self-confidence. Somewhere, the whole thing gets derailed instead, it seems.

How can one now be condemnatory of one who has nothing, and finds himself in a medieval madrassa teaching armed jihad, when those who are so gifted and have so much wantonly, in their desire for self-indulgence, make such a mess of things ?

---

Re: Urstruly # 18

Brilliant analysis! You really stunned me with your astute insights, but I am sorry to say that there was no trauma on ``my tender mind``! I hope you stick with your day job, because you are not even in the ball park on this one! :)

Re: Saira Riaz # 19

The primary concern was to avoid a legal problem and not to decide the fact whether a crime was committed or not. Macgupta was right when he said we were not qualified to judge if a crime was committed. The job before us was to limit our legal liabilities and once you have lived within a Greek environment you realize that truth is of secondary importance; your first responsibility is to save your own skin!

Secondly, your statements about will power/making choices is a good one, but will power and making irrevocable decisions are little bit different in reality than they are in an ideal world. Life is not fairy tale! Period! Having said that, I was amused to hear you equating me with a lack of decision making ability, because I did not marry my girlfriend. In my book, just because you date someone does not mean that you have to marry only that person. That was the most idealistic assumption I have ever heard! :)

There were many reasons for that, not to marry her, decision and none of them had to do with this incident.

Re: Shankar # 14

I am not personalizing this as much as the Chowkwallahs might be thinking. I wish Urstruly`s insight about this incident and my articles would be correct, but alas, Urstruly will have to get over his/her dismay! :)

The only part of this whole incident which concerns me, in hindsight, is not my actions during those days. It was the chain reaction which this event unleashed. This happened in May of 1992; a year later almost to the month one of our brothers committed suicide by hanging himself by his TV cables (the girl he loved did not love him as his suicide note said) and in January of the next year, 1994, another brother also committed suicide (no suicide note was found). A year later another one died from stomach cancer. They were all in their early to mid 20s and this not an age that you expect people die and in such a quick sequence.

I am not suggesting that all these incidents are related to that rape, but what I am suggesting is that those of us who lived through these events of pure hell, in emotional terms, losing friends in such a tragic manner and coping with the aftermath could never be the same person again. One had to be at the burial of C, who hanged himself with cables, and see his mom cry herself into a mind numbing stupor at losing another son to suicide. C`s elder brother also hung himself in a prison cell and to see his mother crying herself into a hysteria and knowing that there is nothing you can do to comfort her leaves a bitter feeling in you at your own sense of futility.

Now, whether I was weak or strong are moot points. This article was about an event, unrelated though it may have been, but to me it was the rolling stone, that triggered all the subsequent events that really crippled the fraternity emotionally and I was one of its victims. In many ways, the rape was the begining of the end for the House and though the House has a new generation in it and soon with the passage of time it will be just a faded memory, but to those of us who experinced it, it will always be a living memory and no passing years will dull the ache we still have over those memories.

This discussion has helped a lot, because I never really talked about it with such candor simply because it hard to explain something to a person who has not experinced it personally and I hope never does! It was the triggering of the sequence that is hard to accept. Why did it have to happen in such an order and why within such a short time?

It is not me personalizing this experience, but rather the inability of the mind to absorb the emotional impact of this whole chain of events. The rape may have been an isolated case, but it is emotionally linked to a set of emotionally handicapping experiences and that is where the angst comes from.

Having said that, I hope Urstruly is right, because his/her comments really simplifies the complex! That is where the demons come from and the question still remains unanswered: how do I answer them and with what?

I wish I knew!

Ciao!

As I said, nobody here is competent to decide whether rape has happened or not.

If I go by the guidelines published in the newspaper article that I provided the URL for,

Quote

Legally, in a court of law, no means no; a drunken yes means no; silence means no. Being forced to perform a sexual act or any penetration by any object into any vaginal, anal or oral opening is sexual assault.

End quote.

Notice that ``a drunken yes means no``.

So, going by the newspaper rather than all you experts here, the girl was raped, a crime was committed.

-arun gupta

The following from the local newspaper here may help put the comments of those who wrote -- who knows, maybe she was asking for it ? -- in proper perspective.

http://www.injersey.com/news/app/story/0,2110,289763,00.html

F R Khan,

It was an interesting article.First of all I would like to say that one should have strong decision power, when you take a decision,you should stand firm on it and then prepare yourself to bear all its fruits and forget about the world.

After having expelled the boy,how could you expect the same good behaviour from your brothers because in their eyes you were not loyal whereas” loyalty” does not only mean to stand by your brother even if he is doing wrong.Infact you did so because you did not like to spoil the reputation of a big lot just for one boy and also avoided legal action.Secondly,a girl wearing a sexy mini skirt chilled every male blood and intended to enjoy all sorts of pleasure a party could offer.She was like “an open invitation”to every body,so how can you expect innocence from her,may be she invented a story for some purpose.Thirdly,you were not sure whether the boy committed rape or not, don’t you think that you could give him a chance by forgiving him ?.Do you feel shame for taking action against the boy or not marrying the girl you dated for 4 years?.This also proves your weak power of decision.

In the end I would say that it is useless to regret when the situation is over because you cannot go back in your past, nurturing guilt over a period of time is of no good use.It is good to listen to the voice of conscience but not to an extent that it haunts you like a ghost and makes you restless from time to time.