Monica Lewinsky, either you know her story or have heard her name brought up in conversation. On Thursday March 19th, this figure of public gossip of 15 + years stepped out of the shadows and onto the stage: a stage at the 2015 TED Conference hosted in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. For those who don't know, TED is a nonprofit that works on spreading ideas around the world, through conferences that it holds. These ideas range from dance to math to humanitarian work to psychology. For the 2015 conference, the topic was Truth and Dare, and during it, Monica not only revealed some truths, but also gave society as a whole a dare.
We as a Greek community experience the harsh affects of social media, public shaming, and virtual gossip pretty regularly and also protest the existence of the rumors just as often. Ideas that Greek houses are only for bimbos and jerks who will sometime in the near future end up in rehab, plague this nation. What is worse though are the public shamings that we inflict upon each other.
“Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop," said Monica Lewinsky. All too often are private, embarrassing pictures publicized or revealed to our brothers or sisters. Too often have other houses posted comments about one-another online in order to degrade and shame. Greeks have become desensitized to the harm, pain and destruction we are causing. We all love our freedoms, and we always preach and praise our freedom of expression. But as Monica says, “we need to talk more about our responsibility to freedom of expression. We all want to be heard, but let's acknowledge the difference between speaking up with intention and speaking up for attention."
This type of behavior is everywhere, and it isn't just in the Greek community. As leaders on campus, we need to set a precedent for others to follow. “Changing behavior begins with evolving beliefs. We've seen that to be true with racism, homophobia, and plenty of other biases, today and in the past. As we've changed beliefs about same-sex marriage, more people have been offered equal freedoms. When we began valuing sustainability, more people began to recycle. So as far as our culture of humiliation goes, what we need is a cultural revolution. Public shaming as a blood sport has to stop, and it's time for an intervention on the Internet and in our culture," said Lewinsky. Let us be the ones to lead this change, let us be the ones to make a difference.
