By being in Greek life at The University of Texas, you get to be part of a very special group that promotes academic and personal success, along with community, through an emphasis on bonds and good works. Last year alone the Greek community at the niversity gave more than $654,000 to philanthropic causes and did more than 29,000 hours of community service, according to figures provided by the university. However, this isn’t the story that I often see portrayed in the media, and this media issue makes me proud to be a part of The Odyssey, a newspaper working to tell the entire story of Greek life on the 40 Acres — so that this exceptional community can continue to grow and flourish.

One doesn’t have to look far to find examples of poor Greek life coverage around here. The Daily Texan, a student newspaper at The University of Texas, illustrates this point well with its coverage of this past spring’s Roundup festivities. For those that don’t know, Roundup is an annual weekend-long event at Texas in which Greek organizations host large parties and philanthropic events. The Daily Texan chose to do an article on what it claimed was more police action at Roundup this year, with the only source for the article being one student who thought they noticed more police. The only evidence to this claim in the article reads: 

Biology sophomore Vina Cao, who also attended Roundup events last spring, said she thought security officers enforced stricter capacity restrictions at parties. “This year, they were giving fines to fraternities for being over capacity,” Cao said. “They were pretty active Saturday night shutting down parties, and I saw a few people get arrested as well, which I didn’t see last year.”

There was nothing in the article indicating any effort to talk to law enforcement, the university or Greek life officials or to even get any kind of a second source. And, this is the only coverage of Roundup that The Daily Texan did this year.   

When you think about what an undertaking Roundup is, it’s pretty amazing that this year’s festivities went off as successfully as they did. You’ve got dozens of organizations working to hold events in one neighborhood, with issues including security, ticketing, policy enforcement and scheduling to worry about. That’s the story here to me. 

Pulling that off successfully and getting hit with an article like The Daily Texan’s could no doubt be discouraging.   

I’m writing this piece to shed awareness that there is a real effort out there to tell the entire story of Greek life at UT, and I hope that The Odyssey, which is still in its infancy at Texas, continues to grow and get the exceptional story of Longhorn Greeks out there. All members of the Greek community at UT are eligible to apply to work at The Odyssey, and I encourage you all to, in order to advance its work in covering Longhorn Greeks.