There has been some discussion over the past few days as to why no one spoke up against the questions asked at Sigma Chi’s Derby Days during the event.
Although I am not in a fraternity and did not attend the event, I have watched videos of the event and have had discussions with people who attended the event as participants and viewers, both Greek and non-Greek, all who will remain nameless. I am not going to be making excuses for people nor will I be defending the events in question, but I am going to present my personal views on why these questions were allowed to continue.
First and foremost, if you watch videos of this year’s Derby Days you will hear something following some of the inappropriate questions and answers: laughter. This laughter did not only come from fraternity members in the audience, but women watching the event also. In other words, there were people in the crowd that legitimately found the questions amusing. This says some people genuinely felt there was nothing wrong with the questions that were asked.
Therefore, if there were people that thought it was funny and there was nothing wrong with it, then it is reasonable to say these people did not view the questioning as sexual harassment. People have expressed this to me, so it is not something that I am making up on my own. It is also likely that this laughter was seen as a sign of approval; therefore, it encouraged that type of questioning.
Secondly, in most introductory psychology classes, students are taught something known as the bystander effect. The bystander effect, in simple terms, is when individuals do not help a victim of some incident or help those in need because there are other people in the vicinity relinquishing a single individual of a majority of the responsibility. It is very apparent that there are several people that wanted it to stop, but the diffusion of responsibility, let alone outside pressures against speaking out, prevented them from doing so.
Lastly, after talking with several students who are not part of the Greek system, it appears no one was surprised at what transpired. What I mean here is, members of the non-Greek community believe this type of “talk” is commonplace for Greek events.
This commonplace aspect goes both ways, in that fraternities and sororities share the responsibility for the undertaking of these actions, and in the sense that one of the two initiates and the other responds with little or no objection. This, of course, does not excuse this behavior, but it does explain why it is prevalent. Outsiders, to some degree, believe this behavior is what is normal for Greek activities; therefore, they may have felt no need to stop the questioning, because they assumed that the sororities and fraternities were okay with it or that it was, in some form, expected beforehand.
Dalton Capps is a senior history major from Coldwater.
