Shouts from Acacia deserve explanation

I had the opportunity again this year to participate in the campus' annual "Take Back the Night" events, including Thursday night's march through campus and on to the courthouse square. Anyone who either participated in those activities or paused to read the expressions of anxiety and pain conveyed through the Clothesline Project had to be moved by the poignant message of community that was both determined and hopeful, and, most important, it was a message for all of us, women and men alike. \nYet an experience that should have been nothing more than shared determined hope was stained by a small, mean act during Thursday's march. As we passed the Acacia fraternity house at 702 E. Third St., some men shouted from the top floor. I couldn't hear everything they said, but at least one contributor shouted, "If I want to do you, I'll do you right now; I'll take you whenever I want." To their credit, the marchers moved on, seemingly unaffected. But I, at least, was left to wonder at an act of such unmitigated gall and stupidity in the midst of such a moment so clearly and powerfully at odds with it.\nI doubt the shouts were reflective of the values and attitudes of most of the men in Acacia. I even hold hope that the statements didn't convey the true beliefs of those who made them. Even so, perhaps the chapter's leadership would like to explain to me, to the marchers, to every decent member of our campus community how this could happen. Perhaps the shouters themselves will want to apologize in a manner at least as public as their offense.\nOf course, if I'm wrong, if the statements made from the dark reaches of that house actually do represent the attitudes of those responsible, then the chapter's leadership has much to consider. They might begin by looking to their own membership standards, to their claim to be striving for the best, to be building foundations for success, to be forging a good and decent brotherhood, and they might ask themselves: Are we? \nI wonder myself.