shafted.

Earlier this summer, I got asked to write a short "promo" article for Purdue's Fraternity & Sorority publication aptly called The Greek. This goes to all of the incoming freshmen, and every sorority was asked to pick a girl in their house to send in an article explaining why they chose their sorority.

So the publication came out today, and I looked at my article only to discover that the editors completely took out, altered, and shortened my piece. I mean, don't get me wrong, I would understand if they were limited on space, and gave everyone the same word limit, but some sororities were given an entire page to blab about why they love their house.

The requirement I was given was a 300 word maximum. I wanted to write something less generic than “I chose my sorority because they have strong values!”, so I went ahead and basically compared being in my sorority to my short-lived song-reviewing job. I thought a bit of creativity would provide me the opportunity to earn a larger word maximum when in reality, it only got me cut. They even changed my punctuation! That gets me the most. I can see them cutting out my stuff...but why change the meaning and tone of my article too?!

I am not entirely upset that they cut my work. I know my writing isn’t genius and I understand the gate-keeping workings of publications, but I am more annoyed at how unprofessional they went about it. For courtesy sake they should have at least e-mailed me informing me of the changes they made to my work. I am putting my name behind the article, and I feel shafted that they thought it to be ok to still put my name as the author even if they went ahead and changed my words.

I want to write a strongly worded letter to this editor, but I risk the chance of getting my opportunities as a regular writer for The Odyssey (the weekly Fraternity & Sorority newspaper) cut.

The sororities that were given a higher word count weren’t even that mind-blowing. For example one line that one girl (who had an entire page for her article) wrote:

“I chose to go through rush out of random thought. Before I go any further I have to declare that it was the best random thought I have ever had.”

…really? I probably shouldn’t be too surprised knowing that the editor is in a sorority that is our “rival” house, and the girls that were given a higher word count were her friends.

For lack of better words, that is bullshit.