R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find Out What It Means to Me

To be completely honest, I was pretty depressed about the whole pledging process and the fraternity in general last week. How many times have I already used a sentence like that to describe how I felt about the fraternity?

Definitely way too many times to count by now.

Last week, we had a Tuesday night GBM to make up for the one we missed during the three-day weekend that ran pretty late into the night. I don't even remember what happened at that GBM, but I don't think I got back to my room until past midnight.

The weather in La Jolla was gray, wet, cold, and just gross in general for most of the week. I couldn't find my umbrella so I walked all around campus to my classes in the rain.

I still can't find my umbrella.

I had a kind-of-a-big-deal second draft of my research paper due in class that Thursday and pulled an all-nighter to get that partially done. No matter how busy or stressed out I was before this quarter, I have never had to pull all-nighters; they now make regular appearances in my life at least once or twice per week.

Sleep, I miss you dearly.

I briefly attended one of the "biggest Omega traditions," our quarterly potluck on Thursday night, and felt completely out of place and alone in the house full of strangers who supposedly made up my close-knit Greek family. Whenever food is involved in any kind of event or outing with my family or even my line (who are supposed to be the "cool" Omegas with whom I am supposed to form the closest bonds), I constantly feel attacked for being a vegetarian.

Yes, attacked.

As if I do not already feel like enough of an outsider in my family, my personal choice to not eat meat seems to make me absolutely unacceptable in the eyes of these people.

I fucking get that you guys LOVE meat, and I respect your choices to support environmentally harmful, cruel factory farming practices of the meat industry by eating helpless animals who were once alive and living in ethically questionable conditions so fucking respect mine to not to partake in actions that violate my personal moral code.



I have never had a problem with my friends or family eating meat and I have never attempted to go all "Veggie Nazi" on them or try to "convert" them to vegetarianism, but the responses and comments I have had to field from these people piss me off so much that I am constantly tempted to respond to their comments with angry rants about how they are all horrible people for eating unethical meat, just to pick a fight with them.


I do have an "A"-worthy, seven-page research paper's worth of information about vegetarianism and the cruelties of factory farming to support my argument, after all.


If I have to sit through another car ride where the conversation about food and my vegetarianism makes the implication that my personal choice is silly or outrageous in some way, I think I might just explode like that.

Don't even get me started on talk about the conflicting political ideology and ideas about social issues in my line.

"Are you Republican or something?"

"Yeah... I am."

Let's just leave it at that.

Differences in choices and ideas, I can deal with. But when respect and tolerance go out the door, so do my patience and acceptance.

It is not an one-way road, after all.