I am writing in response to your article on March 17 on fraternities and their academic problems. I was severely misquoted in that particular article. Your version of the interview was not even close to my original statement and it made me look ignorant.

Thanks to the mistake, I was harassed and ridiculed all day long. Frankly, I can deal with personal embarrassment, but when individuals start associating "my statement" and its apparent intelligence level with the intelligence level of my chapter, I feel I have a cause for concern. I may not have done well last semester, but my academic level is not necessarily the academic level of the entire chapter membership. Within my associate member class (commonly known as pledge class), there were members with grade point averages above 3.00. The highest GPA of my associate member class was also the highest GPA in the house, 3.94.

I agreed to do the interview because I thought sharing my experience would benefit others. My interview was over 15 minutes long. Less than five minutes were dedicated to how I did last semester. The remaining time was used to discuss my chapter's policies which are helping me to improve my GPA this semester. However, when I read your article, I was surprised to see that Ms. Kopecki had manipulated that small segment of the interview and stretched it to make up almost her entire article. Therefore, the article did not convey the meaning of my statement, instead it emphasized your newspaper's readily apparent anti-Greek views.

It seems that whenever the Greek community makes a mistake, your reporters are the first to criticize them. The Greek community is a great asset to Penn State. The philanthropies that many fraternities sponsor each year are a good example of this. Contrary to the "Animal House" stereotype, we are not all beer-guzzling bums who have never opened a book in our college careers. We are students working for our degrees just like every other person enrolled in the University.

Fraternities consist of people, human beings, all of whom make mistakes just like independents. My low GPA last semester was not caused by my involvement in a fraternity. It was caused by poor study habits learned during my earlier school years. It was a time for adjustment. As I bring this letter to a close, I'd like to ask you a question: I'm about to proofread my letter, do you do the same with your articles?