Your View: Belittling Women is not a Part of How Southern Chivalry Should be Defined

Editor, the Auburn Plainsman

I was recently referred, by a friend, to an article appearing in the Wall Street Journal regarding football traditions in the SEC.

Auburn's program acts as a primary example of many points made by the author.

What I find particularly appalling and embarrassing is the quoted material offered to the publication by members of Auburn's student body which illuminates, proudly, a part of our campus culture which should be discouraged, if not at least hidden.

That part of the culture being the "dating games" for the football season (as labeled by the author and illustrated by Auburn students).

The most humiliating, though telling, part of the article is the characterization of women given by various fraternity men regarding football knowledge and femininity/masculinity.

One particular student claimed that it was undesirable for a girl, who is a date, to be more knowledgeable about football than a boy because it is "emasculating."

Instead, a desirable candidate is a girl who can adequately baby-sit and nurse a drunken and childlike man who is too inebriated to behave with maturity and decorum.

I find it completely ridiculous that one would find a knowledgeable girl emasculating; what is emasculating is that you "gentlemen" cannot get your acts together and stay sober enough to stand up, refrain from violence and diminish your consistent ability to offend the rest of the population of game attendees through brash yelling and profanities.

What is also emasculating is the unified abandoning of academic responsibilities of many Auburn men (and women) days in advance of a home game as evidenced by absence from classrooms and campus in general in favor of partying downtown.

Perhaps if we gave more attention to becoming an institution known for our academic endeavors rather than our date selection and football program, then Auburn wouldn't be negatively portrayed in an international publication, thus providing an avenue for commentary which labels Southerners as "uneducated" and "sexist."

What is additionally laughable is the statement that all of this is part of "Southern chivalry" and part of "building better men."

I hope that "Southern chivalry" does not truly involve degrading women by scoring them as potential dates based on the criteria of who can best nurse a hangover while looking the sexiest in an orange dress.

I also hope it does not mean provoking fights in the stadium, cursing our players in times when we're struggling to score, and getting tossed onto the pavement by Jordan-Hare security before the game even commences due to being intoxicated to the point of irrationality.

Women, I also implore you to consider yourselves worth more physically and intellectually than accessories to this behavior, beings only useful as mannequins and supporters of unappreciative men.

Do not concern yourselves with purchasing cute dresses and accompanying boys to parties, suffering all the while through the above-mentioned behavior simply to get a good seat and a plate at a tailgate celebration; rather, view yourselves as good enough contributors to our campus to denounce this behavior and work to discourage the Wall Street Journal's published, negative perception of our institution's current social climate.

Benjamin Arnberg

Pearl Shields

Graduate Students, English