Patricia Lee West wrote in Friday’s Forum that Shazia Bashir’s Thursday column was an unfair representation of Greek life. She makes the point that Bashir, an outsider to sorority life, has no right to criticize it.

Following this logic, we have no right to criticize Nazis because we weren’t there and have no idea what was really going on. Boys have no right to criticize girls. West, a non-columnist, has no right to criticize Bashir.

West does have a point that criticisms based on stereotypes are unacceptable. However, I remind West that Bashir mentioned several real-life examples of the kind of shallowness and cruelty to which she objects. Knee-jerk defenses of the Greek system rightly point out that pejorative clichés should not be carelessly applied, but I have yet to see someone try to justify the kind of “superficial evaluation” that occurs during rush week and beyond, the kind that anyone with eyes and ears on this campus knows about. Parading facts about philanthropic causes may justify your existence, but I am still waiting for something that justifies the other aspects of Greek life.