I opened the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday afternoon. That’s when I saw it. The headline read “Alcohol makes a comeback on (Washington University’s) frat row.”

The article stated that a three-month ban on alcohol during Greek events at the university that began last October is coming to an end. As a second semester member of Eastern’s Greek community, it caught my attention, and I read on. Greek organizations seem to get a lot of press covering alcohol-related events and bad behavior.

This happens too often. It’s important to add that such events are newsworthy and must be covered, but there are ways to improve the public’s view of Greek life while remaining fair and objective. One way is to educate Greeks about how to stay safe and avoid making the mistakes that make people look bad in the news.

At a required risk-management educational in November, Greek Life Director Bob Dudolski spoke to a room packed with Greek students about the alcohol misuse that lures media attention and bad press for the organizations as well as the different organization’s insurance liabilities involving such incidents. During an exercise near the end of the educational, Dudolski handed each person in the room a piece of paper featuring a headline from different newspapers from 2004. The headlines about alcohol-related deaths and hazing incidents shocked many of the students in the room, including myself. My jaw literally dropped. I couldn’t believe some of the things I heard in that room.

Many think this would never happen at Eastern, and it won’t as long as students are educated about the consequences. Dudolski warned us of the repercussions and told us to keep our acts together in order to prevent such incidents.

Before we left, we were reminded that not every Greek organization is guilty of the crimes reported in the headlines. Not every person involved in the Greek community gets wasted every weekend, ties new members to trees or writes profanity on the faces of his or her passed out brothers or sisters when the night comes to a close.

The Greek community is about something else, and this is something I learned first-hand when I went through recruitment and found my place in the Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority this fall. We help people who are in need, we are always there for one another and we don’t fit the stereotypes that people place on us.

I am proud of the community I became a part of and, while I can’t single-handedly steer Greek organizations away from the bad behavior that brings bad press, I can do my job as a journalist and make sure the community gets an objective view of Greek life, including the bad but not leaving out the good.

“Over the past year the Greek community has raised over $19,000 for St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital through various events,” Dudolski said. “They have also adopted a family over the past few months that has suffered many medical struggles and were able to raise $1,500 to help that family.”

Each of the fraternities and sororities on campus have fundraisers and philanthropies, and each do their part for the community while having a little fun on the side. Not everything we do involves alcohol, which is a common misconception of Greeks.

In addition, the campus beat is making an effort this semester to cover Greek life more thoroughly, both by featuring a different organization or member every week and by covering events and interesting topics that deal with Greek life.