I recently read an article in The Northeastern News that highlighted the students’ reaction to the negative response the university received from Boston following the Patriots’ Super Bowl win. My response? Welcome to our world. I am currently a computer technology major at Northeastern, but the thing I advertise the most about myself is that I am a fraternity member and, for the past four years, I have felt what these students are now feeling on a daily basis.

As one member of the Northeastern University community said, “I understand the community’s response, but they have to understand they’re living around a college campus.” Seems reasonable, right? Do you know what would happen if I explained my side of the story to Northeastern after an apartment that I am paying for out of my own pocket receives a noise complaint? An apartment that is not affiliated with my fraternity, it just happens to have members living there? We would be brought in front of the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution and raked over the coals.

The summer before I came to NU, Scott Krueger died due to an alcohol overdose at an MIT fraternity. Since then, every major Boston university and college has not only targeted fraternities, but done most things in their power to rid themselves of them. As I walk around campus wearing my letters, I am instantly targeted as an alcoholic, a partyer, a boozer, a loser or someone who “pays for their friends.” Now it seems, whenever a student wears a Northeastern University shirt, he too will be under the watchful gaze of Boston residents and the police. All I can say is welcome to my world, but I’ve got much more practice under my belt than you do.

Greek life at Northeastern comprises five percent of the student population. We annually make up more than 75 percent of the participants of NU Service Day, along with raising money for multiple philanthropies, ensuring our academic excellence and striving to better the campus. Do you think that when one fraternity gets closed down for hazing, and another has over 1,000 community service hours, people feel the need to differentiate between the two? Which do you think will make the headlines as well?

So the next time I read in The News that “students and administrators alike watched as Northeastern was cast in a negative light and were forced to decide for themselves where the blame should lie,” all I can say is suck it up. I deal with this multiple times each year. If a fraternity in New Hampshire were to mess up, we feel the repercussions. The difference is that we don’t attempt to pin blame. We know this happens, and we instead focus our energies in attempting to show people that a few should not determine the worth of the majority.

— Jonathan Wojtkun is a senior computer

engineering technology major, a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity.