The whining of people who are constantly burdened by the actions of strangers is truly a tired sentiment. Feminism, albeit a worthy cause, seems to create a problem, then attack it. The Delta Tau Delta shoe tree is nothing more than that, a tree with shoes in it. It is not some sad attempt to cling to the misogynistic past that was destroyed long ago by the shackles of political correctness.

I don’t know exactly what Ms. Hernandez (Celebrating the Fall, Monday, April 17) thinks the shoes stand for today. Maybe it is something different than what it meant many years ago during her bra-burning days. Today, even the active brothers of Delta Tau Delta don’t know what the tree really stands for. I personally think it is for every brother that has received a 4.0 in any given semester. In fact, we don’t even put the shoes in the tree these days. It seems to be more of a G Street tradition than a Delt one. Whatever the motivation behind the tree is, people have to realize that we are a fraternity. We are not going to change our policies. We don’t hurt anyone. And we all have lives outside of the fraternity. It is a social club that happens to also do some community service. You can complain about what we do, you can even protest us – as was done this past weekend because we claimed to be capitalists – but you are just wasting your breath.

In all honesty, if those shoes had something to do with objectifying women, then that would mean we do a lot better with women than we actually do. We just are not that cool. Thank you, Ms. Hernandez, for the vote of confidence, though.

As for your argument that the shoes impose any sort of danger, I challenge you to take my own shoes and drop them from the Delt house roof directly onto my head. If any damage is incurred, I will personally join your crusade to rid our campus of the shoes. I just wonder if Ms. Hernandez and the many other people who have requested the removal of the tree have ever considered all the homeless people who we have seen climb into that tree and take the shoes for themselves. Are we to deny these people shoes to satisfy someone’s intangible need to rid the world of imagined injustice? Personally, I don’t have the heart.

-Jonathan Habersophomore