If anyone at Wesleyan ever engaged in ethnic profiling they’d be drummed out of the University community, but not only is socioeconomic profiling permitted, it’s inflamed by the administration itself.

In the debate on the future of Wesleyan’s fraternities, one argument that is constantly used to discredit fraternities is that they are bastions of white privilege. To listen to fraternity opponents, you’d think every brother had grown up in a mansion, owned a yacht and gone scuba diving in the Maldives. Ironically, some of those who themselves won the birth lottery are among the first to take cheap shots at fraternities.

This stereotype starts at the top. In a September 3, 2014 memo to the Trustees, Roth described fraternity members as privileged members of society who enjoy access to graduate members “ensconced in positions of power and influence in society” and to “affiliations post-graduation.” As a DKE alumnus, I can only say, “I Wish!”

The truth is that when I went to Wesleyan in the ‘70s, DKE brothers were hardly the privileged elite that their opponents claim. In fact, because we mostly came from middle and working-class families, when we surveyed the rest of the campus, what we saw were plenty of kids who came from more affluent backgrounds than we did. We certainly did not hold that against them and we were friends with many of them. But because of our modest backgrounds, fraternity life was a valuable support system that helped me and my brothers navigate the stresses of academia, social life, and finding our way.

The same is still the case today. The current DKE members are actually more economically and racially diverse than Wesleyan as a whole. About a two-thirds of current DKEs are on financial aid, compared to fewer than half of the student body. Twelve percent of current DKEs are first-generation college students, compared to seven percent of the student body, and twelve percent are black compared to nine percent of Wesleyan as a whole.

In other words, there’s more diversity at DKE than in the college itself. Without frats there’d be even less diversity because one of the reasons that working class guys agree to go to Wesleyan in the first place is because they know they can get the support they need in fraternities. More than a few of my brothers have said they would not have stayed at Wesleyan if it had not been for the support of the friends they made at DKE.

Yet the myth of privilege persists and no one seems to feel ashamed to make arguments based on outdated stereotypes. As we move forward in this debate, I hope we’ll have more intellectual honesty than we’ve had in the past. And to fraternity opponents I’d say, check your own privilege first before you start casting stones at us.