Beauty Bowl

A huge part of my college experience has been with Delta Gamma, a sorority here at SJSU, and every year we participate in Kappa Sigma’s philanthropy event called Beauty Bowl. Every Greek fraternity and sorority on campus has a philanthropic group that they donate to as an organization. Usually, each house will put on a fun event that Greeks can participate in for a good cause.

Kappa Sigma’s Beauty Bowl is the biggest and most competitive event the Greek system holds. Beauty Bowl is a flag football event, where the sororities participate as players and the fraternities participate as coaches.

This year Delta Gamma was doing better than ever. We won three games in a row, but ended up playing a team we had already won earlier that day. The communication between Kappa Sigma, who put on the event, and everyone else was terrible. No body knew what was going on and because of the way they had set up the brackets, Delta Gamma was out of the competition because they lost by one point, to a team they had already beat. That team that we beat also had previously lost two games.

All of us were furious, to say the least, and left the field angry as ever. What irritated me the most about this situation was that it all could have been fixed, had there been clear communication to begin with. 

Tunnel Of Oppression

            The Tunnel of Oppression is a program that goes from school to school to spread awareness about all types of oppression. The tunnel is filled with different sections that contain information about topics such as ageism, sexism, racism, veterans, economics and other issues that influence daily lives. As I walked through each room, I became a bit disturbed with all of the phrases, pictures and videos surrounding me. These issues intertwine with communication studies and gave me an idea of what students can do to be proactive.

The room that hit home for me was the sexism and sexual harassment area. All around the room there were phrases like, “hey baby” and “let me get your number sexy.” There were also empowering poems written by women and how they feel about this type of oppression. I felt a connection with this room as a young women living in a large metropolitan city like San Jose because situations like this happen to me all the time. I think that things like this happen to women my age so frequently that most of the time people just laugh it off and pretend like it's a joke, when in reality it’s demeaning towards women and disrespectful.

I believe that the media is a strong enforcer of belittling women, and making them feel as though looking a certain way will benefit them and make them happy. Everything revolves around outer beauty, and the less you wear the more attention you will receive from guys. Guys on the other hand, are taught to be as masculine as possible and “holler” at girls as much as they can. They are taught through the media to have sex with as many girls as possible, and that treating girls like a piece of meat is the cool thing to do.

It’s important to spread the word and get this out there to other groups of people. Guys can be aware of the disrespect shown to women, and treat all women with a higher respect. Gentlemen should also be good friends to ladies and reinforce polite behavior amongst each other. Girls can also spread the word about oppression and not give in to the medias trap.

I really enjoyed being exposed to the Tunnel of Oppression because I had no idea what it was before. There were a lot of things I didn't necessary want to see or read that happen in every day life and it’s great that people are getting exposed to all of these perspectives. It really was an eye opening experience, and I know that just by being aware that these types of oppressions occur will make me more proactive.