Before the end of the semester, this email began circulating around USC from a girl in Kappa Kappa Gamma to the rest of the girls in her sorority house. I wanted to write about it for my last column of the semester, but because some of my readers thought that I only liked Delta Gamma and loathed any other sorority house (which is not true, but I can understand why it appears that way because I attend DG events because I am generally invited to them and created a ridiculous Facebook group as a funny joke to explain why I knew so many people in the house at one time).

To clear the air, I did have a lot of friends in the Delta Gamma graduation class of May 2006, one of whom happens to be one of my best friends and possibly the best female I know, Arlene Freeman. If that's not a good reason to enjoy a group of people, then I don't really know what is. Regardless :) I thought that I couldn't write about it for the paper without getting a slew of hate mail from some readers.

So anyways, on to the email!

"Dear fellow Kappas,

With the holiday season upon us, i thought it was important to illustrate the effects that those extra slices of pie can bring. Asthe fabulous, good looking Kappas that we are, we run a share of this row because of our pretty faces and taught stomaches. some of us are on top of our consumption, some never have been, and some eataccording to their boredom and/or the number of guys we are making out with (after all, who wants to make out with a belly full of thursday Kappa cookies.) either way, whether you are an unstable dieter or not,thanksgiving can really take its toll on your abdomen and here a a few tips to keep off those extra 10 holiday pounds.

- dont eat donuts, just dont do it. i know grandma and auntie maureen always come over in the morning to help with the turkey and bring donut holes for the kids, but really, you'll be eating twiceyour weight in food come lunch time. just dont touch the donuts.

- go for a run. seriously, its summer in the middle of winter thisyear. put on your shoes, wear your KKG bum shorts and go get a tan, listen to good music, and run around your hometown (which i GUARANTEE looks far prettier than this ghetto...and has a lot less mystery fluid on the sidewalk)

- create for yourself a "holiday slideshow." the pictures attached should help you get back that Kappa pride so that we all don't look like cows before rush next year (i always knew we were better than theDGs). Please note the DG logo and its association to Applebees, along with our friend who is literally mid-hot-dog-bite. please please please don't let me come back to Kappa Kappa Krispy Kreme bid dayshirts.

To be honest, living in Kappa at least, im planning on LOSING the 10 pounds this holiday break. Without the constant supply of cereal andbagels (and now the daily basket of packaged goodies with everything from oreos to biscotti...someone's trying to fatten me up nice and good for xmas) hopefully our stomaches will actually shrink for achange. as for those of you who live out, just be thankful that your dinner choices can vary from pasta roma and bistango....what a concept.so be smart this holiday season. go home, get your bank accounts filled up, eat lots of turkey and salad, try your luck at resisting your third slice of pie, and we should all be golden. if your dietingproblems are subconscious and you catch yourself waking up at 3am and blindly eating the shortbread cookies... speak to miss bickford. she seems to have developed steps to take control of this bizarresleep-eating situation.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

PeaceLoveAndTurkeys,
(Name removed because I feel bad for the girl)
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California
*******@usc.edu
(***)531-**** mobile"

Since I've been home, I've been telling people just how different Boston is from Los Angeles. The small talk is different, the people are different, the topics of conversation, how people act in public places is different, even the jokes people tell are completely different. While I didn't really notice these differences before, after living almost exclusively in LA (and loving it) for the past four years, I don't see how I didn't notice how polar opposite people can be just because they live on opposite coasts of the United States.

The knock of Los Angeles that I always hear from people is that "the people are really superficial and they're really fake." Clearly, the posted email would serve as Exhibit A when trying to make a case for how superficial the people in the City of Angels are supposed to be. My response to the claim that people in Los Angeles are "really fake," has always been that "I'll take really fake over someone being a dick."

While many of us in Los Angeles have mastered and tailored our communication to be conducive to random meetings with strangers, I think that it is done in a way that makes people generally pretty socially adept and pleasant to be around. Whether it's opening a door for others and having that person say "Thank you" audibly, or rolling down a window to tell someone that you're leaving a parking spot and they should take it, or a witty one-liner or two, I think that's a great thing. I'll go into this in a later blog, but I think it's great.

What bothers me about the way this email has been maliciously cited around the web is that this email was likely sent out as a lighthearted joke to this girl's sorority "sisters" and many people are ignoring this relationship. While the email says some not-so-nice things about Delta Gammas, is poorly written, and isn't very nice to people who might weigh a little more than others, I doubt that the girl meant to horribly offend anyone through her words. Her word choice is definitely questionable and the purpose of the email (hoping to have good looking Kappas during Rush, when sororities hope to attract the newest, hottest, most well-rounded sorority recruits) is silly, but many of those who are ripping on the girl likely have little understanding of the USC sorority community, which is filled with beyond-attractive White girls who could fill volumes of Maxim's "Hometown Hotties" annual centerfolds.

I'll admit that the email is unbelievably vain and completely ridiculous. It definitely speaks volumes to how much image has become an overwhelming significant part of our lives (especially on the West Coast, where Coach bags, SideKick III's, Chanel sunglasses, and Prada shoes become "necessities", while "My mom and dad pay for my cell phone bill" is a pretty common statement). But while people are ripping on this girl's words, they're also forgetting that this is just an undergraduate college student who had one of her sorority sisters turn on her and forward an email to someone outside of the proverbial "circle of trust." An email that was meant for only internal distribution (how many of us would be in trouble of someone else read some of the emails we write to our trusted friends?) got out and it likely made a lot of inside jokes and sarcastic humor be read out of context, by people who don't even begin to understand the Kappa community.

Since the email began circulating, the writer has set her Facebook profile to private and even removed her photo, which one can assume was done so that random people who receive the email could not write malicious things on her wall, nor see something to her on campus. College is supposed to be the "best time of our lives" and it's unfortunate that the betrayal by one person has likely damaged one student's whole appreciation for at least one year of her college experience.

Things like this remind me of how people all over the Internet were recently ripping on Natalie Nelson, one of the USC Song Girls, for raising her hands in celebration when Vince Young ran into the endzone to defeat USC in the 2006 Rose Bowl. While people took e-shots (where everyone is over 6 feet tall and 250 lbs, with a max bench press of 500 lbs) at Natalie, the Song Girls, and "dumb cheerleaders" worldwide, it was ridiculous to read the way that people were making terrible judgments about someone and her character (at 21 years of age) because of one error during a GAME.

How many of us have cheered after the team we're cheering for has just thrown an interception, thinking that our squad was about to score a touchdown? How many of us have jumped up in excitement and screamed "PICK!!!!", only to find that the opposing team has just scored a touchdown? It happens. It's a game. The difference is that Natalie was on the field, we weren't (ok, well, I was). And in her case, everyone was watching and no one cared that she was probably running on fumes after working what was likely one of the longest days of her dancing life at the time. And now, as people rip on USC Song Girl Megan Ramer (I think, it's tough to tell from the video) for cheering as UCLA scores an extra point during their upset over USC at this end of this season, it's moments like this that make me momentarily not enjoy sports.

On the WeAreSC.com message board, I recently read a post from a guy who is proud of himself for saying terrible things to Steve Breaston (Michigan Wide Receiver) at the Century City Mall because he wanted to "represent" for the USC fans. It's moments like this that make me shake my head in complete disgust. Players work harder than any typical college student and the Bowl is their reward for their hard work. If your parents threw you a graduation party and someone at a table next to your family was saying "Hey, USC SUCKS!!! You gold-digging, can't get into Stanford, spoiled, Republican, Hummer-driving, think I'm on an episode of Laguna Beach, douche!", I think you'd be pretty bummed and it would ruin your day. Just because people are on a public stage, it doesn't give other people the right to try and make their lives miserable. At the end of the day, we're all just people who enjoy our memorable moments and want to do the best at what we're passionate about.

Sadly, despite the fact that people are college students just trying to do what they enjoy or talk amongst their friends, people forget the context of the event. And on the Internet, when making fun of others or criticizing someone else's error, too often, we all suddenly become infallible and somehow, it's only others who make mistakes.