I want to address a personal gripe that I've had for a while regarding the overall disappointment and disgust directed towards the Millennial generation, from our elders in particular.

My sentiment can be summed up in one question, "Why do you hate us for doing what you told us?"

I was always told to question the world and conventional wisdom. I was always told it was important to be better and not make the same mistakes my parents did. I was always told to strive to be more than I originally thought I could be. Yet, when either myself or my friends made mistakes of any kind, they were met by a crude mixture of shame and disappointment, not the positive optimism you'd expect for someone undertaking the learning process. In fact, this approach is completely counter to what science says is necessary for the process of learning. This strange combination of holding unrealistic expectations and chastising us for failure seems to me an effective way to deride the entire Millennial generation and, even more pointedly, fraternity men -- for doing nothing other than existing.

By no stretch of the imagination do I think that my generation as a whole (or any other generation, for that matter) is qualitatively better than another; I personally think each generation is a continuously morphing link in the chain of human history, and that comparing one generation to another is more difficult than comparing apples to anteaters. In fact, I'm probably one of my own generation's harshest critics. There is, however, one thing that has to stop: the simultaneous raising and lowering of the expectations concerning what we Millennials are supposed to do with our lives.

In the same breath, parents, grandparents, teachers, advisers, deans, researchers, and newscasters of aging generations will seeth at our ignorance and entitlement -- as demonstrated in this video -- while also expecting us to accomplish wonders such as curing cancer, solving world hunger, and starting a new Renaissance using the Internet. How are these things supposed to happen at the same time? The answer is they aren't, because they can't. While the article linked there may shed light on a previously unconsidered aspect of murdering our creativity and thus innovation, we've always known that the fear of failure restricts what individuals can do and stunts their general quality of life.

Now, let's revisit the Washington Post article that I linked above. It describes a job market that is far more competitive than anything the world has ever seen.

The article also admonishes, "A college degree is now the career equivalent of what a high school degree used to be."

Take that in stride with the increased specialization in every field -- as well as a media and social media culture that only highlights the very best in absolutely everything -- and you have an environment where "emerging adults" are neither equipped to enter the real world (which we had nothing to do with creating, yet are somehow responsible for) nor desiring to do so. This reality has been hinted at in my own life as well when, in a conversation about college admissions, my grandfather -- an extremely accomplished career-Navy Naval Academy grad -- admits that he would never have been able to get into the Academy in today's climate of excellence as a norm.

All of these contradictions come bubbling to a head when attending various meetings for my fraternity's executive council and listening to advisers and alumni talk about the glory of what was, and the degradation of the work ethic they possessed that we so rarely exhibit. While some of these frustrations can be explained away as the tantrums of a bruised ego, it isn't true for all of them. I was put in charge of documenting the accomplishments of our chapter and it's members this past academic year, and at the risk of sounding conceited I'll admit that we ran out of space on the form while I was half-way through our list of accolades. Yet I don't think that my chapter is unique in this regard. I think that every Greek organization has run into this problem. As is mandated by our creeds and standards, we are asked to be individuals possessed of a greater degree of motivation and drive than our non-affiliated counterparts. Yet, like Private Pyle in Full Metal Jacket, we are consistently confronted with an unsatisfied task master, and the question then becomes why?

My argument is, the gap in accomplishments between non-affiliated and affiliated individuals is diminishing due to Millennials being the most connected generation ever, thereby eliminating the prerequisite of a Greek organization to facilitate campus-wide change. Then, in a misguided attempt to stagnate this trend and glorify their college and fraternal experience, stuffy old men and women governing Greek organizations pass bylaws (what is a bylaw, anyway?) that force current members to perform mental and physical acrobatics approaching literally being in two places at once to re-widen this gap and assert Greek organizations as the dominant force on campus, as they may have been two or three decades ago.

For now I'll skip delving into the myriad of ways that Greek organizations as a whole could change in ways that would lead to less non-affiliated hatred, and a diminshed adversarial relationship between general membership and authority. Instead, I'll focus on what this is doing to us as individual Millennial college students. Though we seem to lash out at authority, in general, we have tended to simply shoulder the burdens thrust upon us, and as a result, it's killing us.

All of these factors bring me to the title of this article. At this point it can't be argued that fraternities are fairly intensely focused upon as an institution to be hated. While there has always been a portion of the population that has hated them for a variety of reasons, that portion has expanded dramatically in the last 5 years, and specifically the past 12-18 months. This concentration of hatred has culminated in what can only be described as a gruesome crucifixion of what fraternities are, and debate over what they actually stand for. What the world sees is a bunch of overly confident, entitled, know-it-all kids, with potentially sexually criminal behavior hiding a burning core of completely unmet potential that somehow makes all these frustrations and "crimes" cut that much deeper. In essence, fraternities exhibit the extremes of the entire Millennial generation and they're concentrated and exacerbated in a single institution. However, I see something different than the view older generations seem to be pushing on us. I see boys who want to be men, yet, whether they admit it or not, they are terrified of making the wrong move, of saying the wrong thing, of not living up to expectation, all while attempting to understand this ephemeral thing every parent refers to as "potential." I see boys who possess a drive to be something great and truly experience something transcendent, yet have had the tools ripped away from them by various social and economic pressures imposed by their elders.

By no means do I want to pawn all of the problems with Millennials onto those older than us, onto those who came before. I do, however, want to point out that our parents generation, while "successful" also spawned a billions of dollars self-help industry that simply didn't exist 60 years ago, and effectively created the idea of a midlife crisis. What this tells me, and should tell the rest of the Millennials is that they worked to make a living, not a life.

Now, we stand at the critical juncture, where we, as fraternity men, sorority women, college students, young and emerging adults, and Millennials, must decide to either succumb to the expectations of our elder generations, or respond to them.

My answer, leave us alone for once, and we'll take it from here.