TUFTS COLLEGE
■w % ■
J
Tuns College Library
) b T 6 °l *4-
U51 .C63
Clark, Thomas Arkle,
1862-1932. The fraternity and the undergraduate, with twelve additional papers on fraternity life,
39090002401251
The Fraternity
AND
The Undergraduate
With Thirteen Additional Papers on Fraternity Life
By
Thomas Arkle Clark Urban a, Illinois University of Illinois
Cttollpgtat* $rrsi
George Banta Publishing Company Menasha, Wisconsin
O
tc ( c < cccccc
f <■ c c c c c
r«e * c c C C C C f t.
C C *"c „ 1 1 '
tc ccc < < 'cc tec C C cC < c < , C c * < c
c * c c c C C
i c c r c c
Copyright 1923 By
Oeo. Banta Publishing Co.
/
ci
if L 3
CONTENTS
•Preface . 5
xThe Fraternity and the Undergraduate 7
**The Greek and the Independent . 84
\ '•Rushing and the Rushee . 51
After the Pledging . 82
The Freshman’s Time and Money . 97
v The House Party . 118
Photo Plays and Vaudeville . 133
vThe Chapter Letter . 147
" Building a Chapter, House . 168
The Man Who Does Not Join . 188
The Transfer . 206
The Men Who Do Not Graduate . 220
Faternity Expansion . 232
\ The Future of the Fraternity . 244
PREFACE
In this second volume of essays on fraternity life I have brought together the papers written dur¬ ing the past two years. The connections between them is not always close, and there has been no thought in my mind of covering the whole field of fraternity activity. Six of the papers have pre¬ viously been published: “The Chapter Letter” and “Building a Chapter House” appeared in the Alpha Tau Omega Palm; “Vaudeville and Photo Plays” was published in Banta's Greek Exchange ; “The Man Who Does Not Join,” in the Carnation of Delta Sigma Phi; “Rushing and the Rushee,” in Delta of Sigma Nu; and “The Future of the Fraternity” was delivered as an address before the twenty-sixth biennial Congress of Alpha Tau Omega.
March 10, 1917.
Reprinted 1923.
THE FRATERNITY AND THE UNDER¬ GRADUATE
The history, the organization, and the purpose of a college Greek-letter fraternity are about as vague in the mind of the average native of my state as are his ideals of Greek life and customs in the time of Sophocles, and I do not believe that the natives of my state are in great degree more igno¬ rant than are the citizens of adjacent states. Un¬ fortunately the large majority of those who have written about fraternities, more especially those who have written against them, have had very little first hand information. What they say ought not to be given too much weight in discussing fra¬ ternities. Their invectives remind me of an ex¬ perience of my undergraduate days.
The state university which I attended was, in fact, a pretty orderly, quiet, steady institution whose faculty almost to a man held no unorthodox views, but placed the highest ideals before us and themselves worked in the churches as regularly as taxes. There could not have been a safer place theologically to send a boy. Most of us went to church and the Y. M. C. A. meetings regularly and said our prayers without molestation as we had done at home. Among the religious denominations throughout the state, however, an opinion had be-
7
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
come extant that at the State University atheism ran riot. In my junior year there was a gathering at the seat of the university of the state organiza¬ tion of one of the Protestant churches. A few of the more venturesome delegates, led by deviltry and curiosity, wandered over to visit the university. As they stood on the first floor of the main build¬ ing awed and fearsomelike because of their sur¬ roundings, I heard one of them say, “One can simply feel the spirit of infidelity here as he enters the building.” And yet up on the third floor an undergraduate prayer meeting was going on at that moment. Their ideas of the awful life stu¬ dents were living at the state university had about as much foundation and were entitled to about as much credence as what men write about fraternities who have not themselves had a reasonable expe¬ rience as members. A large part of the opposition to fraternities is the result of jealousy and ig¬ norance.
A young fellow was telljng me recently that wheniie. came tq r.rdlpgp it, was with the id pa tjmt the Greek-letter fraternity was simply a breeding place for loafing, and extravagance, and immorali¬ ty When he was asked later to join a fraternity he hesitated, but finally he consented. In his senior year his father came to visit him and found him as president of the Young Men’s Chris-
8
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
tian Association living in the Association dormi¬ tory. The old man had by this time become acquainted with the fraternity and was consider¬ ably attracted by the fellows in it. When he looked over his son’s surroundings in the Associa¬ tion building, concerning which there was no reasonable ground for legitimate complaint, he became thoughtful for a time and then said very seriously, “You know, Jack, I believe you’d be bet¬ ter off down at the fraternity house.”
There are boys in the secondary schools, also, who look upon the fraternity as an organization in which they can have the greatest moral and social freedom. The fraternity house is a place where they can study when they like, sit with their hats on and their feet on the mantel, and engage in rough house until the plaster falls. They know the college man only as they see him on the stage in his most exaggerated forms. A freshman in one of our fraternity houses was being called to account not long ago for his rough and boisterous conduct when he seemed quite astonished that any one should object to his breaking up the furniture and acting like a savage.
“Why, I thought that was what a fraternity was for,” he ventured quite apologetically. His view is not an unique one.
“I don’t believe I want my son to be a fraternity
9
I ' m
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
man when he gets to college,” the father of a high school senior remarked to me recently, when I was calling at his house.
“Why not?” I asked.
“It’s an undemocratic life,” he said, “and one very different from what he lives at home or from what he will live after he gets out of college. Besides, there are a good many new dangers likely to be encountered.”
“Well, is it,” I replied, “and are there? What is he doing now?” He was, as I supposed, out with his chums, the regular group of boys with whom he associated and who formed a regular part of his daily life. He was following the same sort of procedure as he would follow if after he got to col¬ lege he should join a fraternity, excepting that in the
organized one. It need not be less normal and it usually is not less so than the life he lived at home in association with his friends and his home folks.
Fathers write me every fall in an endeavor to find out what fraternities are like, what they stand for, how the men live, what influence the organiz¬ ations are likely to have on their sons should they join. They drop into the office with their fresh¬ man sons to discuss the relative merits of various organizations, and the relative advantage of going in or staying out. The amount of parental ignor-
fraternity the life would be a more definitely
10
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
ance that I have a chance to dispel is really remarkable. Boys confused and embarrassed by the strangeness of the new life and the new problems of living see me daily at the opening of each new college year, and I have many a chance to put them right as to college customs, college tradi¬ tions, and college organizations. I should like in this paper to give college sons and college fathers some intelligent idea of what a Greek-letter fra- ■ ternity is, and what it does or may do for the boy who goes into it.
I have not yet got quite to the point of advising freshmen to join a fraternity any more than I feel like advising my next door neighbor to buy an electric for his wife or to install a pneumatic cleaner in his house, but I feel sure that there are advantages and benefits likely to accrue to the one who joins, and I am frank in saying to the fresh¬ man as he enters college that if I were in his posi¬ tion and were beginning my college course, know¬ ing all that I now know about college fraternities, their weaknesses and their strong points, I think I should want to join one, just as, if one is religious,
I think he is foolish not to join a church, and if he is interested in politics, not to ally himself with some political organization. If I had a son in college, I should offer no objection to his joining.
The Greek-letter fraternity in college is of com¬ il
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
paratively recent origin. The oldest fraternity cannot look back quite one hundred years, and a good many of these years were pretty dull so far as educational development was concerned. The most of the Greek-letter fraternities are less than' sixty years old. The., purpose of their founders was usually -self-developmojit, the cultivation'll ideals, good scholarship, and good-fellow ■shipr Many of these organizations at first were smuTai in character to our modern literary societies and encouraged and cultivated debating and public speaking and literary composition. The idea of furnishing a home and of developing home life for its members was at first unthought of and unneces¬ sary. The living conditions in the college in which fraternities were first organized were satisfactory. In many instances students lived in dormitories provided by the college, and it was not necessary for the fraternity to furnish the home life for its members. During the last fifty years conditions have been rapidly changing. Colleges everywhere are providing in the regular curriculum the train¬ ing for which the fraternity originally stood, and the fraternity in a large number of cases must now look after the housing and feeding of its own mem¬ bers, and so provide its own home life — a duty which the college formerly performed.
There is little that is subtle or unusual in the
12
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
organization of the modern college fraternity. It has a ritual — simple, dignified, and full of high ideals usually, but the ceremony of initiation when carried on seriously as it now is in most frater¬ nities worth consideration is one which tends to inspire the initiate and to make him thoughtful rather than otherwise. It has its secret work — innocent, harmless, and appealing to the imagina¬ tion of youth for the most part; but if all the secrets which are a part of the initiation cere¬ monies of such fraternities were published in the daily press, if all the grips and signs and pass words were forgotten, the fraternity would not be materially affected. These details are not a vital influence either for good or for evil. They simply appeal to the youthful imagination; they throw a certain glamour of mystery and romance about the organization, that makes a strong impression upon youthful minds. Anything that is locked or that is hidden by a curtain always arouses curi¬ osity. It is the same sort of innocent appeal that is made to every young person by the so- called secrets of the fraternity.
A good many fathers look upon a fraternity merely as a lodging house and a boarding club, \ and though it is both of these it is much more; it is a home. The college student, young, inexperi- ] enced, and away from home usually for the first I
13
i . in
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
time, lives under peculiar conditions. He wants friends, companionship, and the associations of home; he wants sympathy, encouragement, and direction, and it is these which the fraternity can give him. It is the most natural and normal thing that the young man in college should develop his own peculiar organization for the cultivation of such characteristics of the home as are in college possible. The Greek-letter fraternity is such an organization.
The criticisms that are made upon the frater¬ nity by those who are not members of it or who know little or nothing about it, are that it is undemocratic, that it encouarges extravagance and immorality. Men argue that in college, especially in an institution supported by the state, no organization should be allowed to exist which it is impossible for any student to belong to should he so desire. I read a letter not long ago from the father of two boys who had graduated from col¬ lege protesting against fraternities on the ground that, though he did not want his sons to join and could not have afforded to have them do so even if he had desired it, it was unjustifiable that there should be any organization at a state university which was not open to his sons and to every other student. It seems to me as reasonable to argue that if I belong to the Presbyterian church or to
14
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
the Republican party, I am under obligations to have the most intimate social relations with every member of each one of these organizations, and if I give a dinner party, I must ask each one of them to my house.
The number of intimate, close, personal friends which any one man can have is limited by his time, by his tastes, and by his temperament. He has a right to choose who these shall be, with whom he shall live, and with whom he shall associate, and the fact that he does not find it convenient or desirable or pleasing to choose me does not argue against me or against his democracy. With the marriage laws as they are no one is likely to be able to marry all the attractive girls he knows, nor can any fellow in college develop an intimate friendship with every one else. There is no lack of democracy in such a situation nor any sane reason for thinking a man exclusive because of these limitations.
The charges of immorality and extravagance have little foundation. The extravagances and dissipations of an organization are much more evident than are those of an individual, and much more talked about. For that reason, they are more readily corrected. If they are not corrected, then the college authorities who permit these things to continue are to blame quite as much as
. 15
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
are the organizations which are guilty of them. I should be foolish to argue that there are not immoralities in college fraternities, and I am willing to grant that when these exist among the members of such an organization the evil result may be more far reaching than when such irfegu- larities are seen in an individual, but these things are not inherent in the fraternity any more than they are in our public schools.
It costs more to live in a fraternity house than in the ordinary boarding-house, because men usually live better, live more comfortably, have more privileges. But priviliges bring obligations in this case as in others, so that the undergraduate who joins a fraternity will find himself restricted by this action. When he chooses a certain group of men for his particular friends, for his college family as it were, he shuts himself off naturally from a similar association with other men or at least with many other men. This does not seem to me more deplorable or regrettable than the fact that when my friend, Tom Brown, married Jane Bailey and thereby acquired Jane’s mother as a mother-in-law he made it impossible to hold Mrs. Babb in the same relation, though Mrs. Babb was a delightful lady and from my point of view rather more desirable as a parent-in-law than the person Tom acquired. It is a pity, but one cannot under
16
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
circumstances existing at present, have every attractive, middle-aged woman as a mother-in-law. Well, there are limitations in college, and the man who thinks there should be none must have rather a thin coating of gray on his brain.
The fellow who goes into a fraternity takes the group for better or for worse, just as when one gets into a family he finds that the fortunes and the reputation of the family are his. I know' a lot of fellows who have gone ahead with the idea that when they say “I will” to the minister’s questions, it applies only to the girl at their side, but they soon wake up to find that it took in the whole family even to the most remote and most disrepu¬ table second cousin. It is just like that in a frater¬ nity; the group you elect is yours, good or bad; and having chosen, you must make the best of it.
There are those who feel that this fraternity relationship should be easily broken just as they might feel that our divorce laws are too stringent. They argue that if a member of a fraternity proves himself undesirable, it ought to be a simple matter to get rid of him. I cannot feel so. It seems to me that the relationship is such a close and binding one that only under the most critical circumstances should it be severed. The home relations in the fraternity should be considered sacred relations.
17
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
It is just as well to keep in mind that a frater¬ nity man is held responsible for what every other man in his chapter does and that the character of the chapter is determined by what the worst man in it does. A very good chapter of one of the oldest and most respected fraternities at the Uni¬ versity of Illinois is at present about as unpopular and about as thoroughly disliked as any chapter on the campus, and all because a few of its men are always on hand to recount tales of personal deviltry at the popular loafing places, and are eager to be known as “men of the world,” what¬ ever that suggestive phrase 'may mean. The whole chapter has the name of being loafers and rounders, just because three conceited men have taken courses in public speaking and are able to put their stories across.
I have sometimes thought that I should be better satisfied if the method of picking out the brothers in a fraternity were characterized by a little more sanity. The rushing systems of most fraternities with which I am acquainted are on the whole unlikely to give the freshman a true con¬ ception of the real character of the fraternity and its members, as I shall show later. In choosing between the local organization and the national fraternity, I have often advised fellows to join the former if the make-up of the latter organization
18
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
seemed not likely to be congenial or helpful to the best development of character. A man’s fra¬ ternity life is lived largely while he is in college, and he should go with the group that will give him the best chance to live a healthy, happy, effective, undergraduate life.
‘ Why should a boy entering college join. a, fra- ternity?” I am asked again and again. “What\ does he get out of it, and what does it do for him?” j As the system is now in most of our colleges, only a limited number of entering students can join such an organization, because the number of such organizations is small and the membership of each must be kept within reasonable. limits. The presi¬ dent of a large institution said to me not long ago, “When are you going to stop increasing the num¬ ber of fraternities? Do you think it is a good thing to have more and more fraternities in col¬ lege?” My answer then was in the affirmative, and as I have since then given the matter more serious thought, I have not felt like changing my mind. I wish that every boy who comes to college might find an organization suited to his particular needs, and might have done to him and for him the service which a well-organized and well-managed frater-j nity does for its members.
First of all ^fag-fraternity gives the undergradu- ote^riendsyj ush as~he is needing. them most. The
19
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
thing about which parents usually concern them¬ selves when their sons leave home to enter college is that thev will be thrown at once upon their own resources .T I think this is a good thing, but inde¬ pendence"^ and isolation are not identical nor equally necessary. / The fraternity man does not run his own affairs/but he is associated closely with the fellows of his own age and tastes who are doing the same thing. Not long ago a young fellow came into my office, lonesome, homesick, pretty close to friendless. He had come from a country home a thousand miles away from the college, he had entered the second semester, he knew no one, and he had no one with whom he could talk, no one with whom he might spend his leisure time, and no personal means of recreation. A fraternity man saw him talking to me, picked .him up, and took him to dinner. A few days later he came into the office wearing a pledge button. He was happy, contented, interested in his studies, interested in the college because he had found friends and a home. The fraternity had furnished for him the center of a new life.
The fraternity throws at once upon the under- graduate certain responsibilities about the house, and I believe in no small measure prepares him for the duties which he will later have to assume or direct when he has a home of his own. The young
20
v
(
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
fellow freed from the tasks incident to keeping up a house often becomes indifferent to these things and almost unconscious that they have to be per¬ formed. It is a good thing for a boy to learn early that no house furnace has yet been designed that will long successfully stoke itself, that floors need to be polished occasionally if they are to look re¬ spectable, and that dust and dirt and litter of all sorts must have someone’s personal attention if they are to be discouraged or materially abated. I have never been strongly an advocate of the system which permits upperclassmen to order freshmen about just for the sake of showing that they can, or of beating them just to keep one’s muscles in shape, but I believe the system is a helpful one which requires each underclassman in a frater¬ nity house to take his share of the responsibility: in doing; the chores about the house and in seeing that the house is kept m_arder. It is simply another" opportunity to impress upon^the under¬ graduate! the obligations^ of good citizenship. A man appreciates better the siz e of a yard after he has run the lawn mower over it for a few times ; he has more civic pride after he has rak^d-the parking into condition and picked up the loose paper about the premises. ) He has an altogether different idea of life from what the undergraduate has who lives in a mere boarding-house and who
21
; y JJIM
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
can be made to assume none of the responsi¬ bilities. _l'When our towns have a “clean up” day in the spring, I am never surprised to see what a large percentage of fraternity men get out and help, for these men have had a thorough local home training in such matters and have learned to take an interest in them and to appreciate their importance.
One of thefir&t thing^ddiat..a-yoemg-ielhrwk^yns 1 when he get^ into a fraternity is that if he would be happy, he must know how te~get-on with people. . \ The boy who at home has run the household, and J the only child who has never had to yield his rights or his playthings to anyone, the sensitive or the selfish fellow, will be taught a good many things before he has been in a fraternity long. While I was writing this paragraph the mail brought me a letter from a worried father begging me to ask the officers of the fraternity of which his only son was a member to be kind to the boy, to humor his idiosyncrasies, and to say nothing to him unkind concerning his personal peculiarities which I, before he had been in college a wTeek, had discovered were not few. It wras a foolish letter for a father to write, and a useless one. The fraternity officers would have paid no attention to such advice had I been silly enough to give it to them ; their purposes are t.q. educate. • One of the main functions of a
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
fraternity is to mould the -to cour
rect his faults, to change his peculiarities, and to help him to become normal and to live comfortably and happily with normal people.- It is largely a matter of observation and adjustment, of yielding one’s own preferences or prejudices for the com¬ fort or good of others. The fraternity is a help¬ ful agency in the development of this sort of unselfishness. If the young boy whose father wrote me stays in college long enough, he will be pretty sure to learn how to stand in with the various members of his fraternity or how to manage them ; he will learn by experience that his sensitiveness and his selfishness and his peculiar manners hinder him and handicap him, and if he has sense he will correct all these personal peculiarities in order that he may apomplish his purposes — in order that he may get on with people.
A little fellow I knew once, an only child, had had no restraint at home. He was ill tempered, bad mannered, profane, and generally disagreeable to every member of his family, all of whom humored him, waited on him, and endured him. It was only when he started to school and saw that these traits of character made him unpopular and disliked, ostracised and isolated him, and so made him un- happy, that he corrected his faults and did for
23
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
■f
I
himself that which neither his parents nor his friends had previously been able to do. It is some such service as this that the fraternity performs for the undergraduate.
“College has made a wonderful change in Fred Gates,” one of his townsmen said to me not long ago. “Every one notices that he is. quieter, more thoughtful, less selfish.” “It was his fraternity that did it,” I replied, and I knew how difficult a task it had been to accomplish.
In a peculiar way, I think, the fraternity teaches the undergraduate to respect the rights of others. If twenty-five or thirty men are to get on happily in a house there must be some regard on the part of everyone for “mine” and “thine.” The care¬ lessness or thoughtlessness of one man may annoy or injure all of the others. The man who sleeps late in the morning or comes noisy into the dormi¬ tory at night, who plays the piano when other men want to study, will not live long in a fraternity house before he is called by the umpire. In the use of other men’s time, or dress shirts, or theme paper, or tobacco, the fraternity man ultimately learns that the fellow who does not respect the rights or preperty of others is not a good member of a fraternity household.
The , fi^iiier.nity teaches the undergraduate a good many things about social conventions vduch
W"
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
he would be long in learning in the ordinary board¬ ing house. • Not every freshman who comes to col¬ lege, and not every freshman who joins a frater¬ nity. has a perfect working knowledge of t.l^ conventionalities of life. I have seen the freshman even in a fraternity house reach for a slice of bread with his fork, pass the toothpicks, or fail to “ship his oars,” but he did not do it often before some thoughtful brother called his attention to the error. A man may be goocl fraternity material without having polished manners, but if the fraternity is well organized and well managed, an undergraduate cannot be a member of it long without learning to show more respect for the proper sociaTconventions, without cultivating self- possession and developing poise, j I was not long ago with: a friend at dinner at a fraternity house. My friend was a woman of broad experience who had traveled widely all over the world and who had associated with cultivated people everywhere. The young men met her without embarrassment, they talked easily, and their dinner was served in the utmost good taste. She marveled to me at their finesse, and I, who am used to seeing frater¬ nity men do these things so well, have scarcely ceased to marvel myself. They were country boys, many of them, or boys from country towns. Some of them, it is true, had been brought up in the city,
25
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
but these, in many cases, had had quite as little social experience as the others. There is a certain tradition about it all ; it is a kind of ritual handed down from one generation to the next. The fresh¬ man learns from the upperclassman and then in turn passes the lesson on to succeeding undergradu¬ ates. However it is done, the man wTho goes into a fraternity of the right sort is sure to- learn some¬ thing of Social form, of politeness and courtesy and good manners that will be to him in later life no mean asset.
It has been a criticism upon the fraternity, and it has not been an altogether unjust one, that it has led its members rather more actively into social activities than was good for many of them. If I were arguing on this side of the question, I should not be at a loss to find illustrations to prove my point, but I believe as I go back over my experience that the instances in which the social life and activities of fraternity men were a benefit to them are so far in excess of those in which they were a detriment, that it can safely be held that the social activities into which the modern Greek- letter fraternity introduces its members are, on the whole, an excellent thing. Most of the men who enter our Middle West educational institu¬ tions are from very modest homes in many of which the social life is unconventional and in not
26
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
a few crude. If these men do not get proper social training in college, they are little likely to acquire it after they get out. A member of a good fra¬ ternity has an easier entree into the best social life which the college offers than does any other man. In no college with which I am acquainted do the fraternity men usurp the best social life, but the fraternity man always has someone to introduce him, someone to help him plan, someone to push him if he lags back or lacks nerve. We may be emphasizing social life too much in our colleges at the present time, and especially in our coeducational institutions, but be that as it may, a healthy, moderate social life no one in college can afford to omit, and the fraternity furnishes the undergraduate the easiest aproach to it. I heard a well-known successful engineer say at one time that more engineers had failed in getting a job because of soiled collars and badly selected neck¬ ties than from any other reason. I should not be inclined to take
am convinced that, social assnrLoJdrms nf tha-rlfftft
sort-do teach a man manyJhina&.«^
dress and . manners and s n cU]
these lessons, will .b^,p.i,qfitaUk-.to him as long as he
lives.
The fraternity, in the Middle West at least, leads its members pretty generally into all forms
27
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
of student activities. In the University of Illinois the extra-curriculum activities of students are fully three-fourths, I believe, in the hands of fra¬ ternity men. The fraternities urge their men to get out, keep after them constantly, and help them in every way possible. The man who does not belong to a fraternity has no organization behind him, no one to goad him if he gets lazy, so even when he has a good chance of winning, he often becomes discouraged and drops out. There again in this matter of outside activities there is often a difference of opinion. Some conservative college officers hold that the fewer extra-curriculum activi¬ ties in which the student engages the better off he is. If the only object of a college educa¬ tion were to teach a man facts, to acquaint him with scientific principles, and to fill him with book knowledge, I should agree with this view fully.
I am convinced, however, from my own experience f as well as from a long period of observation, that J .though study and books are the main thing, the
value . of a college training lies almost as mucj
in what the undergraduate gets outside of the srocm as in what he gets within it. • Associa¬ tion with men, the solving of the practical prob¬ lems of life, independence, self-reliance, poise,' finesse are all developed through outside activities.
I believe that the number of activities into which /
28
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
any student may go and the amount of time which he may spend upon such work should be limited by the college, but I believe that most students who stay entirely out of extra-curriculum activi¬ ties ijiake a mistake, and I think that the frater¬ nity in urging the undergraduate to spend a reasonable amount of time in such work is doing him a service.
The effect of the fraternity upon the studies of the undergraduate has not been until within recent years all that it should be. Interest in scholarship, however, is increasing everywhere among the faternities, and fraternity averages all over the country are coming up. One of the difficulties to be met, and one which has not previ¬ ously been given the consideration it deserves, lies in the fact that it is not an easy matter to have a high scholastic average among groups of men exceeding twelve in number. Even men of the highest scholastic standing seem to lower their average when they get into groups exceeding a dozen. It has been remarked at the University of Illinois that the members of Tau Beta Pi, one of the best known of the honorary engineering fraternities, very often have a drop in their scholastic standing when they move into the Tau Beta Pi house. Whether this drop in their scholarship may be attributed to the fact that,
29
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
having proved their worth by their election to an honorary society, they become self-satisfied and relax their industry, or whether it may be explained by the fact that the most of the men have previously lived in houses where there were few students and so find it difficult to work among so many, it is difficult to say; at any rate it is certain that the scholarship in such cases does usually drop. Statistics show this year at the University of Illinois that the scholarship stand¬ ing of men outside of the fraternities who lived in houses accommodating more than a dozen men was not so good as that of the fraternities whose mem¬ bership with us averages about thirty. This fact of lower scholarship was seen in the Young Men’s Christian Association dormitory, in College Hall, and in practically all the places where a large number of men are housed. It seems evident from these facts that if a man is going out for high scholarship, he will most easily attain this result by living by himself. Only three or four of the twenty-five men ranking highest in the Uni¬ versity of Illinois last semester lived in houses containing more than a half-dozen students, and in not a few cases there were no other students in the house.
It can be seen from the facts given also that the fraternity is solving its scholastic problems
SO
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
better than are other groups of men whose difficul¬ ties are not so great as those of the fraternity. The fraternity has house rules and fixed study hours, and so far I can see there is a reasonable and serious attempt to enforce these rules. The scholarship average of our fraternities last semes¬ ter was as high as the average of men living outside of these organizations and, as I have said, consider¬ ably higher than that of other men living in large groups. The scholarship of fraternity freshmen was also higher than that of other freshmen. The fraternity man who wants to study learns to do so even if the conditions surrounding him are not ideal. He comes to the point of not being disturbed by a little noise or confusion. Before he gets through college the fraternity man is usually so immune to the effects of having people about him that he could write his theme or solve his problem in mechanics as easily in the trenches of Verdun as in his own room.
From my point of view this is a good thing. It is one of the regrets of my college life that I lived alone and that I learned to study and to work alone. Now I find it next to impossible to do any serious work with people about me. I have powers of concentration, but I can control these powers only when I have complete isolation. This fact is a great handicap. If in college I had lived
31
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
in a fraternity house instead of living at home with my mother, I am quite sure, that I could have learned to adjust myself to other conditions, and that such adjustment would be to me today a great help.
I ought not to ignore the fact in this connec¬ tion that there are dangers to young fellows, i especially to those who are easily led, or who have no strong definite purpose in coming to college, in living in a fraternity house. There are easy 1 chairs and open fires, and pleasant companions \ about. There are inducements to loaf and oppor- | tunities to spend money, and temptation on all I sides to take life easy. The fraternity, like every- \ day life, is a test of character. If a man is weak and purposeless, he may have a hard time of it ; but df he is weak . and purposeless, he has little place mi college at all and little chance anywhere. Fra¬ ternity life is no more severe test of his character than any boy finds who goes away from home as a boy should and tries to make for himself a place and a home among other men.
I believe that the greatest service that the fra¬ ternity does for the undergraduate is to set before him high ideals of living. It is true, for youth is thoughtless and impulsive, that these principles are not always adhered to ; they are frequently ignored or forgotten, but ultimately, I am Presby-
32
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
terian enough to believe, they sink in, they leave their impression, they have a greater or a less influence upon the moral life of every man who has taken the oath of the organization. One can not hear the ritual read or go through the cere¬ mony of initiation without having a greater regard for truth and honesty and virtue and brotherly love, and this impression one unconsciously carries into the routine of the business of his every day life. As I came back from the biennial congress of my fraternity some time ago, I could not help noticing the impression which the meeting had made upon the undergraduates who were on the train with me. All of them were young, and some of them were careless, and a few were controlled by the passions of youth; but just then they were serious, thoughtful, impressed with the obligations which membership in the fraternity placed upon them, and determined, too, to go home and more conscientiously to live up to the principles for which the fraternity stands. The fraternity had done them all good.
And so I say, as I said at the beginning, if I were an undergraduate in college again, I think I should want to belong to a fraternity; and if I had a son in college, I should be quite contented to have him a member of such an organization.
33
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
THE GREEK AND THE INDEPENDENT
With us at the University of Illinois, although the fraternities have been in active operation for thirty years and are constantly increasing in number, there has been no general quarrel or ill- feeling or jealousy between the Greeks and inde¬ pendents. We have tried to look ahead and solve our problems before they became too complex, so that the disagreeble situations which have arisen at some of our neighboring institutions we have fortunately escaped. We are, perhaps, more democratic than are the students of some other colleges. A man seldom loses standing by not having money, and very often gains none by pos¬ sessing it. We are a friendly group ; everyone speaks to everyone else when he meets him on the street. I am often pleased when walking with some companion through the student district in the evening, disguised by the enveloping shadows which soften the differences between youth and middle age, to be greeted on all sides with the salutation, “Hello, boys,” or “Good evening, fellows.” Not knowing who I am, they speak any¬ way, and reveal by so doing a friendly cosmo¬ politan spirit, which, to a westerner like myself, is very gratifying. At the dignified New England
34
The Greek and the Independent
institution where I did my graduate work, such a custom would have been unthinkable. No one spoke to his seatmate there without an introduc¬ tion. I sat by a man in an English course three days a week for two-thirds of a year without his giving me a sign of recognition, only for us to find out later that we came from neighboring towns in Illinois and were really only simulating the conservatism of the environs of Boston. As I said, with us it seems unfriendy not to speak to every one, whether he be Greek or independent, whether he come from southern Asia or northern Scandi¬ navia. One man with us is as good as another, provided he is a gentleman who has some charac¬ ter.
Fortunately for us, I believe, the fraternities have never been politically a unit. From the time when the literary societies were the only real fraternities existing, there have been divisions, two factions, two political parties opposing each other in every contest and at every election. The opposi¬ tion is seldom unfriendly or bitter, but it is keen and definite. It is comparable to the feeling which exists in this country between Democrats and Republicans, or between a man and his wife, who, though they may have different political views and affiliations, yet live a congenial, peace¬ able life together. No matter how many intra-
35
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
fraternity organizations have arisen to bring the fraternities closer together, and to unify frater¬ nity interests, no matter how many Helmets and Klu Kluxes and Yoxans have been organized to draw their material for membership from the fra¬ ternities in general, when the fraternity men have come to the polls the party lines have been closely drawn, and the split has come in about the same place that it did twenty years ago. I am sure that this condition of affairs has worked profit to the fraternities, and kept them far more in general favor than they might have been had they all regularly lined up upon the same side of an issue, for the fraternities to win have had to make friends with the independents, and if an independent wished to win, he must get the support of at least one faction of the fraternities. This state of affairs has made it necessary for anyone running for office, and our fraternity men are regularly office seekers, to make friends pretty generally, if he expected election, both among fraternity men and men independent of such organizations. There is little snobbishness, therefore, and little inclina¬ tion to draw social and organization lines closely. A good illustration of this condition was seen last semester in the politics of our senior class. The president of the class, a well-known and well-liked fraternity man, was elected without opposition.
36
The Greek and the Independent
He was supported on all sides by Greek and inde¬ pendents alike. When it came to the appointment of his committees, instead of selecting a fraternity man for the most important position, as he might very well have done, he chose the strongest and the most influential independent in the institution. The selection was satisfactorv to everyone because it recognized real worth, and put into an important place one of the most respected men in college.
I am, perhaps, for this reason just mentioned, not so well qualified to discuss the relationship between those men who belong to fraternities and those who do not, it may be argued, as someone might be who is familiar with the dissensions that have arisen in various localities or as someone who may have been a part of these disagreements ; I am not directly familiar with the petty quarrels that have arisen in too many institutions between the Greeks and the independents, though I have read many of the details in fraternity journals and in the daily newspapers. On the other hand I am not so sure but that I am better qualified than some other man might be who has lived in an atmosphere of dissension and jealously because I know that it is possible for these two classes of undergraduates, conflicting and discordant as they are in some institutions, to get on happily, to recognize each other’s merits, to have no ground
37
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
of disagreement, and in the various political games which are played in the college community to work together harmoniously.
Coming in contact, as I do daily, with all sorts of students and student difficulties, I am most likely to know immediately about all the differences which arise between individual students, between different student organizations, and between Greeks and independents. I am most likely, also, to become entangled unpleasantly in these, and, whether I wish to do so or not, to become a part of them. It often requires a skilful steering between Scylla and Charybdis. I have sometimes been surprised at the relatively small amount of criticism which I, as a college officer, am subjected to because of these relationships. Only this week a rather hot-headed junior said some pretty caustic things to me, because in helping to carry out the details of a quarantine which had been imposed upon a fraternity and a private dormi¬ tory, I was somewhat more rigid with the men in the dormitory than I was with the men in the fra¬ ternity. His claim was that I trusted the men in the fraternity and put a policeman to watch the comings and goings of the men in the dormitory. I was able to show him that the fraternity was a responsible organization which I had learned to depend upon and which the members themselves
88
The Greek and the Independent
took pride in ; that when the head of the organiza¬ tion agreed to a line of conduct I was confident that for the good of his organization he would see that it was carried out. The men in the dormi¬ tory were not socially or morally inferior, but they were not in any true sense organized; what one man or one group of men would agree to do would seldom affect the rest of the men. There was so little unity, so little concerted action, that I knew it would be quite unsafe to depend upon the fact that they would all abide by any regulation that might be imposed. It was not that the men them¬ selves were different or more entitled to considera¬ tion; they lived in a different way, they were controlled by a different organization, and so they must of necessity be managed differently by me. It was not difficult to make my critic see all these things, and to get him to agree that it was quite just that the men in the fraternity should not be treated quite in the same way as the men in the dormitory.
For a good many years we had every fall at the University of Illinois a pretty severe physical con¬ test between the members of the freshman and sophomore classes which involved many hundreds of contestants. Because of their superior experi¬ ence, even though their numbers were ordinarily inferior, the sophomores usually won. In one
39
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
instance the tables were turned, and the fresh¬ men came out of the fray victorious. Two exultant freshmen were walking down Green Street dis¬ cussing the victory and offering each other mutual congratulations. “I don’t see how we ever did it,” the first one ventured. “Well, I know, kid,” the second man explained, emphasizing each syllable by a slap on his companion’s back. “It was or-gan-i-za-tion.” Whether the freshman was correct or not, it is quite evident to any unpreju¬ diced onlooker that the main difference between the fraternity man and the independent is, as I have said, that one is a part of a coherent organiza¬ tion, and the other is not. Inherently, there is no difference, and it is upon the basis of organiza¬ tion only, and how best to manage men in it, that distinctions should be made. Perhaps this is as good a place as I shall find to say that the theory that all students should be treated alike is as foolish a one as could be promulgated, though I have heard it emphasized since the time when as a child I entered the public schools. The teacher or school official who treated one boy differently from what he treated another was the subject of much com¬ ment at home and on the playground, and the subject, also, of biting criticism. The theory would be all right if students were all alike, but since they are not it is the height of folly and
40
The Greek and the Independent
verges on imbecility for parents or teachers or col¬ lege officials to treat any two young people alike in any situation where the conditions are affected by the personality of the individual. Even children can see this if it is put up to them intelli¬ gently.
There are those who argue that a member of a fraternity has more show than an independent, that he is given more consideration, that college officers discriminate in his favor. In point of fact, I feel that the opposite of this is true, barring the fact that organization is one of the first ele¬ ments in attaining success, and that the frater¬ nity man takes advantage of this favorable condi¬ tion. I have sometimes felt that possibly a college man occasionally lost favor by being a part of an organization, because one has a tendency to blame him for the sins of his fellows. “Does Brown belong to a fraternity?” the chairman of a com¬ mittee diliberating over a freshman’s intellectual future, asked me over the telephone the other day. “I think so,” I replied, “but that fact ought not to determine whether or not he is allowed to con¬ tinue.”
Usually I am convinced that the man in an organization is helped. We see it in business, in politics, in the church, in society — why not in col¬ lege? The independent fights against odds
41
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
because he fights alone. “I don’t want anyone to help me out,” I heard an undergraduate say not long ago. “If I get anything or anywhere I want to do it by my own efforts and upon my own merits.” But no one is likely to get very far alone, and more and more we are coming to recognize the fact that it is team work that counts. Even the self-made man is not so much in vogue as he once was, because we see what a crude, freakish, incom¬ plete product he often is. It is better to employ organization and “piece work” in turning out a successful man. The fact that a fraternity man is allied with a group of other men who are working for approximately the same thing as he is working for, who are in sympathy with him, who are willing to help him and advise him, does usually give him an advantage over other men. His condition reminds me somewhat of an experience which I had yesterday. I attended a baseball game between our home team and that of a nearby state uni¬ versity. The odds were pretty even, if I may be permitted to use so paradoxical an expression, and more than once our pitcher seemed in a rather tight corner. At each instance of this sort there always came from all sides of the bleachers the encouraging cry “We’re all behind you, Red,” and I have no doubt it was that friendly fraternal word that helped “Red” to pull himself success-
The Greek and the Independent
fully out of the holes into which he seemed to be slipping. It is the same sort of help that the fra¬ ternity man has behind him that many men count an unfair advantage.
There are few communities in which the intellec¬ tual differences, great as they sometimes seem to be, are so slight as they are in a college community, and especially as they are in a college community in the Middle West. The young men who enter such an institution are, for the most part, from middle class homes. Their fathers and mothers have usually attained some business or community distinction in the neighborhood in which they live, but they very seldom have as broad an education as they hope to secure for their children. These young people themselves have been quite similarly educated. The preparation which one receives in a good country high school is not materially dif¬ ferent from that which he would get in a good city high school ; at least it can be shown that the young fellows who attain intellectual distinction after coming to college are quite as likely to have had their preparation in a small high school as in a larger one. There is little difference, there¬ fore, intellectually, between these boys who come to college, some of whom may join a fraternity, and a larger number of whom will not.
Socially, also, the difference is not so great
43
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
as one might suppose. It is true there are some pretty wide extremes and some rather striking contrasts, but as I have seen through many years the procession of fathers and mothers that come each autumn with the opening of college and each spring at commencement time, I am convinced that the great mass of our students, in the Middle West at least, come from a quite similar social environ¬ ment. I have been given a jolt often at commence¬ ment week when meeting for the first time the parents of some well-known fraternity hero, as I have been delighted when I have been introduced to the friends of some modest independent. The Greek, as I have known him, has very little on the independent so far as social prestige is concerned.
Nor is the distinction between these two classes of students in any large degree based upon the relative amounts of money which they or their parents have. It is true that ordinarily it requires somewhat more money to live in a fraternity house than to live outside, but the mere fact that a man has money seldom decides whether or not he will become a fraternity man when he enters col¬ lege. As I write these sentences the names of a score of wealthy boj^s who were in college this year come to my mind, not one of whom belonged to a fraternity. Some of them did not care to do so, and some of them could not have got in had thev
44
The Greek and the Independent
wished ever so much to do so ; and on the other hand there are in my mind the names of a large number of fellows with scarcely moderate means who were rushed off their feet by a half dozen organizations eager to pledge them. There is little or no difference between them so far as financial standing is concerned. I have in mind two boys, friends from childhood, who came to college two years ago. The parents of one were wealthy, and the parents of the other could with the greatest sacrifice send him to college. They joined the same fraternity, have enjoyed the same privileges, and have attained about the same dis¬ tinction and popularity.
I realize that there are many people who do not agree with me in these statements which I have been making. On the one hand there are those who look upon fraternity men as made of somewhat more refined and better glazed clay than are other men. These men, if pushed, would be willing to grant that the fraternity man, perhaps, is no grind, that he is more likely to make the loafer’s club than Phi Beta Kappa, but when it comes to social prominence and finesse, they are sure that he has it on every other fellow in college. I have heard the occasional fraternity man talks as if he were making a great concession when he associated with an independent, but fortunately such men
45
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
are not numerous. On the other hand there are independents who look upon fraternity men with complete disfavor. They consider them snobs, loafers, and men of generally loose principles. One of our honorary societies prided itself for years that when it came to the election of members no fraternity man ever got by. It was not until a fraternity man came along who was intel¬ lectually so undeniably superior to the other avail¬ able men that the old custom was abandoned. Since that time candidates are considered upon their merits, whether they are fraternity men or not.
When such an attitude of mind exists as I have just mentioned, all sorts of difficulties are likely to arise. Social differences and political factions develop, and independent fraternities whose sole purpose is to fight fraternities not unlike them¬ selves are organized and begin a campaign of opposition which results in the grossest and most exaggerated statements. The few college clubs which I have known, as well as those which I have heard of, that were organized with the determina¬ tion to fight fraternities, or not to become frater¬ nities, were the most radical of fraternities as soon as they were organized. The fact that they wrere known by English names rather than b}^ Greek- letters made not the slightest difference. The procedure resembles very much the ordinary poli-
46
The Greek and the Independent
tical campaign, where opposing candidates go the limit in making unsupported accusations against each other.
The newspapers do not help the situation; they exploit eagerly every trivial circumstance or dif¬ ference which arises between Greeks and indepen¬ dents. They enjoy a fight. The public believes what it reads, and forms its opinions upon false data. With regard to these things as with regard to many similar ones, it is not difficult to prove almost anything if one does not demand too many illustrations. The most worthless loafer I know in college this year is a fellow who is working his way and dependent upon his own resources for every cent he spends. Neither this one instance, nor a half dozen others would prove, however, that the man who works his way through college is a loafer. The most dissipated, extravagant spend¬ thrift with us last semester was an independent, but no one thinks of blaming his conduct upon the fact that he did not join something; no more should we usually blame another man’s downfall upon the fact that he did.
It will not be very difficult to conclude that from my viewpoint there seems little that is pertinent to say with reference to the relationships which exist or would exist between fraternity men and those who are not affiliated with such an organi-
47
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
zation. They are all made of the same sort of dust; socially, intellectually, financially, and mor¬ ally there are no appreciable differences between them. Their interests are identical; their environment is in no large degree dissimilar; there is no difference excepting that one is a member of an organization and the other not, the only way we can make a real difference is by imagining one and talking about it. It is this talking about it that does the most of the damage and stirs up the useless trouble. A good deal of it comes from silly jealousy.
Many of us found ourselves in a similar situation with reference to the late terrible European war. My father and mother were of English birth as were my older brothers and sisters. All my life my sympathies have been drawn more or less unconsciously, no doubt, toward England. America in my mind was always first, but England was second. I can scarcely see how it could be otherwise. During the last thirty years I have formed many close friends among Germans and men and women of German ancestry. I can very well see that their feelirtg toward the country from which their fathers came is not unlike that which I feel toward England. I could not expect it to be otherwise. We have gotten on together, and our friendship
48
The Greek and the Independent
has not weakened because we have been sensible enough not to exaggerate our differences, not to extol one set of friends to the exclusion of another. Each side, no doubt, has its justification, but on the whole it is better to let it go at that and not waste useful time in discussing it. We are not different in our hearts because our ancestors came from different parts of Europe. In a remotely similar way I feel toward fraternity men and those men who do not belong to fraternities. It is only when they insist on recognizing that there are differences and disagreements, and are determined to discuss them and to exaggerate them that these differences and disagreements actually exist. The men themselves are not different in ideals or in purposes.
“How shall I treat my old friends, after I have joined a fraternity?” I am constantly asked by young fellows who somehow get the idea that when they become members of a fraternity they at once sever all diplomatic relationships with every one outside. I presume it is the same sort of question which presents itself to many a young fellow who is about to be married, and who feels that such a ceremony entirely alienates him from all other friends whom he may have previously counted as his own. Neither marriage nor joining a frater¬ nity necessarily changes a man, and if either act is
49
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
instrumental in causing differences or disagree¬ ments to come between friends, something is wrong with the marriage or with the fraternity. The fact that one takes a new obligation does not in any sense absolve him from an old one. The answer to the question as to how a fraternity man should treat his independent friends is a simple one ; he should treat them as he always has done; visit them at their houses and invite them to his own; keep up his friendly associations with them in the classroom and out of it, on the street and on the campus. To do otherwise is to prove oneself a snob, and to emphasize differences which do not exist.
If there is ill feeling and jealousy and misunder¬ standing on any college campus between fraternity men and those who are independent of such organi¬ zations, it is largely because men have exaggerated trifles. When we begin to draw social lines, or poli¬ tical lines, or intellectual lines between these two classes of men we are making a mistake ; we are no more justified in doing so than we should be in insisting upon similar distinctions being made be¬ tween those men who live at home and those who live in a boarding-house; between the philanthro¬ pists who belong to church and those who do not. We shall wipe out the differences which are said to exist between Greeks and independents, when we refuse to recognize the fact that there are any.
50
Rushing and the Rushee
RUSHING AND THE RUSHEE
I have always felt that some of the strangest and most curious phenomena connected with fra¬ ternity life and fraternity customs have to do with the processes and procedures of rushing. In try¬ ing to explain to the fathers of prospective fresh¬ men just what fraternities are and what customs they follow, I think there is nothing more difficult of elucidation than those details which connect themselves with the preliminaries to bidding a man. I hear the sounds, and look on at the struggles, and detect the same old subterfuges every fall, but I have never yet been quite able to look upon the procedure wholly seriously. I hear the same argu¬ ment recited to me every year by the freshman who has listened to it in the chapter houses, the whole purpose of which is to dazzle the coveted man and to make him decide at once to take the pledge button.
Perhaps some one may essay to read this paper who is so ignorant of fraternity parlance as not to know what “rushing” means. For his benefit I may say that rushing is that conglomerate process by which the members of a fraternity in theory attempt to study a new man’s character, to get acquainted with him, and to let him get acquainted
51
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
with them, in order that both the fraternity and the freshman may decide intelligently whether or not either wishes to continue the friendship and cement it into brotherhood —To'^those engaged actively in this process of eating and drinking, of talking and drawing people into talk, of picture shows and joy rides, of vaudeville and house dances, it is really a serious business, verging often upon tragedy; to an unimpassioned and disinterested spectator the results are often serious, but the methods not infrequently suggest farce comedy.
Until within a few days before term time the college town is dead. One walks down silent desert¬ ed streets. Sleepy merchants in the University district sit in front of their places of business, yawning and without a customer. The middle of September arrives, and then everything changes. Fraternity officers come to town, fraternity help arrives, yards are cleaned up, houses are set in order, the student district in general takes on a look of life and activity, and some evening after the freshmen have begun to come in, if I chance to walk down fraternity row, or if I am invited out to a fraternity house dinner, I find that the whole community looks and sounds like a carnival in full sway. The air is full of college songs and vaude¬ ville melodies ; pianos are pounding out rag time, ukuleles are strumming, and victrolas are giving
52
Rushing and the Rushee
expression to all sorts of vocal efforts from Harry Lauder in Roamin' in the Gloamin * to Tetrazzini in the Mad Scene from Lucia . I do not need this familiar sound of revelry by night to recognize the fact that the rushing season is on.
I have always been interested in the large part which music, or that which passes for music, plays in the rushing program. I have never visited a fra¬ ternity house during the period of rushing that I did not come away hoarse from my efforts to carry on a conversation in the face of the storm of music that thundered and roared constantly on. Very few chapters are content with a mere piano played by a single performer. They try duets and trios, they gather round the piano with horns and drums and shout the latest rag time. At one house which I recently visited they had formed an orchestra with two drums that made noise enough utterly to drown any attempts at conversation. I leaned over and shouted at my companion with whom I was trying to carry on a simple conversation until I was red in the face. One organization I visited last fall had borrowed for the season a musical horror that really fascinated me. It com¬ bined under one mahogany roof a regular orchestra —piano, violin, flute, and so on. All you had to do was turn a crank and press a button and you were off. The man who operates the musical
53
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
machinery at the fraternity house during the fall rushing season must come back in good physical condition, or he will be as completely exhausted at the end of the first week as a green freshman after his first scrimmage in football.
“Why do you regularly carry on these wild musical incantations during the rushing season?” I asked a fraternity officer recently.
“It’s the custom; every one up and down the street is doing it,” was the reply; “and you have no idea, unless you’ve been through the strain, how it fills in gaps in conversation, and helps to relieve self-consciousness.”
I am quite well aware that it not only helps to fill in the gaps in conversations, but that it usually makes conversation impossible. How it aided the fraternity to get at the real character and worth of the fellows they were studying, however, I could not see then, nor can I now. I believe that one of the ways in which fraternities could help them¬ selves on to more intelligent rushing would be to have less music, and more quiet well organized con¬ versation. I believe this because *bf the real pur¬ pose for which the processes of rushing are carried on. The new man is usually very little known. He has been recommended by some one who knew his father, or who had met his sister at a summer resort, or who has some social ax to grind.
54«
Rushing and the Rushee
Usually the one who recommends him most strongly knows least about him directly. It is, or it should be, the purpose of the fraternity in rushing him to' find out something about his social and intellectual training, to discover his purposes, his ideals, his initiative, his adaptability. If he is initiated, the members of the chapter will have to live with him for four years, he will be a member of the family ; he will help to give the chapter character and repu¬ tation, or he will do his part in bringing it to dis¬ favor or disgrace. It is no trifling matter which a fraternity is undertaking when it begins to rush a man, but I have seen fraternity men give more thought and attention in going into the pedigree, history, and winning points of a bull pup they were about to take into their household than they did to the qualities of the young fellow they were about to pledge as a brother.
I think it would be a helpful proceeding for every member of the active chapter to ask himself before he goes into the work of the rushing season just what rushing is for, and govern his conduct accord¬ ingly. Years ago, before the University had rid itself of hazing, it was the custom of the unregen¬ erate sophomores to run in any isolated freshmen who might be out alone after night, and force them to take an immediate bath in the Boneyard, a dirty sluggish little stream scarcely more than a ditch
55
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
that flows through the campus. I was out one night about nine o’clock walking through the stu¬ dent district when I came unexpectedly upon a group of sophomores putting three freshmen through this ceremony. One husky second-year man was standing on the bank of the stream, and as he pushed each freshman into the slimy depths, he called out lustily, “What’s the Boneyard for? What in the hell’s it for?” As I have sat by each year for the past thirty years and watched the processes of rushing, I have asked myself more than once, with reference to rushing, the same general question that the sophomore asked about the Boneyard, “What is rushing for?”
Perhaps one of the first things which a frater¬ nity should attempt to discover when rushing a man is how long he expects to remain in college. The purposeless man, the man who has not decided what he is coming to college for, who expects to stay for a year or so and then get into some real work, is useless to a fraternity. It is time wasted taking him in. It is that sort that brings down the scholarship average, that fails to pay his house bills, and that gets fraternities generally into dis¬ repute. Many a good man may have to leave col¬ lege before graduation, but the fellow who comes with the avowed intention of hanging around only for a year or two ought not to be considered.
56
Rushing and the Rushee
One of the surprising features of rushing is the rapidity which it is carried on and brought to a finish. “How quickly is a young fellow pledged ?” an old college mate of mine, whose only son expects to enter the University next fall, asked me at Com¬ mencement time. “Within a few minutes, some¬ times,” I answered in all seriousness. I have seen men wearing a pledge button at inter-scholastic time before they had been in the chapter house over night; I have known men to be approached with a pretty definite proposition of membership while for the first time on the way from the railroad station to their boarding houses. Freshmen come in to see me every fall with some curiously wrought pledge button, to which they have become attached during the night, and it has often all been brought about so suddenly that they want someone to tell them what has happened to them. The rapidity with which membership is offered and accepted is frequently appalling. It is like conversion at a Billy Sunday revival ; it comes without warning or seeming deliberation.
There is nothing that urges on this rapid work like competition. In fraternity affairs, as in other business, it is the life of trade. Business may be a little dull as regards Smith and the Beta’s ; several of the brothers mav be indifferent, and one or two stubbornly “not ready to vote,” but if one of the
imj
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
officers of the fraternity happens to drop in to my office and finds a Deke asking me for Smith’s address and history, Smith’s stock picks up im¬ mediately in Beta circles, and ten to one he is wear¬ ing their pledge button before morning. I have heard one man, pretty wise and experienced in fra¬ ternity affairs, offer to bet that he could take almost any man, inconspicuously dressed, moder¬ ately good looking, and not too hopelessly unso¬ phisticated, and get him pledged within a week just by introducing him to a few fraternities during rushing season, and starting a little competition. It would be an interesting experiment, and I should not be at all surprised if it worked. If I dared, I could myself tell some entertaining tales of men who were rushed through in order to keep the other fellows from getting them.
Another reason alleged for rapid work in rush¬ ing is the fact that the chapter can not bear to lose a man whom it is seriously after. One of the most frequent boasts in chapter letters after the rushing season, is the statement that “We rushed ten and never lost a man.” “Why did you bid Savage so quickly?” I asked a fraternity officer not long ago. “You know little about him, and he is not you type of man in any sense.” “I know that is true,” he replied, “but the Psi U’s were after him hard, and we didn’t want to lose him.” And yet
58
Rushing and the Rushee
in many cases these men under discussion are of such a character that it would be a credit to any fraternity to lose them.
I have been interested in studying rushing methods to see how strongly undergraduates are influenced by insignificant or trifling details. If a man talks too much or too little, if his ties or his shoes or the intonations of his voice are not just right, he is likely to be thrown into the discard. “Cole is an awfully good man,” a senior said to me in speaking of a prominent junior who was not a member of any fraternity. “Yes,” I answered; “you fellows rushed him pretty hard when he was a freshman; why did you never bid him?” “Well,” was the senior’s reply, “most of us were strong for him, and thought him a prince of a fellow, as he is, but Hill simply couldn’t stand for the way in which he shakes hands, so we had to let him go.” Here was a fraternity that had turned down one of the strongest and most influential men in college — forceful, aggressive, a real leader — just because he did not hold his arm at the approved angle when he was shaking hands. The fellow who confessed to the reason was ashamed of it, as he should have been.
“I am convinced,” I heard a gray haired frater¬ nity man say in a public address not long ago, “that fraternity men in rushing freshmen pay
59
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
altogether too much attention to the cut of the fellow’s clothes. If the chapter would scrutinize the men’s characters a little more and their clothes a little less, fraternities would advance more rapidly than they are now doing.” In illustration of this point is the story of two men who, a few years ago, came to a little college in the Middle West. One was well dressed, smooth, and self-pos¬ sessed. He was bid at once. The other was a green, awkward country lad, ill-dressed, and inex¬ perienced. He had beeen recommended to the same chapter as the first man, but when the fellows looked him over they laughed; he was undeniably im¬ possible. A little later, however, as the men came into closer contact with him in class, in spite of his ill-fitting common clothes, he grew on them. He had a charm and a strength of character which made a vital appeal to their good sense. His name was brought up again, and after much opposition it went through. The first man proved to be com¬ monplace; he never disgraced the fraternity, though he never did it any good. The second was adaptable ; he learned quickly to break away from his crudities. The chapter looks back upon him and counts him the best president it ever had. Today he is one of the leading ministers in one of the leading Protestant churches of the country, and the head national officer of his fraternity. The
60
Rushing and the Rushee
overlooking of certain unessentials, and the recog¬ nition or real merit, saved to his fraternity one of the best men it has ever had.
Too often, in a coeducational institution at least, in looking a man over, the fraternity judges his fitness too much from the social impression which he is likely to make upon the girls. The fellow who wears the hand-me-downs picked from the stock in father’s country store, has little chance with the sporty chap who runs a charge account at Capper and Capper’s. The fear that the chapter’s social standing might be damaged, or that some one might laugh at them for picking a “rube,” has kept man a good fellow from getting a chance to show himself in the right light. It is a good deal easier to teach a young man where to buy his clothes and when to get his hair cut, than it is to teach him moral principles and intellectual alertness. The impression which a pledge makes upon the girls has very little to do with his use¬ fulness and influence in the chapter.
Rushing is not going to be done very success¬ fully if the work is left to one or two members of the chapter. It is true that some one must be in charge to plan the campaign, to direct the details, to invite the new men to the house, but the responsi¬ bility of seeing that the men are entertained, that they get acquainted with every member of the
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
chapter, and that they see the chapter at its best, should be upon every member. Often the responsi¬ bility is thrown upon two or three members only, they are given very little support, and when it comes to the time for making a decision, half the men are not ready to vote or vote without intelli¬ gence, because they have loafed on their duty, have not seen the new men enough to have any opinion of them, and so delay the decision or render it im¬ possible, by having failed to do their part at the right time. Possibly this failure results from a lack of definiteness in planning the business — for it is a business as important as any which the fra¬ ternity does. I have seen a good deal of rushing, but for the most part it has seemed to me pretty purposeless and unorganized. Half the members of the chapter often do not meet the men, and the new men in these cases of course do not have a chance to form a definite opinion of even half the chapter. The whole process is largely a scramble. The men are invited to dinner, there is an hour or so of vigorous pounding of the piano, the crowd, or so much of it as has not sneaked away, is rounded up and rushed to the vaudeville or the movies, and following this a few soft drinks at a downtown refectory closes the session. The process is not one calculated to give either party to the pending agreement an intelligent knowledge of the other.
t
62
Rushing and the Rushee
After the members of the chapter reach home there is usually a discussion, however, and men who have been seen in this inadequate way are not infre¬ quently elected. I have known cases where men voted for fellows whom they had scarcely seen, if, indeed, they had seen at all. “What does that fellow look like, that we voted in tonight?” I heard an indifferent “rusher” ask last fall; “I don’t remember wThether he was a blonde or a brunette.” And all the information that his companions could give him was that the prospective brother was decidedly a “good looker.”
A mistake which many fraternities make in their selection of men seems to me to be seen in the tendency to rush men of one type or from one town or locality. The fraternity, a majority of whose members are athletes, is likely to be a weak one. The fraternity which chooses a majority of its members from a single town or locality is likely to be a narrow one. Such a tendency is sure to develop clannishness and factions. “Our frater¬ nity has been almost broken up this year,” a fra¬ ternity officer confessed to me, “by our Chicago men. Half of our men come from one high school, and they always hang together and defeat any¬ thing which the other men may propose. We might with propriety be called the Hyde Park Club. We should be far better off if we chose our
63
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
men from a wider range of localities.” I have been forced to the conclusions through long experience that any fraternity that allows a majority of its members to be made up of men from any one city, or even from a number of large cities is making a mistake. I have never known a fraternity that followed this practice that did not ultimately regret it.
Experience has led me to the conclusion that when, during rushing season, two or more organi¬ zations allow themselves to get into a wrangle over any man who is being rushed, no one of them is likely to lose much if they drop the man altogether. Of all the men I have known during the last score of years who have been mixed up in a rushing mis¬ understanding, and who have created ill feeling among organizations, I can not think of a half dozen who have been worth the price of admission to the fraternity which finally got them. A new man who allows himself to get into an embarrassing position during rushing season, or who draws into such a situation the organizations which are rush¬ ing him, is usually a man lacking force or finesse.
The practice of rushing only immediate or remote relatives of present or former members of the chapter is one which would require a con¬ siderable number of pages adequately to discuss. With us it seems to have the greatest vogue among
64
Rushing and the Rushee
those fraternities whose history is the oldest. “My father, or my Uncle William, was a Beta Psi,” seems to many a young fellow an adequate reason why he should be likewise. I have no prejudices in this matter, but I believe I could go over the records of the chapters at the University of Illinois and easily establish the fact that those which have followed this practice of nepotism have more fre¬ quently had cause to regret it than otherwise. An energetic father is with no assurance followed by a hardworking, energetic son ; brothers are as un¬ like often as if they hailed from different planets. “Puny’s brother is coming next fall,” a senior informed me at inter-scholastic time. “Punv,” besides being what his name indicated, was a ner¬ vous, impulsive, tricky sinner, who would slip from your grasp like an eel. He was imaginative, talka¬ tive, irresponsible. He studied only when he had to, and went to class with the most regular irregu¬ larity. His brother was a husky athlete, studious, dependable, regular, and steady as clock work. He had nothing to say ; I was scarcely able by the most subtle means to pry a dozen words out of him dur¬ ing the fifteen minutes he was in my office. The boys were alike in nothing I could discover, except¬ ing that each had black eyes.
“We look them over, but we don’t take them un¬ less they measure up pretty well,” one man ex-
65
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
pressed it, and that seems to me the more sensible procedure to follow. There are few things, how¬ ever, in fraternity affairs that cause more trouble and more heartaches. The chapter that follows the practice of bidding relatives of its former members frequently takes in a weak brother, and the chap¬ ter that does not do so, often alienates some of its best alumni. It is a loyal alumnus who can see his son or his wife’s brother turned down by his college fraternity, and still keep up his annual payments to the house fund. I could easily fur¬ nish a long list of those who have not been able to stand the test.
There are fraternities, I am sorry to say, though I do not know many of them, who, like some politi¬ cal organizations, rather than lose a man, will employ methods in rushing which are neither honorable nor creditable. I think I need hardly discuss such details here. The organization that is not honest and above board in its methods that descends to that which is low and coarse, that wins its members through the telling of risque stories, or through “showing them the town” is not worthy of the name of fraternity, and the freshman who is beguiled and attracted by such things is no asset to the organization that wins him.
A good many people who deplore the evils of rushing as it is now carried on in many of our
66
Rushing and the Rushee
institutions have the feeling that we could modify, if not entirely do away with these evils, if the facul¬ ties or the local fraternity conferences should pass regulations controlling the methods of rushing. I know a great many people who have the feeling that if an evil exists, all that is necessary is to enact a law or pass a regulation prohibiting it, and the matter is settled. My only knowledge of how these matters are regulated by rules comes from my observation of the results which have been attained at the University of Illinois by the young women of the sororities, who have had very definite regula¬ tions for a number of years. These regulations have been changed at intervals, as it was found how inadequate or impossible they were or how easily they might be evaded. From my observa¬ tion of how the girls get on, I am not convinced that by their regulations they have as yet solved the diffiulties of rushing any more satisfactorily than have the fraternities without rules. I am confident, however, that if the representatives of local fraternity conferences could first come to the point of trusting each other, and would then formu¬ late a few simple, sensible regulations which all the fraternities would agree to, and which all would abide by conditions might be considerably im¬ proved. Most of the rules which I have seen are
67
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
too complicated and offer no easy and adequate means of enforcement.
The prohibiting of rushing during the first semester would not solve the problem. Men would always violate the spirit of such a regulation. The normal time for men to get acquainted and form friendships is when men first meet, not six months afterwards. The pledging of men before they enter college I think ought not to be permitted. The limit of a few days, at least, within which time men might not be bid would I think help matters, and I feel sure we shall come to the time when all fraternities will abandon the “sweat box” system of bidding a man still employed by many organiza¬ tions, and instead of pushing him into a corner, gagging him, and forcing the pledge button on him whether he is eager for it or riot, the proper officer of the fraternity will write him a courteous, dig¬ nified note, and will give him an adequate time to come to the decision which, for every college man who must decide whether he will join a fraternity or not, is one of the most important decisions he is called upon during his freshman year to make.
Having said some things with reference to rush¬ ing, and the members of the chapter itself, there is much advice and many suggestions that I might give to the rushee. The man for whom these snares are being laid, for whom the wary lie in
68
Rushing and the Rushee
wait, is more often than otherwise ignorant of the ways of college, and more completely ignorant still of the ways of the fraternity. He is most fre- qently in dire need of advice, though he may not be eager to accept it. He is often as completely confused as is the country boy who finds himself for the first time alone in a great city. Experi¬ enced undergraduates know all this and take advantage of it in the tactics they use in making an impression upon the man they are rushing. Ever}^ year I see dozens of boys who are taken off their feet by the suddenness with which all these new experiences come to them, and by their inabil¬ ity at once to decide just what they should do. I could wish that it were all a little more deliberate.
First of all I should say that the man who is being rushed, should not allow himself to be put, at the outset, under obligation to any fraternity. Fellows often ask the new men in whom they are interested to come to the fraternity house and live for the first few days while Ihey are getting settled. The boy who accepts such an invitation is foolish, even though he hopes to become a member of the fraternity which has invited him. He makes it difficult for other fraternities who may want to get acquainted with him, and he makes it very embar¬ rassing for himself, should he later decide that he does not care to become a member of the organiza-
69
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
tion whose hospitality he has accepted. He may feel inexpressibly chagrined, also, if the members of the fraternity ultimately decide that they do not want him, and are in need of the room which he is occupying. He need not feel, however, that he is placing himself under any undue obligation when he accepts invitations to meals, for that is a regular part of the conventional program by which fraternities get acquainted with new men, and if he joins he will later be given a chance to help foot the bills for his own entertainment. He will be wise, even if he has certain prejudices in favor of a definite organization, not to make too many dates even with it. The easily won man is frequently not desired; it is fatal to his chances of membership for him to reveal the fact that he would like to be¬ come a member. It is better not to make too man}r social obligations until he is on the ground. No matter how well pleased he may be with an indi¬ vidual or a group of individuals he should scatter his dates, for if he gives himself a chance, he may meet others whom he likes better, and by seeing the men of two or three organizations he has a better perspective by which to judge of their relative merits. The facts are, also, that even the brightest freshman needs to reserve a few hours for study at the beginning of the semester.
The man who is being rushed should use his head.
70
Rushing and the Rushee
If the rushing is being done well, he may observe, if he keeps his eyes open, that every member of the chapter has had some direct contact with him dur¬ ing a single evening — has asked him a question, or engaged him in conversation, or hung over his chair as he was expressing some opinion. If he is wise, he will not stay in one part of the room all evening, and ^allow the passing show to file by him ; he will himself study the individuals who may wish later to have him as a brother as carefully as they are studying him, and so far as it is possible, he will get their names, hold to some detail about each one, and form an estimate of his character. If he gets into the game in this way, his self-con¬ sciousness will very quickly wear off, and he will be gathering valuable facts upon which later to base a judgment. He should try to make a study of their character as they are probing into his.
It has always interested me to see how quickly the rushers play up to the lead of the rushee. If he expresses an interest in football, the brothers who are on the squad gather round and show them¬ selves ; if he shows a religious turn, some one immediately offers to take him to church the next Sunday ; if he seems interested in scholastic attain¬ ments, the one “Tau Bete” or “Phi Bete” in the house takes him on. Ever word that he drops is utilized as an index to his character. If there is
71
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
some brother who is feared will mar the favorable impression which has been made or is being made on him, he is kept in the background, or sent down town on an errand. And when it comes to the time of bidding him, the brothers are most carefully selected who, it is thought, will impress him most strongly. He should, himself, then keep this all in mind, and so far as possible make as careful a study of the members of the chapter as they are making of him.
Nothing is so unwise as to talk too much, unless it be to talk too little; the happy medium is the summum bonum of the freshmen’s desires. Worse by far, however, than too fluent or too meager speech, is the awful error of showing eagerness or interest. “I like you fellows better than any others • I have met,” I heard a freshman confess last fall to a senior as he was bidding him good night after an evening at the fraternity house. I turned cold with horror at the confession. It was precisely the way the senior wished him to feel, but it was the baldest sort of bone-head work for the freshman to admit it. It almost cost him his invitation to join the organization. It was to the senior as it might have been if the young woman whom he was expecting to invite to the Junior Promenade had expressed to him, before he asked her, the happi¬ ness which she would feel in accompanying him
72
Rushing and the Rushee
there. It is interesting what strange conventions grow up about us.
The boy who has been asked to join a fraternity may safely take a reasonable time in making his decision. Most fraternities give the rushee the opposite idea, but there is little to it. If a fra¬ ternity wants a man whom they have asked, they' will give him such time as he needs to make up his mind what he wants to do. “We never hold a bid open” is the conventional bunk which most frater¬ nities use to force a man to an immediate decision.
“I don’t know what to do,” a freshman said to me last fall. “I must give my answer by six tonight to the fellows who have asked me. I want to join a fraternity, but I’m not yet sure that this is the right one for me. If I don’t join this one, I may never get another chance. What shall I do?”
“Be a good sport,” I answered, “and take a risk. If you are not prepared to give them an answer at six, they’ll give you another week if you insist on it.” He insisted and got it. I have seldom known an organization to turn a man down when he called that sort of bluff. I asked a junior fraternity man yesterday what special advice he would give a freshman being rushed, and he answered smiling, “Well, if it’s any other fraternity than ours, I’d say to him to look them over pretty carefully, and
IS
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
to take all the time he wants in making up his mind.”
A freshman ought not to join a fraternity or any other organization just because he is asked, any more than he should be willing to marry every girl who seems pleased with him. Men say that if they do not join when they are asked, they may never be asked again. What of it? It is infinitely better not to live an organization life at all than to be forced to live one that is not pleasing. If the men with whom you associate yourself are not congenial, if their intellectual and moral ideals are not the same as your own, it is better not to join at all than to form such an affiliation. “I really should like to be a good student,” a freshman said to me while we were discussing a group of men which had invited him to become a member. “Do you think I could be and join this organization?” “Pretty small chance,” I had to reply. Three months later he came to me and thanked me for my frankness. He had waited and got in with the right crowd, and was happy.
I have never known a fraternity that did not put itself at the head of the list in the college in which I it is established. When the various organizations are metaphorically put upon the witness stand To explain their failures and weaknesses and possible low standing, they do it with the utmost facility.
74
Rushing and the Rushee
They remind me of a student I once knew in mathe¬ matics whose instructor, in commenting upon his frequent absence from the class exercises, remarked that the boy had presented an excuse seventeen times, and that they were all good and all differ¬ ent. I have never seen a fraternity unable to give an excellent reason for its coming short of its pos¬ sibilities in any detail — social, moral, or intel¬ lectual. I suppose their is nothing strange about such a situation, however. It is a characteristic of youth. As I remember being called up before father when a boy to explain my derelictions, I do not recall that I ever lacked a first rate excuse.
In view of this youthful genius for explaining, it is just as well for the freshman to take with a little seasoning the arguments which every frater¬ nity bidding for his membership will lay before him to convince him of its superior claims to his favor. The first and the most frequently used of these arguments is “national standing.” Which are the five fraternities having the best national standing in this country? I don’t know, and I am not at all sure that you do. In order to answer such a ques¬ tion we should have to determine the various points to be taken into consideration. Are these age, or location, or number of chapters, or exclusiveness, or the number of prominent alumni, or what ? I can not say. The question is about as easily
75
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
answered as one which was presented in one of the Kansas City high schools to a young freshman with whom I am acquainted. He was asked to name the five greatest educators in the country, and gave as his list, Woodrow Wilson, our athletic coach, the Commissioner of Education of the State of New York, the man who asked him the question, and myself. He may have been somewhat influenced in his choice by his interest in athletics, the Demo¬ cratic party, and the Presbyterian Church, but I am not sure but that his list is as good a one as the average fraternity man would make if asked to name the first five fraternities of the country. If a young fellow can go into a fraternity which has excellent national standing, whatever that may mean, and which has other desirable qualities, also, ' he is certainly wise in so doing. The fundamental thing for him to decide is whether the group of fellows who make up the active chapter of the organization which desires him as a member is such a group as he would be happy to live with during the four years of his college course, and be helped by living with. ♦ If hecan answer this ques¬ tion in the affirmative, then he can later go into the subject of local influence and national stand¬ ing. The national standing business counts for j very littl^^if th^mtike up of the local chapter is ob- . jectionablej If called upon to make a list of the
76' —
Rushing and the Rushee
best five fraternities in college, it is not at all likel that any two men would make the same list. The freshman need pay very little attention to th “national standing” argument.
Leaving out the point just mentioned which almost every fraternity emphasizes heavily, there is always a number of other details which each organization considers as fine rushing stuff. Col¬ lege activities of all sorts are made a great deal of. The fraternity that has the baseball captain or the captain of the football team among its members usually lays it over every one else when it comes to showing the importance of activities ; but every sort of activity is dragged out and made to pass for its full value. The importance of a corporal in the regiment, or of a cub reporter on the college daily, is exaggerated beyond all reason when being used as a rushing asset. Scholarship, social prestige, moral standing, are all thrown into the balance, and made to weigh as heavily as possible. If a fraternity happens to lack any one of these, the fact is passed over entirely, or made to seem of little value. The freshman should not put too much confidence in the statements with reference to any of these points, as they are being presented to him at the time of rushing. They are all impor¬ tant, but their importance is mot infrequently exaggerated when the rushers are presenting them.
77
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
77
I
The rushee will be a wise boy if he keeps in mind the fact that if he joins a fraternity he is to live* during his entire college course with the men who make up the membership. They are to be his friends, his daily and hourly companions ; they are to be present at practically every social function he at tends, })i e-will take them home with him and introduce them to his mother and to his sisters, and gradually he is himself to be influenced by their AZZ~ characters and to become like them. It is not a picnic he is being invited to join himself to; it is a college family that he is becoming a part of. “Do you know why I did not accept the Gamma Psi bid?” a young fellow asked me not long ago. “I meant to do so when they asked me, but as I thought it over, I couldn’t quite see some of those men fitting in at home with mother. They aren’t her sort.” He was a sensible man, and so will others be who stop long enough to give serious thought to this phase of the question.
Going into an organization is not wholly a matter of sentiment ; it is quite as much a matter of busi¬ ness. I know young men who marry because they A are in love, and who give no thought as to how the increasing bills are to be paid. So men often join a fraternity because they like the crowd and never stop to ask themselves how much it is going to cost. Before assuming any obligation it is the
78
Rushing and the Rushee
wisest plan to have a definite understanding as to just what is involved. The freshman is not over curious who wants to see the rooms in which he is to live and to work, if he becomes a member of a fraternity. He is showing admirable good sense if he finds out what his living expenses are to be, and how many “extras,” as they say in Europe, he will be called upon to stand for. Both he and his father have a right to know this, and they may calculate with complete assurance that it will not be less than the members of the fraternity allege.
There are a few things which it is safest to avoid. There is a possibility of being too wise, of knowing too much of fraternity conditions, of playing one organization against the other, and of finally losing out. The high school fraternity boy who comes to college is not infrequently this sort. He has had a fraternity experience, he thinks, and you cannot show him anything. He is in reality the greenest and the most transoarent of them all. The wisest freshman is quiet, observant, dignified. He appreciates what courtesies are offered him, and says so, but he does not show himself boastful, or smart, or self-satisfied. He keeps himself in hand, and he knowTs his own mind. The man who vacillates is making a mistake, and laying up for himself a heritage of unhappiness. If on Monday morning he makes up his mind that the Phi Gam’s
79
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
are the only fellows, and Monday night concludes that he just must be a Sigma Chi or be forever unhappy, by Tuesday noon he has probably become strong for the Phi Psi’s, and by the end of the week he does not know whether he is afoot or horse back, and no one wants him. The comfort of it all, however, is that when a man consults his own best judgment, thinks the thing out, and comes finally to a decision, he is usually contented and happy for all time. There are few freshmen who get the button on, no matter what hieroglyphics it bears, who would have it different. He sees few faults in the brothers, he begins at once to make heroes out of them, and from the outset is confident that he is in the “only fraternity.”
I have always felt that when a man had made up his mind to accept the invitation of a fraternity and still has other social obligations unfulfilled, there are certain conventions which he ought to respect. With us, often when Brown is pledged and still has dates with other organizations which he has not yet met, it is the custom for some mem¬ ber of the fraternity instead of Brown himself, to call up these organizations over the telephone, and announce the fact of his having been pledged, and ask that his social obligations with them be can¬ celled. I do not know how common such a practice is, but whether common or otherwise, it has always
80
Rushing and the Rushee
struck me as bad manners. It may be less embar¬ rassing to Brown to have some one else explain his situation, but I think he could get no better social experience than with one of his new friends to go around to the various fraternity houses and make his own explanations, and himself ask to be allowed to break the engagement which he had made. He will by so doing increase his own self-respect, and if he does the business courteously, he will win the lasting regard of the other fraternity men who were interested in him. He can hardly square himself in a gentlemanly way by doing less.
If the man who is being rushed thinks that those who are rushing him are having a more hilarious time than himself he is mistaken. It is a nerve racking process for all concerned, from the man who plays the piano or leads the conversation to the freshman who must always be prepared at any time to be thrown into the discard and to give no indication that he cares.
81
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
AFTER THE PLEDGING
The young fellow who has just been through a strenuous rushing season and who has accepted the pledge button of a fraternity which satisfies him and measures up to the ideals which he has cherished with reference to such an organization, like a young lover who has just become engaged to the girl of his choice, usually feels that the worst is over and that the future will see only smooth sail¬ ing, congenial associations without disagreement and without friction. The very opposite of this is too often true, for the freshman is quite likely to find the period intervening between his pledging and his initiation a time of trial and discourage¬ ment, a time of uncertainty and of difficult adjust¬ ment to new conditions.
During the rushing season he has seen only the most attractive features of fraternity life; every member of the chapter has presented his best side, his most engaging manners, his strongest personal assets. Before his pledging he has been made to see his prospective brothers as beings far above and beyond ordinary men; they are to him more like young gods than commonplace mortals. “I have never met a bunch of fellows who seemed to me so altogether admirable and perfect,” a young
82
After the Pledging
pledge remarked not long ago. “There is not one of them that I should have different if I could.” But he waked up very shortly, as every neophyte must if he is mentally alert, to the fact that he was not associating with gods but with men — men full of impulses good and bad, possessed of prejudices and harrassed by selfish passions and desires as other mortals are. It was with these men with whom he had to live and it was to their idiosyncra¬ sies and varied personalities that he had to adjust himself. The task is not an easy one, and it is not strange that the new man, suddenly and rudely disillusioned, should often fall into a morass of uncertainty and discouragement.
“Do all pledges have their faith tried and grow discouraged?” a despondent freshman asked me only a short time ago. “Things are made to seem so rosy at first, and then we wake up to find that we are part of an organization made up of fellows just like ordinary men.”
“I presume it is a common experience,” I an¬ swered, “and it is just as well so, for the work of the world is done by ordinary men associating with men equally ordinary. The sooner we learn to adjust ourselves to the peculiarities ‘of all sorts and conditions of men’ the better.”
One could not go far in a discussion like this without saying something concerning the practice
83
The Fraternity and the Under gradtiate
of lifting pledges — a practice which is still not uncommon and which is not confined to any college or to any educational community. It is a possible temptation at the outset for a man to feel that having made a choice he might possibly have made a better one if he had waited, or that even now, if he had the courage to do so, he might give up one and take another. Such a feeling though common and human, perhaps, is weak. It shows indecision ; it breeds unhappiness and discontent.
In the early history of the fraternity the lifting of pledges was not an uncommon nor an unpopu¬ lar practice. Chapters went even further than that and lifted whole groups of men. It was not unheard of for a man to join one fraternity with¬ out going through the ceremony of being released from another. It was a sort of fraternity mor- monism or bigamy which was extant at the time. It was a practice which was not conducive to gen¬ eral good feeling among Greeks, and one which has come to be looked upon with pretty general dis¬ favor. He is a pretty brave man if not a nervy one who can bring himself today to defend the practice even in the most seemingly justifiable cases.
The cause of lifting may be laid in the main, per¬ haps, to the rapidity with which rushing is done in many institutions and to the fear of the rushee
84
After the Pledging
that if he refuses the first bid that comes to him he may not get another. He seizes the bird at hand, doubtful of being able to grasp the more attractive ones in the bush. If the rushee were not pushed so hard, if he were given more time to delib¬ erate, if the whole matter of fraternity member¬ ship were not sprung upon him suddenly and forcibly, he would be more likely to come to a settled and final judgment than he now is. At present he is made to decide before he knows what he actually wants, and he does not realize that if he gets what he does not want it would be better not to have anything at all.
Indecision on the part of fraternity men them¬ selves is another prime cause of lifting. A frater¬ nity may have been indifferently rushing a man or perhaps may only have been considering the pos¬ sibility of doing so. When they see that while they have been dallying another organization has pledged him, their interest and his worth are immediately exaggerated beyond all reason, and they soemtimes feel that they must under such a circumstance have him at any cost. I have in mind now a man who was being lukewarmly con¬ sidered by three organizations. No one of them was particularly enthusiastic or interested in him. One of the three without much elation brought itself to the point of bidding him ; immediately the
85
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
other two developed a frenzy of interest and the man was ultimately persuaded to break his first, pledge and assume a second. No self-respecting fraternity will tamper with a man who is already pledged. The excuses for doing so which are sometimes offered by men who otherwise seem reasonable and sane are on the whole flimsy. The strongest of these is, perhaps, based upon the argument of “national standing,” and practically every fraternity which I have known has been able by one specious argument or another to establish the fact that its national standing was quite superi¬ or to the standing of every other similar organiza¬ tion with which it was associated. I was speaking just the other day to a fraternity man with refer¬ ence to a freshman who had just been pledged to an organization whose standing so far as I can judge is as good as that of the one I belong to or the one he belongs to.
“What a darned shame,” he exclaimed, “I’m sorry he couldn’t have got into a good fraternity,” which in his mind meant his own. This idea in a man’s mind that his own fraternity is superior to any other and that his own fraternity is superior to any other and that the fellow who does not join it makes a grave mistake, — is about the only rea¬ son which justifies him in his own mind in lifting a pledge to another fraternity. His assumption is
86
After the Pledging
usually a false one, and even if it were not, it would in no sense excuse his persuading a student to break his pledge.
“We couldn’t see a good man join a fraternity like that,” a fraternity officer suggested in an attempt to iustify his action in lifting a pledge.
“Why?” I asked.
“They have no standing,” was his reply.
But the facts were they were cleaner fellows, better students, more active in the college com¬ munity, and better respected than the organization which was guilty of the lifting.
There is the reason alleged, also, that the man concerned will be happier with one group than with another, and that any means are justifiable which will rescue him from an environment that in the end will mean to him misery and maladjust¬ ment. I am reminded in this instance of a friend of mine who made an usually happy marriage and who has lived a life of rare contentment.
“I was a lucky man in getting Mary,” he admit¬ ted to me, “but I can’t quite see how one is going to be sure about the outcome of such a union until he tries it.” And so I say about the fraternity; the organization that is willing to descend to a disreputable act in order to save a man from un¬ happiness has no convincing evidence that the man so rescued would have been unhappy, and, besides,
87
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
the thing is up to the man anyway, and the average man would be happy and find it possible to adjust himself to the living conditions in any one of a score of organizations. It is about as foolish for a man to think that his fraternity is the only one in the world suited to a particular freshman as it is to believe that he is the only man in the world who could make a definite girl happy.
There is the point of view of the fraternity, also, that because of their relationships and because of the localities from which they come certain men are in a way the property of one fraternity more than of another if that fraternity chooses to claim its rights. “We have always taken the men from Rockford,” or “His cousin was a member of our fraternity at Wisconsin,” are sometimes con¬ sidered quite good and sufficient reasons for any sort of procedure in the acquiring of pledges.
The character of the men who will allow them¬ selves to be lifted in my experience is seldom such as to make them of any real worth to an organiza¬ tion. As I look back over my relationship with such men I can think of but one man who was worth the price of admission to the organization which lifted him. They have been, with this excep¬ tion, selfish or vacillating, or easily led, — men with¬ out judgment who did not know their own minds, who had no power of leadership. They were not
88
After the Pledging
worth quarreling over; they did not warrant the tarnishing of fraternity honor in order that they might be acquired.
And there is no doubt in the minds of serious thinking men today that the fraternity which lifts men or allows them to be lifted for any cause is lowering its dignity, is in doing this less entitled to respect that it would otherwise be, and cannot in the eyes of sensible people justify its action. Lift¬ ing clinchs one of the strongest arguments against fraternities and strikes a knockout blow at frater¬ nity progress. The fraternity that has any stand¬ ing does not need to do it, and the fraternity that has none should not be allowed to do it. The pledge who allows himself to be lifted has by that act shown a weakness of character which should bar him from initiation.
Fraternities will continue to make mistakes in pledging men, but in most cases these mistakes are possible of correction. Such men can be released in a dignified and orderly way. New men in col¬ lege will, also, under even more favorable condi¬ tions than at most institutions exist at the present time, continue to pledge themselves to the wrong fraternity. There is a way open to any such to correct the error. No fraternity will hold a man if he is dissatisfied. If the fraternity to which you have pledged yourself is not what you thought it
89
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
would be, if the men have low ideals or are uncon¬ genial; if the conditions of living are not such as to commend themselves to you, or if for any reason you feel that you have made a mistake, the only wise thing to do is to say so frankly and to ask for release. The member of another fraternity, how¬ ever, who comes to you and either by open state¬ ment or by more subtle suggestion attempts to bring about dissatisfaction in your mind as to your choice or tries to persuade you that you should join his fraternity because it is a superior organi¬ zation, is doing a dishonorable thing no matter who he is or what fraternity he represents. Before you are pledged any one may enter the contest for your favor; after you have put on a pledge button of any social fraternity, whether it be national or local, anyone who approaches you in an attempt to win you away from the organization of your choice is doing wrong, is not playing the game fair¬ ly, and he should not be listened to. If you break your pledge, it should be your own act.
If social conventions require that a widower wait a decent length of time after the death of his former wife before he takes another, so fraternal conventions are best honored when a man who has broken his pledge with one organization shows his good sense by not rushing headlong into another. Having made a mistake once, he might better give
90
After the Pledging
himself time and opportunity for consideration before risking a second error. A good many inter- fraternity organizations have recently passed regulations which prohibit a man released from one organization from being pledged by another within six months, and some go so far as to require a year to intervene. Neither the pledge nor the fraternity can suffer by the enactment of such legislation. A fraternity which refuses to abide by the rule is scarcely worthy of respect, and the pledge who is not willing to pay a fair price for his mistakes, is not likely to profit by experience.
Granted, however, that the pledge is satisfied with his choice that he has neither opportunity nor desire to go to another organization, difficulties will arise, disappointment will come, and adjust¬ ments will need to be made. It is no easy matter to get on amicably with twenty-five or thirty men, most of whom, very likely, one has never known before. Especially is this true of the boy who, before coming to college has had his own room and exclusive use of his own possessions. Fraternity men are too likely to consider the property of any brother common property, and the freshman who finds his bureau drawers rifled and his favorite studs in another man’s shirt has at once something to learn when he moves into a fraternity house.
A young fellow who had been invited to join a
91
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
fraternity came to see me only a few weeks ago to ask my advice. “I think it would help you, Dave,” I said. “You have always had your own way, you have always followed your own desires, and though that way has been in the main a good one, and those desires excellent, you have yet to learn the lesson of adjustment to the wishes and the comfort of others. It would do you good to join a frater¬ nity.”
“That’s just it,” he responded, “I’m afraid I don’t want to be done good.” His better sense controlled him, however, and he is learning the lesson which every young fraternity man must learn if he is to get the best out of the organiza¬ tion, and that is to give up, to submit, to adjust himself to new conditions.
After the pledging a good deal of the glamour of the fraternity life disappears, and the new man finds that he is expected to do a considerable amount of work that is not wholly pleasant or clean or easy. If he has not previously been used to such tasks they may seem galling and they may even strike him as being imposed more for his dis¬ cipline than because of any real necessity for their accomplishment. If he is a wise young man he will take these duties cheerfully, he will, at least externally, perform them willingly, and he will
92
After the Pledging
receive such adverse criticism as may be imposed without resentment.
“How does it happen,” I once asked a cheerful freshman at a fraternity house, “that you who are so apparently willing to work are seldom asked to do anything, while Rogers, who growls when he is disturbed, is constantly being sent on errands?”
“That’s the secret of the whole thing,” the fresh¬ man exclaimed. “I got on to the fact right at the outset that the more I kicked, the less I accom¬ plished. So I decided never to complain, always to volunteer, and regularly to do my tasks cheerfully. The result is that I’m seldom disturbed because I seem so willing.” It was the reward of seeming virtue which he was receiving.
The fraternity house is often a crowded house. When the freshman wakes up as he ultimately must, to the fact that the college life is a life of study, he very soon after this realizes too that study in a fraternity house is something that must be accomplished with others around him and often others who, at the time when he himself must work, are not themselves so inclined. He must learn a sort of independence. While not forgetting others in allowing himself to get out of sympathy with them, he must yet manage his own affairs, look after his own interests, and see that, amidst all the confusion and bustle of the house, his own work is
93
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
done. This business of utilizing his time to the best advantage, I shall leave to another paper.
The man with the right attitude, after his pledg¬ ing, will do what he can to get into the spirit of the house. He may have no special work assigned to him, and yet if he keeps his eyes open he will see without being told things which he can do, and ways in which he can help to keep things going right; to keep his room and the rest of the house in order, to promote good feeling, and to bring about harmony among the different members of the household. It is a far cry from pledge to presi¬ dent of the chapter, but I am sure that many a freshman has in the first few weeks of his connec¬ tion with his fraternity settled his claim to that remote and coveted office by the way in which he has got on to the work and into the spirit of the house. He has found happiness by helping those who were in trouble ; he has made friends by being friendly, and almost at the outset he has become a standby, a prop upon which even an older man has learned to lean. *
I remember a young freshman who was a mem¬ ber of my own chapter only a few years ago. We had been having a gathering of the older alumni, the new men had all been introduced and had been looked over and discussed.
94
After the Pledging
“Which one,” I asked, “will be at the head of the chapter when he is a senior?”
“Brockton,” they all said at once, “because he gets into things, he takes hold, he has the spirit of the house already,” and they were right, and Brockton today is making one of the best of officers we have ever had.
I remember as a graduate student in an eastern university of being admitted to a special class in English Composition.
“No one who is admitted to this class,” the old instructor informed us at the first meeting, “need ever expect to have anything complimentary said of his literary composition. The fact that one is admitted at all is sufficient proof that he has shown more than average ability as a writer. Granted that, it will be my business in the future to discover to him his faults and weaknesses.”
I have no doubt that the fraternity pledge often feels as discouraged as I did when I got back my first long theme mutilated and scarred, covered with red ink and scrawled over with vituperative criticisms. Nothing that I did seemed right or good. The new man in the house gets little praise ; he is bawled out if he violates or evades rules ; he is seldom commended if he does well. “Don’t praise them,” is the suggestion, “or you’ll make them conceited.” The freshman does not realize
.95
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
that the head of the house most often employs a gruff and surly manner to mask his inexperience. He is afraid that if he is gentle and soft voiced and kind that the pledges and the underclassmen will not recognize the fact that he is in control. He often feels more kindly than he seems, and this fact if the pledge will do his duty, if he will keep up his part of the work, he will soon come to realize. The time will go rapidly, the arduous duties will soon be done, and the pledge before he knows it will be a real brother.
96
The Freshman's Time and Money
THE FRESHMAN’S TIME AND MONEY
If there is one excuse offered more often than another for failure on our part to accomplish a result or to accept an obligation, or to perform a service it is the conventional one that we have no time. The more shiftless we are, the fewer obligations and duties we have, the more convinced we are that it would be disastrous if not impossible for us to take on anything more. St. Peter, if he holds up any eager entrant to the pearly gates with an inquiry as to why he has not accomplished more is met, I have no doubt, with the ready reply that the sinner in question did all that he had time to do. I have scarcely ever talked with a fresh¬ man who wished to omit some unpleasant duty or to get out of some irksome task or to drop some un¬ interesting study who did not allege that his main object was to get more time to put on his studies. When I propounded the direct question as to when he studies and just how much time he does actually give to the business, he seldom if ever knows, and for this there is a very good reason.
“Why did you fail?” I asked Hawkins who managed last semester to get by with only two hours in military and physical training out of a schedule of eighteen hours.
97
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
“I suppose I did not have enough time for study,” was his reply; and yet no one has more time for the accomplishment of the tasks at hand than the freshman.
I am always disappointed at the close of each semester to find how many freshmen fail, and how many others who do not actually fail are yet satis¬ fied to attain less than commonplace intellectual results. They come to college ambitious, with good preparation, and yet they fail; indeed it seems sometimes that those who come with the best preparation apparently, if the well-equipped city high school offers the best preparation, fail the most dismally.
The college course is planned for the average man with an average secondary training ; its sched¬ ule is arranged so as to give him ample time in the preparation of his work, and yet one third of the young fellows who enter college each year, with us at least, fail in something. Why? It can not be because freshmen are dull or ignorant, because they are not, it can not be because they are badly taught in college, for though it can not be denied that there is some inefficient teaching in college, yet, if he would work, the average student could pass any course in college without being taught at all, and the inefficient teacher is not always the one who fails the largest percentage of his students. The
98
The Freshman's Time and Money
real reason seems to me to be not that the fresh¬ man has too little time, but that he does not know how best to utilize his time. He fritters a good deal of it away instead of using it energetically or systematically either in the pursuit of normal rec¬ reation or pleasure, or in the mastering of his studies. He does not know where his time goes to, for he follows no schedule.
One of the main difficulties seems to me to be the fact that before entering college very few boys have learned the first principles of concentration, or know anything about study; nor do many realize that college is fundamentally different in its demands and requirements from the academy or the high school. I have no doubt that there are preparatory school boys or high school boys who have learned to concentrate their minds upon their work until they have actually mastered it, but I do not happen at this moment to recall the names of any. It has been my privilege recently to be an observer for a few weeks of the mental travail of two boys, students in one of the high class academies of the Middle West. They study like squirrels at play. They are quiet for scarcely a moment. They are restless, talkative, kittenish while they are supposed to be at work. They tease each other more persistently than they ap¬ ply themselves to their books. They are constantly
99
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
changing seats or books or getting into more com¬ fortable positions or lighter attire. They stick at nothing long; they carry nothing to a conclu¬ sion. They chatter and hop about like wrens, and all the while they deceive themselves with the delusion that they are getting their lessons, and having done this sort of thing for four years they will go to college with the idea that they know how to study when all they really know is how to fool away time.
The opportunities in college to waste time are infinite, and some of them are so alluring, and others seem to contain so many elements of real improvement and training to the individual that it is not strange that the freshman, ignorant of the exactions of college life, should fall into error. The fraternity freshman, surrounded as he usually is by a large group of congenial companions is more likely than other first year men to fall into this error of misusing his time. If he desires to go down town there is always some one to bear him company; if he draws up his chair to join the circle of fireside bums, there is so much that is interesting going on that it is hard at the proper time to break away ; even if he goes to his room to study, there is his roommate usually to engage him in conversation. The fact that in most fraternities the freshmen are sent to their study-rooms at half
100
The Freshman's Time and Money
past seven is no conclusive evidence that from that time on for the rest of the evening they are engaged in study. There is quite as much time wasted by college students during study hours as at any other period.
Because of the fact that the freshman is often for the first time having a taste of individual free¬ dom it is harder for him to bind himself by rules, to set for himself a schedule for the disposal of his time, and yet such a procedure is for him the only safe one. If at the outset he will divide the day into three parts, giving two-thirds of it to sleep, eating and recreating and the remaining third to class attendance and study, unless he has a more than ordinarily heavy schedule of drawing or laboratory work, he will have made a pretty sensible and workable division. The freshman who is carrying a schedule made up in any large degree of drawing or laboratory science will need to retrench somewhat more upon his recreation time than I have indicated,
If the freshman could only realize that he is tak¬ ing up a regular business as exacting and as im¬ portant as any in which he will ever engage, if he could only see that if he is to get on in it he must work at it regularly, seriously, and with all the energy and interest he can summon, there would be fewer failures, fewer underclassmen
101
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
leaving college, and fewer upperclassmen working up too late to what college really means. The freshman who really recognizes that his first duty in college is his work and who plains his pleasures and his recreations with this thought in mind will be very unlikely to fail.
One of the first questions which the freshman will have to decide with reference to the disposal of his time will have to do with the question of outside activities. Most fraternities urge their men, including the freshmen, to go out for some¬ thing. I have no particular quarrel with this practice excepting as it has to do with the fresh¬ man, and no particular quarrel here if the freshman could only be made to see that any extra¬ curriculum activity into which he may go is of min¬ or importance as compared with his college work, and that if his class standing begins to drop down because of his activities even though those be athletic his immediate duty is to eliminate the ac¬ tivity. One football coach I know always says to the members of the freshman squad “Get your stu- . dies first: you will have three years later to learn football ; but if you fail in your studies you are no good to the team no matter how well you play.”
One of the first temptations which the fresh¬ man in activities has to encounter is the templa- tion to cut class, and such a temptation is a grow-
102
The Freshman's Time and Money
in g one, that has the most disastrous and depress¬ ing effect up jhis college work. I believe fhe freshman will be the wisest who goes little into ac¬ tivities until the end of his first semester or at least until he has learned well how to study.
I was talking to a young fellow only a few days ago concerning his irregular class attendance.
“I never cut class merely for the pleasure of cutting,” he said.
“Why do you cut?” I asked.
“Usually to study for another recitation,” was his reply.
“Are you carrying an over-schedule?” I asked.
“No,” he answered.
“Then you waste your time in some way. I want you to do one thing for me,” I said. “Keep an accurate record of how you spend your time for the next three days accounting for the whole twenty-four hours ; then we’ll talk it over.”
When three days later he came in there was lit¬ tle I needed to say. The process of setting down in black and white how he had disposed of the various hours of the day had taught him very thoroughly how his time was going, and it was not difficult to see that it was mostly going to waste. He was trifling it away and accomplishing little or nothing.
The freshman who desires to get the most out of
103
1
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
his college life whether it be pleasure or profit will accomplish his purpose best by having a schedule from which to work and by following this schedule with pretty careful regularity. He would be foolish never to allow himself to deviate from such a plan, but he should not do so excepting for really adequate reasons. First of all such & schedule should contemplate no omission of class exercises. When unexpected engagements must be made they should be arranged so as not to con¬ flict with regular recitations. The dentist or the doctor or your roommate can each adjust him¬ self to your convenience or necessity if you will insist upon it. When a friend says, “I will meet you at ten,” it is quite easy to explain that you have a French recitation at that hour and can not see him until eleven. This all seems trivial and childish, perhaps, but the records of the college office will show that the young fellow who begins cutting class for any reason very soon develops the habit and needs only the slightest pretext to cause him to omit an exercise. Still another thing the college records will show and that is that high scholastic standing and regular class attendance are closely related. The twenty men who last se¬ mester made the highest averages at the Univer¬ sity of Illinois had either no absences from class exercises or their absences were negligible, and
104
The Freshman's Time and Money
ninety per cent of the men who were dropped for poor scholarship or who went on probation for poor scholarship were habitual cutters. The stu¬ dent who cuts a little during his first year gener¬ ally keeps it up with greater regularity during his succeeding ones, and his grades suffer ac¬ cordingly. The man who will go to class every day and pay close attention to what goes on there ought to pass almost any course even though he studies little.
The sensible freshman, however, will have regu¬ lar hours of study, for he will not be quite satis¬ fied merely to pass. In the adjusting of these study hours it seems to me that most freshmen make their gravest mistake in that they relegate most of their study if not all of it to the evening hours. Every student, and especially every freshman, should have some time for study during the day. His mind is most alert at this time, it is easier during the day to find a place for study where he can be quiet and undisturbed, and by pre¬ paring at least one lesson during the daylight he taxes his eyes less and leaves for the evening an amount of work not impossible of accomplishment. The freshman is still pretty young, he has not been accustomed to late hours, and however much he may like the habits of the night owl such hours are good neither for his studies nor for his health.
105
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
I suppose I shall be laughed at when I say that every freshman, excepting on rare occasions, ought to have his work done and be in bed by half past ten o’clock. The student who prepares one lesson during the day will never under normal conditions need to study more than three hours any evening and so can get to bed as he should do at a normal time.
One of the most useless as well as the most vicious student habits is the keeping of late hours. Living in a community of college students as I do, I have never arisen early enough nor gone to bed late enough to find the lights out in the students’ rooms about me. At whatever hour of the night or morning one may walk down John street or Illinois street he may always see some student’s light brightly burning.
I remember a young fellow who some years ago lived next door to me and into wrhose room I could look from my own study window. He was dull in the classroom, and if he passed at all did so with very low grades. At night his light was seldom out. He goaded himself to work far into the morning hours. I have wakened at three in the morning to find his study light still shining in at my window, and to see him nodding over his books. If he had worked hard one hour in the day time and put in two or three good hours
106
The Freshman's Time and Money
in the evening, and then had gone to bed early he might have learned something. As it was he never had time for anything, never got anywhere, never seemed to be awake. He utilized time badly while priding himself that he was working hard.
“We send our freshmen up to their rooms at half past seven every study night,” the fraternity man proudly asserts in proof of the fact that a fraternity house is a good place for a freshman to be in ; but what do the freshmen do after they get to their rooms? Some of them study it is true, but more of them waste their time in unconcen¬ trated effort, get down to their work about the time they ought to be going to bed, oversleep in the morning, and miss an eight o’clock because they have been up studying so late the night be¬ fore. The man who got the highest grades of any student I have known in thirty years seldom stu¬ died more than two or three hours during an even¬ ing, but when he went to his books he banished every other thought and occupation; dynamite could not have turned him from the solution of a problem in calculus or from the writing of an exercise in rhetoric after he once got set at it. He wasted no time in looking for his pipe or dis¬ cussing politics or the last dance; he had learned concentration, and so the freshman must learn if he is to get the most possible out of his time.
107
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
Procrastination is the bane of the intellectual lives of most students. They falsely argue that it does not matter if they get behind a little; there is always plenty of time in the future. The only time one can safely count on is today, and that is the reason why, in the midst of a very enjoyable vacation, I have stopped long enough to finish this article which I have promised for next week. I know that I have the time today, and experience has taught me that in all probability I shall not have it next week when I get back to the regular duties of my office.
“Are your themes all in?” I asked a freshman whose adviser I am.
“I think so,” he replied, “at least I am not back more than four or five.” He did not see that lack¬ ing the four or five he would probably fail the course, and that having them in he might pass with a creditable grade, nor did he realize either that if he came to the end of the half year lacking a good percentage of his work, it would be entirely impossible for him to make it up. It is a safe rule never to get behind, for in that case one is always ready for an unexpected emergency. The fresh¬ man, boy-like, too often takes his pleasure first and promises himself that he will find plenty of time after he is through with the show or the game or the dance to get up the neglected work.
108
The Freshman s Time and Money
Such plans almost always go astray. One of the best freshmen I know this year, and he is in reality a boy of only ordinary attainments, has made high grades and has found time besides for all sorts of recreations and pleasures, by always doing his college work first. If he is going out at night, he stays in during the afternoon and writes his theme or his French exercise, so that when he comes to the party he has nothing on his mind, he is not goaded with the thought that he must get up early in the morning to prepare a de¬ layed lesson, but can give himself unreservedly to the pleasure at hand. He is one of the high men scholastically and he has Imd time for both athlet¬ ic activity and social pleasure because he does his college work before he goes at anything else.
The gist of my sermon to the freshman so far is, plan your work, never put it all off until evening, otherwise you will grow dull and sleepy ; attend every class exercise ; learn concentration early in your course, and see that all assignments are kept up to date. Do your work before you give your time to pleasure. Such a course of action will raise your class standing ten or fifteen per cent and give you more time for sleep, exercise, and pleasure than you could possibly have if you go at your work in a hit and miss, haphazard way.
109
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
You have twice as much time as you really need if you will only utilize it sanely.
Nothing is more closely connected with the proper utilization of the freshman’s time than the use he makes of his money, and the way he handles it.
“How much money should I give my son?” is a question which I am constantly being asked by fathers who are sending their sons away from home for the first time. It is a hard question to answer and a question the answer to which is not in all cases the same. What is ample for one boy is too little for another, and vice versa. In most fraternities there is a flat monthly rate cov¬ ering board, house dues, the social affairs in which all of the members participate, and a few other details. This amount should be a good index of the total monthly allowance necessary for the boy’s expenses while at college. A reasonable al¬ lowance will usually have to be larger than one might calculate or infer from reading the college catalogue, for a college student, like the average newly married man, finds that the extras count up about as much as the regular expenses. A proper allowance will vary with the individual. I have in mind two brothers who, while they have been in college, have had the same monthly allowance, and it is quite an ample one. The older boy never
110
The Freshman’s Time and Money
has any money, is usually in debt, and never seems to be able to meet any unexpected financial obliga¬ tion. The younger seems to go to as many social affairs as his brother, has as many and as expen¬ sive clothes, always meets his financial obligations as soon as they are presented to him, and always has money in the bank. The only difference that I can discover between them is a temperamental one. The older man has no system as the younger has, never plans for the future, spends a dollar whenever he has one in his pocket, and constantly cherishes the hope that an allowance which has up to the present time proved wholly inadequate to his needs will grow into more gratifying propor¬ tions next month. He never learns by experience, never gives up hope that a wind fall will drop at his feet, that a rich uncle will die and leave him a fortune, or that in some way he will stumble out of his financial difficulties. However much or little the student spends it should be a definite sum each month, and it should come to him regularly on a definite day of the month.
“Father complains that I spend too much,” a freshman said to me not long ago, “but the fact is I don’t know how much I do spend. He sends me a hundred or a hundred and fifty dollars and when that is gone I ask for more. It is a kind of a game now to see how much I can get. If he’d
111
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
give me a definite allowance each month and tell me I had to live within that, I should do it, and take pride in the accomplishment even if the amount were much less than I now spend. I have nothing on which to plan now.” The fellow who leaves college and gets a job will usually have to live on a definite monthly salary; he might much better learn to do the trick while he is in college.
The freshman should begin at once to do busi¬ ness in a business-like way. He should open a checking account at some reliable bank and should pay his bills regularly by check. He should car¬ ry his check book with him always, and should number his checks consecutively. One of the greatest difficulties which I have to encounter is with the college fellow who writes checks without having his regular book with him and who then forgets to make the entry when he gets back to his check book. The result is an overdrawn ac¬ count and a blot on the man’s credit.
College students are so notoriously careless in keeping their bank balances and yet are ultimately so sure to pay up that merchants and even banks in a college town have grown more lenient with such derelicts than is wise. Students often learn to count on this leniency and purposely overdraw their accounts and so make a small enforced loan until such time as their next allowance shall arrive.
112
The Freshm an s Time and Money
Merchants and bankers have often told me that before a vacation, especially, when students are going home scores of “phoney” checks are turned in, the student arguing that he may be back and his depleted account replenished before the over¬ draft is discovered. I could write a list of stu¬ dents now who may be regularly counted upon to do this sort of thing. The excuses they offer when called to account for their dishonesty, for such a practice is nothing less than dishonest, is that they made an error in calculation, or that they have done business enough with the bank to entitle them to a little favor once in a while. One man told a merchant of my acqaintanec not long ago that he had to have the money somehow, and that writing a check seemed the easiest way to that end. The freshman who starts out doing business in this irregular way will sooner or later find himself in disrepute if not in jail, and he will never have any money.
The freshman should use his money with an eye to the future. I have in mind now a young fellow whose monthly allowance comes regularly on the first of the month. Such of it as is not already disposed of through bills due and debts contracted melts in his hands like snow before an April sun. He does not give a thought to the future or a sigh for the past; he thinks only of the present, and
113
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
his money is usually gone and he is comfortably broke before the end of the first week of the month. He lives a hand to mouth existence from one month to another and is convinced that his allowance, which is in reality a much more generous one than that of most of his companions, is wholly inade¬ quate to his needs. Like all men of his class, while he is engaged in the rapid disposal of his funds, his studies are going to the bad, for no man can spend money and study to advantage at the same time. Either one takes a mans’ best efforts to accomplish creditably.
As I have frequently found that a student is helped in the disposal of his time by keeping for a few days an actual record of just how the twenty- four hours of the day are spent, so too I am sure that, if for nothing more than his own personal benefit, he will find much that is suggestive and helpful in keeping an accurate expense account. I remember very well what a shock it was to me when I first began to live on a salary to find upon casting up my accounts at the end of the month what a disproportionate percentage of it was going for things that were useless in themselves and that gave me little real pleasure. Even though a boy’s parents do not require him to keep an expense account, he will find an education in the practice just for himself.
114
The Freshman's Time and Money
Beyond a certain point, the amount of money which a young fellow has to spend in college does not add to his pleasure, to his popularity, nor to his success in any way. The man is never really popular who is courted merely because he has money, and the pleasure that comes from spending money is always greater when it must be planned for, when it comes as the result of a little sacrifice. If we could go to a formal party every night or see a circus every day the interest in these forms of relaxation would soon wane. We often give our¬ selves more pleasure by having a little less. A man ought to plan not to spend quite all the money that he has. The wise man, even if he be only a freshman, should keep an eye out for the unex¬ pected, should be prepared for the emergency, should save a little for the rainy day which is quite as likely to come in college life as in any other with which I am acquainted. Nothing gave me more satisfaction than to find recently that a young boy with whom I am associated had saved enough out of his regular allowance to buy for himself an article of clothing which he very much wanted but which his guardian did not quite feel like advanc-* ing the money for. It is never pleasant to meet a pretty girl near an ice cream refectory and find that you are broke or to come upon a group of fellows going to a good show and realize that your
115
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
pocketbook is empty and the first of the month a week off.
Nor is it a good plan to borrow. The easy borrower has a distressingly poor memory of his obligations, never pa}7s when he says he will, and seldom ever pays, and so falls into bad repute with his friends. There are not many bad habits which a freshman can learn that are worse than the habit of borrowing money, or of going into debt for something that is not absolutely necessary. Bor¬ rowing money to be paid out of your next month’s allowance is like cutting one class to study for another.
No student should spend more than the family at home can afford. I have known too many cases of cruel sacrifice at home, when the- boy at college was having a good time, wasting his opportunities, and spending lavishly money that was coming only through the greatest economy of the older mem¬ bers of the family. The freshman at college ought not to be unwilling to make his share of the sacr i¬ fice.
Every fraternity that I have known has its new men, and its old unfortunately, who, being a little short of money are quite willing that the fraternity should carry them. “We hope Granger will not be dropped from college,” a fraternity man said with reference to an uncertain brother. “He owes us
116
The Freshman's Time and Money
a lot, and we want to get it out of him before he has to go.” There was no regret expressed at the boy’s going except the possible financial regret, and there seldom is much in such cases. No self- respecting man, freshman or upperclassman, will allow himself to be carried in this way. He will so plan his expenditures that such money as is at his disposal will be sufficient to meet his obligations. Hundreds of freshmen whom I know who can re¬ ceive from home only a moderate amount of money, by some sort of outside work are able to meet the added expenditures which they want to make. I know any number of such men who by the exercise of one talent or another pay easily and willingly for their own pleasures and enjoy them more fully for so doing.
I have always had the greatest respect for the student who by his own efforts pays his way through college, but I have come to feel also that the young fellow who spends wisely and conserva¬ tively the money which is sent him from home is, entitled to almost as much credit as the man who makes his own way.
117
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
THE HOUSE PARTY
There are some institutions, I know, which will not stand for the fraternity house party. Some¬ times there is a rule against it ; sometimes it is an unwritten unexpressed law; but whether the pro¬ hibition is down in the book of undergraduate rules or not, there is no getting by with this particular form of social function. The argument is that the house party overemphasizes social life, that there is moral danger in it, that it takes most of the undergraduate’s time for an indefinite period prior to the function in making preparation for it, that it takes all of his time and more than all of his money during its progress, and that it leaves him an intellectual and financial wreck at its close. I could bring illustrations to prove that all of these alleged evils have more than a mere foundation of truth. I know one organization that had a house party some years ago, that was written up in all the city papers and that is still the talk of the simple country community in which our institu¬ tion is situated; the chapter enjoyed the advertis¬ ing that it got from this function, but it is still struggling to pay the bills, that were incurred in giving it.
Besides all this, there are delicate problems of
118
The House Party
social conventionalities that frequently arise, and that require skill in solution ; there are the wounded feelings of the local girls, caused by the presence of too many “imports,” to be considered. In fact there are a considerable number of dangerous rocks to be avoided, so that I think, very wisely at times, a good many colleges, as I have said, do not permit the fraternities to give house parties. We shall, possibly, ere long come to this decision ourselves, but at present we have not done so.
Every year in my own fraternity, when on occasion I drop in on the boys, I hear the rumbling of this discussion as to whether or not the annual formal dance shall this year be in connection with a house party. The older fellows whose incomes are not unlimited and whose memories of the last function of this sort given by the chapter are still fresh, recall the fact that we are as yet scarcely free from the incubus of debt which was left us as a heritage by those who staged the last show of this sort, and that it would be a matter of wisdom and sound judgment to move with a little social conservatism. “We simply can’t afford it,” they say and gloomingly recall the past and the weeks of “oleo” and beans that the commissary department forced upon them in order to cut down expenses and save something to meet the extra bills that seemed to rain in for months after the party was
119
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
over. They allege that such a party always costs twice as much as, when it is being planned, any one imagines it will cost.
Then the mathematical geniuses who are quick at figures and able to prove anything when they get busy, take the floor and show that it is really economy to give the house party. They demon¬ strate the fact that with the girls in the house there is neither the opportunity nor the necessity for the fellows to spend money that there is when just a formal dance is held. The facts are pre¬ sented so alluringly, and the details are shown so convincingly, that the freshmen, innocent of this sort of guile and eager for the excitement of things new, believe the sophistry and are ready at once to vote for the party. They need only the argu¬ ment of the socially ambitious to the effect that this is the one and only way to put ourselves right before the girls and to give us a center position upon the local social map, to make them, as the girls say, really crazy for it. A vote of this sort is often very much like a Sunday school election — the children are sure to vote for anybody or any thing that is put up.
They had had some warm discussions this year, I am quite convinced, before I was called in to give my opinion and to make suggestions. The argu¬ ments pro and con were well presented, for there
120
The House Party
are few matters which give better training in extempore speaking and which more completely perfect the brothers in oral debate than the pro¬ posal to give a house party. The advocates of the scheme showed how simple it all was, how little it would cost, and how easily the expenses could be kept down if the fellows would do the work. They were willing for any personal sacrifice — to sleep in the hay loft or the bath tub or to camp out in tents on the front lawn.
I arrived on the scene not completely carried away with enthusiasm over the scheme, for I have been through a good many house parties, and I am, besides, the treasurer of the corporation, and I remember with what difficulty and reluctance the house rent comes in following these social de¬ bauches. I know, too, how the class attendance deteriorates and how the studies suffer. After I heard the discussion, however, I realized that all other plans were chimerical; this was the only simple one, the only sensible one, the only one that was really economical and that would win for us the social prestige to which we were entitled. They assured me that “Cap” had figured it all out, that “Cap” was a mathematician, and that he knew that one dollar would not pay a bill for five ; so I was won over.
The time for the party was set and the prepara-
121
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
tions began. They persuaded me at the outset as treasurer of the corporation to have the house painted — it would look so much better and besides it was needing a new coat of paint pretty badly. The painting of course necessitated the fixing of the gutters, the pointing of the walls, and the repairing of the roof, until I was somewhat in the position of the woman who, having yielded to the temptation of buying new curtains for the parlor ended up finally by being compelled, in order to make things harmonize, entirely to refurnish the house. I was not at all sorry, however, for I realize that it is poor business policy not to keep the house in excellent repair, and my painting the exterior of the house stimulated the fellows within. They organized a kalsomining corps and retinted all the rooms from the basement to the dormitory ; those artistically inclined mixed the colors, and the skilled laborers applied them. All the wood work was varnished or rubbed with oil, the rugs were cleaned, new curtains were bought, and the beds were thoroughly overhauled and put into shape. The house had not had such a cleaning since the last house party. Perhaps the greatest accom¬ plishment was the straightening up of the closets. The fellows found things crammed into the remot¬ est corners of those closets that they could not remember that they had ever possessed. They
122
The House Party
unearthed personal effects that had been lost for years — textbooks, notebooks, sweaters, skates, ball bats, and other athletic supplies sufficient to stock a gym store. They even went so far in their reforms as to clean up the kitchen and the back yard. I am sure the cook had a shock when she saw the kitchen range shining and the kitchen utensils in mathematical order. But if nothing else had been accomplished, the cleaning of the closets would (as a sanitary measure) have been worth all the time and money that the house party cost.
The girls invited to the party were to arrive Thursday noon. Wednesday evening I called at the house to see how things were going and to offer a little encouragement. It was really a sad sight that met my gaze. The house was still in pretty dire confusion. They had torn everything out of its hiding place, had piled it in the middle of the floor, and, tired and cross, they were sitting around looking at the chaotic heap. If I had not seen house parties before, I should have been sure that no order would ever be evolved out of the mix-up, but I had faith that they would burn what they could not hide or get into some sort of respectable shape.
Before going home I visited the hall which was being decorated for the formal dance. The room
123
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
was filled with tired or active or irritated brothers doing what they could to carry out the elaborate plan for internal decoration of the room (infernal decoration one of the fellows said it might more appropriately be called) which had been prepared by one of the artistically inclined brothers. The windows, some of which opened upon a blank dormitory wall, were to be filled with elaborately designed panels in black and white of tall cypress trees behind which a brilliant full moon was rising. There was a dado of black and white about the walls, there was a huge screen of black and white to conceal the gallery, and huge lanterns hung from the ceiling and great lamps stood on the floor all designed to represent the shadowy grove of cypress trees and the brilliant full moon rising behind them. Of course any one not a novice knows very well that to get these much desired effects requires a considerable amount of wielding of the hammer and the saw and the paint brush, and running of electric wires and chewing of the rag, and consequent weariness of the flesh. When I arrived they were just at the stage where every¬ thing is confusion and nothing seems to be coming out right. The whole lot seemed exhausted and disgusted, and I am sure if at that moment a vote could have been taken on the advisability of giving a house party, there would have been no voice to
124
The House Party
champion the enterprise. It all reminded me of the last rehearsal of an amateur play when every one loses his temper and forgets his lines. It is one of the sure indications of a successful outcome of the performance. I knew for certain when I saw how wretchedly things seemed to be going that the result would be perfect.
I did not get to the party for an unfortunate and an unexpected telegram took me out of town on Thursday morning, and I did not get back to the house until Sunday evening. The girls had come and gone again, and the fellows were sitting around the fireplace talking it over, physically wrung out, but girding up their mental loins for the repair of their disorganized and wrecked studies. Every¬ thing had turned out all right. There had been no social blunders, no hitches in anything, nothing to regret. The girls had been charming, all of them, and pleased and complimentary beyond expression. They had thought the house delight¬ ful and had left money enough to buy a new rug to replace the worn one in the library, which had really been the one thing that had kept the furnishings of the place from seeming perfect. There was much self-congratulation and self-satisfaction on the part of every one, and much joy over the fact that it was all over and every one was alive. They had had a little time to take account of expenses,
125
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
and of course even under “Cap’s” careful manage¬ ment, the party had cost about twice what they had planned. They were like the man, however, who said that he did not get off as cheaply as he had thought he would, and he did not think he would. It had cost more than they thought it would, and each one of them had always thought it would, so they had been prepared for the worst and were satisfied. They had established their social prestige for a year or two, they had proved their ability to put on a really high class social function, and they were ready to have a good sleep and get back to the real work of college.
Seriously, I have never known an organization to give a house party that did not ultimately cost nearly twice as much, when all the bills were paid and the actual overheard expenses added on, as it was scheduled to cost. It is difficult to use judg¬ ment and to practice economy when one is enter¬ taining a pretty girl. When we plan we are con¬ servative; when we are in the midst of expendi¬ tures and the actual money is not going out, we are far less likely to hold ourselves down. There are so many unexpected things to be done, so many desirable ones, so much acting upon the impulse that the bills rapidily mount up. My experience has been that it is much easier in theory to keep down the bills than it is in practice. Any frater-
126
The House Party
nity that is going to give a house party ought to be prepared to meet expenditures twice as great as the committee planning the party say will be necessary, and it is not a bad thing to have the money in the till before the party is given. Other¬ wise it is like paying a security debt or a bill for something that has been long ago worn out.
It is usually an extravagant form of entertain¬ ment. The man who argues that it is cheap and can be done for little more than the ordinary formal party is either ignorant or an intentional deceiver. It is a form of social entertainment that has got more fraternities hopelessly into debt than any other that I know. Any organization which goes into it should not do so without seriously counting the cost, and the cost is frequently more than young fellows of modest means can afford. One’s social standing is not dependent upon such a function. In point of fact most of the young women invited to house parties come from out of town and their entertainment adds little or nothing to the social prestige of the fraternity. Local people get in very slightly on these things; the social reputation which the fraternity develops is usually one of extravagance. The cost of the party, high as it sometimes is, is exaggerated by the neighbors, deplored by the faculty, and protested against by the home folks many of whom are
127
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
unused to such things. The house party is the most difficult form of fraternity social dissipation to explain to the outsider; from his point of view it is little less than an orgy. It is a form of pleasure that is undoubtedly hard on a man’s studies. The theoretical time taken up by the party seldom ex¬ ceeds three days, but no house party was ever given that did not consume two weeks of actual time in discussion and preparation and participation and at least a week after it was over in getting back to a normal state of mind and emotion. A boy called me up while I have been writing this paper to ask my advice concerning his work. “What is the trouble?” I asked. “I simply can’t get down to work since the house party,” he replied. “We had so much pleasure and excitement that I cannot get it out of my mind.” To a middle-aged, stolid parent or professor this may all seem like foolish¬ ness, but it is quite a regular and normal view¬ point for the young undergraduate.
I have never seen such a function where the pro¬ gram was not too congested. At the outset the fellows mean to be conservative, to give themselves a little time to think, to give their guests a few minutes to rest; but by the time the preparations have been fully completed the different events have been planned so closely to follow one another that there is little opportunity to eat and none at all
128
The House Party
to sleep. The girls are rushed from one event to another until by the time things break up and they are ready to leave for home they look as jaded and haggard as a colony of convalescents. If I were giving advice to a committee planning the program for a house party, I should say plan to allow the girls twelve hours a day for sleeping and putting on their pretty clothes, and they will bless you for your thoughtfulness and not go home the physical wrecks that they usually are.
The house party has more possibilities for ris¬ que situations than any other social function the fraternity can give. There is social danger in it, if it is not conventionally managed and carefully chaperoned, as many a fraternity has learned to its sorrow when it was too late.
The extravagance of the fraternity almost always leads to emulation on the part of another. “You should have seen the Delt house,” one man whom I was advising to be conservative said to me. “They must have spent a heap of money. We are to have some of the same girls at our dance, and how do you suppose we should feel if our party seemed cheap?” There is no logic that can meet an argument of this sort. If you give a party, the undergraduate thinks, it must be a little better than the best, whether you have money to stand for it or not.
129
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
There are some advantages. If it is done well, it requires generalship, organization, and thought. It gives social training and develops social experi¬ ence as very few other functions can. It takes no little finesse for a group of young fellows success¬ fully to carry through a one day party, but when the time grows into three or four the strain and obligation are more than proportionately in¬ creased. Sometimes I have felt that this effort was worth while, especially if the success of the undertaking were not made to depend wholly upon the expenditure of money, but rather upon a thoughtfully worked out plan, in the carrying out of which every man in the chapter did his part. If the fellows could only realize it, there is so much more to be gained in effect by using their heads than by spending money. Anyone can spend mohey if he has it or can get it, but it takes a good man to plan an original and effective function that can be carried out with the expenditure of a moder¬ ate amount of money. Some of the most delight¬ ful parties, however, that I have ever attended have cost the least in the expenditure of actual money. There are so many opportunities to show good taste, and refinement, and thoughtfulness and breeding that if the fellows get by with it, they have had an experience worth while. There are many dangers to avoid — dangers of overdoing
130
so
The House Party
the attentions paid to the guests, of wearing them out by long programs and all night performances, and by never giving them a chance to rest or to be alone or to think over what they are doing, of careless and unconventional manners that it gives one a chance at moderation and self-restraint. It is a severe test of a man’s ability to do two things well at once — to keep up his college work and not neglect his guests.
Leaving out of account entirely what it may do to the undergraduate’s studies or social stand¬ ing or pocketbook, the house party is unques¬ tionably a good thing for the house. I have thought sometimes that our corporation which rents the house to the active chapter might well afford for the good of the property to contribute something every three or four years toward defray¬ ing the expenses of a house party or might give a generous rebate on the rent every time one is given, for there is such a cleaning and scrubbing and polishing, such a painting and kalsomining and varnishing, such a repairing and furbishing, and beautifying within and without as gets the house in condition, and keeps it from running down at the heel, and as makes it perennially look¬ ing fresh and new. It is for this reason, perhaps, that when I am asked to give advice about a house party, I view the project with less serious objec-
131
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
tion than I otherwise might, for though I know the dangers and the expense, I also appreciate the compensations. It may not bring us social prestige, and it may lower our scholastic average, but it is thoroughly good for the house.
132
Photo Plays and Vaudeville
PHOTO PLAYS AND VAUDEVILLE
There are many influences in and about college which in one way or another affect undergraduate life and undergraduate morals and scholarship. Training, environment, tradition, example, extra¬ curriculum activities, all play a part, but in these modern times I believe that at least so far as the colleges which are situated in small cities or country towns are concerned, there are few influ¬ ences which have done more to discourage and vitiate scholarship and to soften character than cheap photo plays and vaudeville. The effect is a subtle one. The habit of patronizing these per¬ formances grows on one imperceptibly but surely.
I do not wish to minimize the good effects of these two classes of amusements. I have only recently heard much commendation of them from people who ought to know what they are talking about. I have no doubt but that moving pictures have their place in education and that they will come to have a wider and a more general use. One can, without doubt, gain admirable effects by the use of pictures which could be obtained in no other way. These points have been discussed and are being discussed by people whose education and whose experience fit them far better than I am
133
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
fitted to discuss these matters. No doubt these modern and cheap methods of presenting dramatic compositions to the public have opened up new fields of amusement to classes of people who could not previously afford them.
Working people who live in unattractive houses, who are busy all day, and whose evenings are free to spend them as they please, should have amuse¬ ment, and, if they find it at all, they must get it from an inexpensive source. For them photo plays furnish a means of recreation and some little education, perhaps, and vaudeville adds a touch of humor and romance which they are quite to be excused if they do not resist. With them I have no fault to find. The college student is in a some¬ what different class. His evenings may with pro¬ priety and profit be spent in study; he can not afford, if he would be more than commonplace, to spend them regularly in cheap moving picture and vaudeville theatres. Moreover, we have a right to expect that his tastes be somewhat higher than those of the average man. Anyone who attends these plays in a college town or who simply watches the crowds as they pour out of the play houses, however, may well be astonished at the numbers of students who regularly attend. Even mature students fall into the habit. Only a short time ago I had reason to inquire into the daily life of
134
Photo Plays and Vaudeville
a graduate student whose work was coming along badly. He had been reported ill, and I inter¬ rogated one of his fraternity brothers as to the condition of health of the supposed invalid. “I don’t think he is dangerously sick,” the man replied, “for he hasn’t missed going to a picture show any day that I remember.” I was quite sure I was getting the truth, for the undergraduate who made the statement, so far as I could learn, had missed none himself.
There is every reason, however, why boys should come to college with the cheap show habit, or at least there is every reason why those who come from communities outside of the big cities should do so. They are trained to it at home. With four performances a day and half rates to all those who attend the graded schools and the high schools, there is a strong tendency for all such children to develop early a decided picture show or vaudeville taste. It is an allurement which they can not resist. I know boys in the graded schools and in the high schools wTho go to these shows practically every day or twice a day, and who are under the spell of the habit as one might be enslaved by a narcotic. No wonder, then, when these boys enter college they should continue the practice and should consider Charlie Chaplin’s as the highest type of humor.
The temptation is like the temptation of ciga-
135
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
rettes — the plays are cheap and easy of access.
In the end, however, the cost piles up higher than most boys will admit unless they keep a daily expense account, for very often there is the street¬ car fare going and coming and soft drinks before starting home. Next to a student opera, there is no greater time waster than these same plays. If one goes in the day time the whole afternoon is wasted; if one goes at night the evening is gone, for if in the evening one selects the first show it is past ten before he can settle down to any real work, and if he goes to the second it is midnight before he can get himself into anything like a studious frame of mind, and then he is too sleepy to do anything and decides to get up early the next morning and do his studying. There is no need , to tell anyone who has ever been to college that the studying is not done at all.
The fraternity freshman perhaps more than freshmen in general is started off on a congested menu of picture plays and vaudeville. It is a daily part of the routine of rushing that after a couple of hours of rag time on the piano following dinner everyone starts for the “Princess” or the “Orpheum” or the “Park” or whatever the name of the particular show house may be. Started out in this way the freshman comes naturally to look upon vaudeville if not as a regular and required
136
Photo Plays and Vaudeville
part of the college curriculum, at least as a very worthy adjunct to it. I think I did not visit a fraternity house during the rushing season last fall without finding that at one time or another dur¬ ing the evening most of the active chapter and all of the prospective pledges formed themselves into a party and raced off to a cheap show of some sort. What else could they do, they asked. It is because of this early start with vaudeville and the “movies” that the fraternity undergraduate is more addicted to these time and money wasters than are other college students.
Even after the rushing season was over when I have been at one or another of the houses for dinner, or when previous to show time I have been down town on the car, I could see crowds of under¬ graduates starting out for the “Orpheum.” “Any¬ one going to the show?” is as familiar a cry at a fraternity or rooming house almost every evening as “rags and old iron” on a city street. Down town nearly every afternoon and evening when photo-play houses and vaudeville theatres dis¬ gorge, the streets are filled with undergraduates. One who gives any attention to it also is impressed with the fact that it is often the same undergradu¬ ates whom one can see in these show places every day.
I was speaking only a few days ago with a young
137
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
fellow who for many months played the piano in one of the picture houses for all four performances each day, and he was saying that he used to break the monotony of his every day routine by looking for familiar faces in the crowd which gathered for each performance. He was constantly im¬ pressed, he said, with the frequency with which he could pick out the faces of the same under¬ graduates in the same places. How they could afford the time was more than he could see. As I have had a chance at the end of the semester to glance at their scholastic records, I was convinced that they could not afford to do it.
It is primarily as a time waster that I have objected to this variety of amusement, but the character of the shows themselves might well be objected to. Even viewed purely as recreation they do not rank high. The jokes and the pictures are often coarse, the comedy is often wretchedly low, and there is almost inevitably mixed up in each bill constantly recurring and objectionable sex complications. I do not myself very often attend these plays but get my impressions from what I hear the fellows say who are regular patrons of the show houses. During the last few weeks, however, I have seen two of what were adver¬ tised as the better class of picture plays. The leading role in each case was taken by a well-known
138
Photo Plays and Vaudeville
actress, and I expected to see an excellent play. The setting of both was beautiful and the acting good, but in each play the heroine after a fierce hand-to-hand struggle with the heavy villain barely escaped public rape upon the stage.
The effect of such scenes upon growing boys and young men can not at best be very wholesome. The mother of one of our freshmen said to me only a few days ago that in company with her son she recently attended one of the so-called better class plays of this sort. “If these are the best,” she said, “I shudder at the thought of what the worst is, for the whole thing was so vulgarly suggestive and so common that I wondered how boys of any refine¬ ment could sit through such a performance.” And, sad to relate, the boys do not make an effort to choose the best, but the raciest.
The actual and ultimate effect upon the morals of those who frequent these plays is bad, but, perhaps, is not so great as one might at first think. A few, no doubt, fall under the baneful influences of the vulgar suggestions which are bandied about. We hear more often than we would wish of the irregular relations which are carried on or which are attempted to be carried on between under¬ graduates and the performers in the vaudeville cast, but these experiences are relatively infre¬ quent, I am sure. The large influence upon
139
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
character comes from the decreased sensitiveness of those who form the play going habit, the thick¬ ening, as it were, of the moral skin. Their ideals are lowered; they are coarsened and made more common by the experience. Even the thickest-skin¬ ned boy could scarcely help but have his point of view changed by a constant contact with such re¬ presentations of life. It seems to me, also, that the forces of evil which are present in every town, or at least in every one in which I have lived, recognize the fact that vaudeville and coarse picture shows help to prepare those who frequent them for lower things, for, with us at least, these forces have gradually begun to gather near, so that the fellows making their exit from the vaudeville and picture shows may have an easier and more direct back¬ door entrance to the houses where intoxicants and evil women are to be found. How widely this influence extends, I can only guess; and though I cannot believe that it is far reaching, it must at least be taken into account and reckoned with.
The effect of these dramatic influences on a young fellow’s studies is not infrequently dis¬ astrous. The habit of attendance once begun grows. Each new bill as it is advertised must be discussed and analyzed, and seen. The bill at the vaudeville theatres and the plays that are being shown at the “movies” furnish a regular and time-
140
Photo Plays and Vaudeville
worn topic of conversation wherever the under¬ graduate loafers gather. It is like the talk about automobiles in a country town. The sum total of energy expended upon the various vaudeville bills that appear weekly in the average town if turned into intellectual directions would revolutionize scientific discoveries, and if converted into physi¬ cal force might soon have ended the recent Euro¬ pean war. Unless they have had their attention drawn specifically to this matter I am sure that few undergraduates realize how much of their time and thought are given to these trifling histrionic matters. The boy who comes under the spell of such an influence can with difficulty resist when the invitation comes to see the show; he finds it difficult or impossible to spend an evening or an afternoon in study, and as for reading a book for pleasure at one sitting as we used to do when I was a boy, that is unthinkable. He becomes restless, he lacks concentration, if he studies an hour and a half he is in such a state of mind and body that he grows desperate for the relaxation of the pic¬ ture show. The call comes, and his studies are for¬ gotten and his scholarship not strengthened.
With us the interest in vaudeville and moving pictures has gone so far that very few student gatherings are thought to show the finishing touch of refinement unless there is introduced some
141
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
“cabaret stuff” or a few moving pictures. If a class party is planned in the armory some bright youth with an original mind at once suggests that the management brings over an act from the local vaudeville theatre to entertain the guests while they are eating. Class smokers and house dances and formal parties are not infrequently given a touch of spice by introducing, when interest wanes, a few snappy stunts from the local vaudeville stage or a reel of two of moving pictures. We are going vaudeville mad it seems to me and are grow¬ ing to think only in moving pictures. The Uni¬ versity of Illinois has recently tried in some small measure to inhibit this tendency by stipulating in a number of instances when a request for a student gathering or a class party is granted that such entertainment as might be furnished should come from the members of the class or organization giving the function and not from the local vaude¬ ville stage.
“But what can a fellow do?” an undergraduate interrogated not long ago when I protested against this debauchery in vaudeville. “One must have some recreation; he can’t study all the time.” I grant this willingly; but there are good plays occasionally coming to town, and though they cost more than the commonplace and often vulgar stuff which is daily presented to the public, it is
142
Photo Plays and Vaudeville
better in the long run to see a few good plays than to sit through all the worthless exhibitions which appear uninterruptedly throughout the four years of an undergraduate course. I can conceive of a young fellow seeing a few of the low comedies which for the most part hold the weekly boards of our vaudeville and photo-play theatres merely to satisfy his curiosity, but how an educated, refined man can develop a taste for such things, which can be satisfied only by daily indulgence, is to me more difficult to understand. But there are other sources of relaxation and amusement than comedy open to undergraduates. Men can go into athletic sports of which we are developing a con¬ stantly greater variety. No man is now so fat or thin or short or tall or light or heavy but that he can find some form of athletic activity to which he is adapted and in which, if he has persistence and develops interest, he may excel. This sort of recreation has the advantage over vaudeville in that, if it is not carried to excess, it really does recreate and so tend better to prepare the partici¬ pant for the real work of college — that is, the pursuit of his studies.
The student is not unknown, though I am forced to admit that he is rare, who has found recreation in reading an interesting book. Nor do I mean by this the latest romantic novel, though some
143
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
undergraduates do once in a while read such a book; I mean that the student who has been rightly trained, who has been made to like books as every student should, will find pleasure and recreation and delight in spending an evening with such old stand-bys as Dickens, and Thackeray, and Stevenson, and George Eliot. There is more romance and real life in an hour or two with one of these authors than in a whole cycle of the ordinary cheap photo-play and vaudeville. I was surprised though pleased not long ago to have a junior engineer tell me that he always kept an interesting book at hand to read when he was tired or had a little leisure. He has covered a range of literature from Arnold Bennett to Robert Burns and has developed a habit which will bring him pleasure and profit as long as he lives. Our college daily mentioned not long ago the case of a man who when wishing to withdraw regularly from col¬ lege was directed to take his withdrawal permit to the library to have the official in charge of the loan desk certify that all books which he had drawn out had been properly returned. The student was confused for a moment, and then recovering himself said with a gleam of something akin to intelligence, “Oh, yes, that’s the building across from the Arcade, isn’t it?” He knew the
144
Photo Plays and Vaudeville
bench where the loafers gather, but he did not know where the books are kept.
I am not so old fashioned nor so far removed from youth as to expect or desire that young people in college will give up these dramatic delights of which I have been speaking. All I wish to show is that they are becoming too absorbing, that they are exercising too great a domination over the lives of undergraduates. There are other relaxations and recreations which will better pre¬ pare students for their work and which are in them¬ selves more helpful and more fully recreating. Vaudeville and photo-plays as they are in the great majority of cases presented today are sug¬ gestive of unhealthy relationships ; they are often coarse, vulgar, and must tend to weaken morals and to lower ideals. Those undergraduates who make a habit of attending, waste time recklessly, squander more money than they think, and injure the real work for which they come to college. Few people whom I have seen come away from these shows happier, cleaner minded, or in any way better prepared to take up their daily work. Their scholarship and their ideals would be strengthened, I believe, if they saw fewer of such performances. The danger to the fraternity man is perhaps greater than to other men because his social rela¬ tionships are closer, it is easier for him to find
145
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
companionship, to pick up someone whom he likes who has the inclination and who thinks he has time to go to these plays. Recognizing the danger he should take the warning.
hb
146
The Chapter Letter
THE CHAPTER LETTER
“We have the best bunch of freshmen this year we have ever had and the best bunch in college,” an alumnus of one of our leading fraternities said to me early in the autumn.
“What do you think of Klein?” I ask( with a desire to show interest and a willingness reveal the fact that I knew some of his men.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “I have nor seen any of them; but I read about them in the chapter letter in our quarterly.”
A considerable number of fraternity publica¬ tions come to my table during the year through the courtesy of editors and fraternity men with whom I am acquainted, and as I look them through there is no department of these journals which awakens in me more interest or gives me more pleasure than that one devoted to the letters from the various chapters of the fraternity. I do not think that the most unsophisticated ever believes what he reads in a chapter letter. It contains a variety of fiction which is unique. The facts are often drawm from the imagination, the pathos is generally quite ingenuous, and the humor is more often than otherwise entirely unconscious and unintentional. The following, quoted from a
147
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
southern correspondent to one of the journals, and breathing of soft music and palm trees, has the tender sentimental touch:
“Haying given an unusual amount of smokers and dances, we drew the scholastic year to a glorious close with our annual Commencement Ban¬ quet. Were I to attempt to recount in detail all the pleasure and glory given to Alpha that night I would consume more than our space. Let it suffice to say that there were more than forty seated ‘round our festive board’ including our¬ selves and our ladies. The banquet hall was deco¬ rated with more than a hundred college pennants, Florida palms, and pitcher plants. Soft music drifted from behind the palms while we slowly, and with dignity, sacrificed eighteen delightful courses. Ever and anon the laughter of the girls and the ‘speel’ of the boys were silenced by the thundering oratory of the toastmaster and his toasters. So much for the banquet.”
I recall that 0. Henry has one of his characters say with reference to a bibulous young fellow who had kissed a plain-featured waitress and who after¬ wards apologized for his rudeness, “He wasn’t no gentleman, or he’d never have apologized,” which suggests to me that no one but a southerner ever takes a “lady” to his annual dance.
I have never gone into the history of these
148
The Chapter Letter
letters which are almost universally at present a part of fraternity journals, but I have no doubt that if it were possible to do so it would be found that the practice of requiring them grew up from a desire on the part of officers and members to become better acquainted with the entire member¬ ship of the organization, to know something of the personal lives of the individuals composing each chapter, and to bind the different chapters more closely together. It is no doubt something of the same purpose expressed in a broader way, perhaps, that the members of a family widely separated now have who write regularly to each other of the personal happenings in their own lives, or that personal friends have who through regular corre¬ spondence attempt to keep the fires of friendship brightly burning.
In the early history of Greek-letter fraternities there were few chapters of each organization, and these few were usually close together. It was pos¬ sible for a wide-awake man in those da vs to know personally a large percentage of the men who made up the undergraduate ranks of his organization and through the quarterly letters to know some¬ thing about every other man whom he did not know personally. As the fraternity roll was increased and the interests of the fraternity widened the need of something to bind the various
149
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
chapters together, to strengthen unity, and to bring the undergraduates more fully into personal acquaintance with each other was more and more felt, and the regular chapter letter was made a requirement under penalty of a fine. There have been many attempts made in committees, and con¬ ferences, and congresses to repeal this requirement, but they have always been unsuccessful, as I sus¬ pect they are likely to continue to be. The letters do a work in the fraternity which I think is worth doing, and though I feel strongly that they do not accomplish it as well as it could be done or as well as it should be done, I should be sorry to have the custom discontinued.
I have never been a very willing correspondent, and having been called upon to write many and various sorts of letters, I can sincerely sympathize with the man who has laid upon him the unsolicited task of writing letters to an editor whom he never saw, at a time when he would much rather do something else, and upon a subject in which he is likely to find little personal interest. It is a task which in the fraternity is too frequently, I am sure, laid upon one of the younger members of the chapter, generally a sophomore if my reading of these letters is correct. Such a task might very much better be undertaken by an older man who has had more experience, who knows more of
150
The Chapter Letter
the history and traditions of the chapter about which he is writing. The older man, too, should have corrected or outgrown some of the sopho- moric rhetoric with which these letters so much abound.
For some months I have been carrying on a weekly correspondence with a young boy at “prep” school whose guardian I am and in whose intellec- ual, physical, and moral progress I have no little interest. His letters to me are full of the results of football games, of parties, of “Bojack” parades, of escapades off campus. I am interested in these matters, of course, but the things I want most to know he is not likely to mention. I was reviewing his Latin with him at Christmas time and came to a chapter of Caesar with which he was totally unfamiliar. “They had that while I was in the hospital,” he explained to me. “When were you in the hopsital?” I asked, somewhat in surprise. “Oh, in November,” he replied, “Didn’t I write you about that?” And so incidentally it came out during his vacation that he was taking piano lessons, that there had been a fire in his dormitory, that his roommate had had scarlet fever, and that he had failed his mathematics. He was quite sur¬ prised to find that he had neglected to tell me any of these things in his letters, or that I should be interested in their recital. What to me was vital
151
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
was to him only a passing and a trifling incident better forgotten than immortalized in print. His letters have not truthfully reflected his real life. I have felt as I have gone over these chapter letters that in many if not in most cases they told very little of what I should most like to know of the lives and accomplishments of the men in the active chapters.
The first thing that strikes me about these letters is their oppressive optimism. They reek with panygyrics ; they express nothing short of superlatives ; they are turgid with laudation. One who has had even a moderate amount of experi¬ ence with imperfect human nature must have some¬ thing of the feeling toward the writers of these letters that a friend of mine had toward a mutual acquaintance whom he characterized as “imagina¬ tive and expedient rather than rigidly and puri¬ tanically literal.” The letters that are before me as I write these paragraphs are pregnant with “brightest prospects for the year,” are full of “the most promising material,” and “swell with pride” as they introduce “the best freshmen in college and the most brilliant that the fraternity has ever pledged.” The semester that is closed is “the most successful in the history of the fra¬ ternity,” and the one that is opening “bids fair to eclipse those of former years.” As one reads them
152
The Chapter Letter
he hesitates to believe the baldest statement of fact.
I recall a letter written by a member of a chap¬ ter with which I was acquainted which began “After closing a remarkably successful college year,” and continued with a page of similar enthu¬ siasm. The “remarkably successful college year” for them had in reality been full of disaster. The commissary through mismanagement had left the fraternity nearly $1,000 in debt, one of their prominent upperclassmen had been dismissed for cribbing, the highest officer of the fraternity had neglected his duty throughout his entire term of office, and the freshmen had been allowed to run wild so that they had brought down the scholastic standing of the organization to the bottom of the fraternity list and yet it had been a “remarkably successful college year.” I wondered what the cor¬ respondent would have said if they had accom¬ plished something.
The following modest recital illustrates the sort of stuff which I have in mind, and which everyone discounts as he reads it. The only modification which I have made is to change the names. It looks as if Lyons was a hard worked man.
“Our annual reception was one, indeed, to be proud of, and pronounced the greatest fete of the Commencement season. At Commencement Lyons
153 .
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
did honor to our noble fraternity by being awarded the medal given by the News , the college paper, for the best short story. Lyons, also, tied for the “Ready Writer’s” medal.
“We are represented on the college paper, the News , by George as associate editor and Smith as circulation manager. On the Monthly by Weaver and Lyons as editor-in-chief and business manager. At the last meeting of the athletic association, Lyons was elected president and Smith, treasurer. While we have received these honors, we did not secure them by political schemes, but attained them through merit.”
The estimate which the fraternity correspondent places upon his chapter and upon its accomplish¬ ments is very seldom a reasonable one, or one which is born out by the facts. I have known but one man who admitted that his own chapter was not the best in college, and I doubt very much if he would have done so had he been making a statement in the chapter letter. I have seldom known a man who could really look at his chapter in a cold-blooded and unemotional way and judge it fairly. Some years ago my office sent out to the various frater¬ nities which have chapters at the University of Illinois a questionnaire asking, among other things, that the thirty or so chapters of Greek-letter fra¬ ternities then represented at Illinois be ranked in
154
The Chapter Letter
order of excellence or standing. The papers were to be returned without signature, so that it was not possible to tell what fraternity had filled out any one of the papers. It was interesting to note that practically every fraternity was given first place on at least one paper, and it was not hard to guess that most of the organizations had ranked themselves first. If the estimates of correspondents are to count for anything the men who write must be able to see their own faults and the weaknesses of the organizations which they represent, and they must be willing to admit some of these faults. An upperclassman is more likely to do this than is a freshman or a sophomore.
A third characteristic of these letters which seems to me to show a weakness of judgment is the fact that nothing is seized upon a fit subject for praise and dissemination with such eagerness and self-congratulation as is the fact that some one of the brothers has been elected to something or has joined some organization outside of the fra¬ ternity. There is verily more joy over the one or two lucky brothers who get into the most insignifi- ant organizations than over all the others who stay in the chapter house and do the real work of the fraternity. A few excerpts will suffice to illus¬ trate my point.
“The coming year promises to be one of great
1 55
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
prosperity. The chapter is better represented in all lines of activity than any other organization here. We have two varsity captains, manager of the musical clubs, an athletic manager, an inter¬ scholastic manager and an assistant manager, upper and lower class debaters, editor of the 1917 Sphinx with three men on the board, a class presi¬ dent, and other minor offices.”
“ ‘Bull’ Dunne made Archone, junior law society, and ‘Swats’ Bartelme was appointed stage manager of the Comedy Club for next year. At the all-campus election held in May, ‘Tim’ Paisley was elected assistant track manager for 1915-16. With these honors to begin the year, and the prospect of having every active brother back again, we are confident that the ensuing year will prove an exceptionally successful one for us.”
After reading such an item I am moved to ask in the language of the undergraduate, “What d’you mean successful?” The statements sound like the flattery printed in a country newspaper when the freshman goes home from college.
The next illustration is rather characteristic, and seems to indicate that the Kahle brothers might be the busy men at the picnic.
“For the coming year there are bright pros¬ pects. The candidates under consideration are very promising and much is expected from the
156
The Chapter Letter
older brothers. Rhoades is a member of the Col¬ lege Council and Rankin and H. B. Kahle mem¬ bers of the Interfraternity Conference. R. F. Kahle is associate editor of the Campus , the college weekly, and assistant editor of the Kaldron, an annual publication. He is also treasurer of the Modern Problems Club and on the debating team. Boyd is assistant football manager this year and succeeds to the managership next year.
“Moore, Baker, and H. B. Kahle have been ini¬ tiated into Alpha Chi Sigma, the chemical fra¬ ternity. McKinney has been chosen leader of the Mandolin Club and H. B. Kahle is manager of the combined Glee and Mandolin Clubs.
“Moore is business manager of the Literary Monthly , and also secretary of the Athletic Assoc¬ iation.
“McKinney, Wilber, and H. B. Kahle are out for the basketball team. R. F. Kahle is in charge of the cross-country running squads.”
I do not wish to minimize such honors as are mentioned here. They are interesting, some of them are worth while, but they are after all only incidental to the real life and work of the chapter and should not have the emphatic position in the letter. It takes little genius in college when one has influence to get into things, but it often requires backbone and finesse to keep out.
157
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
Scholastic success unless attended with some public praise or recognition is made little of in these letters, and if one did not know to the con¬ trary, one might very well ask himself when he is reading whether or not the fraternity man ever attains any scholastic honors. The item quoted below touches the scholastic situation with a delicacy which deserves commendation.
“Illinois Beta is now enjoying its summer vaca¬ tion after a most successful year. Most of the brothers passed their final examinations satis¬ factorily and from the outlook we should take a high place among the fraternities at Illinois.
“This year we lose three men by graduation. Three other brothers will not return next year having left college to go into business.”
One can scarcely help wondering if the three brothers who have left college to go into business may not have been induced somewhat to take that step because they were not included in the fortu¬ nate list of those who passed their final examina¬ tion. There is no mention either of any brother who might in passing have done himself and the chapter credit. It is considered a sufficient cause for congratulation that so large a number suc¬ ceeded in getting by, and no questions are asked or information given as to the margin above a mere passing grade which the brothers attained. Since
158
The Chapter Letter
the doing of his college work is the main thing for which an undergraduate is supposed to go to college, the fellow who accomplishes this result with distinguished credit to himself is certainly entitled to some special mention even in the chapter letter.
One could wish sometimes that the writers had adopted a more direct and a simpler style. The following is the introductory sentence to a letter full of the most ridiculously exaggerated eulogium. One feels as he is reading it as if he were wallow¬ ing in a mire of oratorical slush.
“Fifty-six years of Iowa Zeta’s existence have passed into the realm of history, and as Apollo casts his radiant gleams upon her fifty-seventh annus we wish first of all to introduce seven new brothers.”
Each issue of one fraternity journal which comes to my table is full of such humor from the first letter to the last.
The effect of all this inflated style, exaggerated self-praise, and failure to realize the relative value of things, is bad. The letters seem artificial, insin¬ cere, conceited. They remind me often of the conversation of two imaginative small boys the one trying to outstrip the other in tales of personal accomplishment and adventure. They too often lack character, force, and real truthfulness, and
159
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
they seldom give us any adequate idea of the actual condition of the chapter.
Having heaped so much criticism upon the chap¬ ter letters as I have found them, I ought at least to make a few suggestions as to their improvement, and this I shall attempt to do.
I have never seen any advantage to the local chapter or to the fraternity at large in fabricat¬ ing the facts. Such a procedure seldom deceives anyone. When a pale, haggard-eyed under¬ graduate comes into my office and tells me that he is in riotous good health and that he never felt better in his life, I know that he is practicing the faith cure or lying, though I do not always go to the trouble of telling him so. So when a fra¬ ternity boasts of his chapter’s having the best year in its history , of its having pledged seventeen of the most superb freshmen that ever came out of prep school, and of being on the whole the most inexpressibly successful and influential bunch ever tolerated by the college authorities, every one who has had any experience knows about where they stand. To blow one’s horn mellifluously and modestly is a task so difficult that the ordinary correspondent might better not attempt it. Present the facts fairly and as they are. Tell the truth. If the fellows have succeeded, say so ; but we have all learned that life is not entirely
160
The Chapter Letter
sunshine. If you have lost out, admit it ; if things are wrong and you have made mistakes, face the facts honestly. It is unquestionably bad taste to air one’s family troubles in public, but one ought not to be afraid to tell the truth and admit one’s weaknesses to one’s family. The man or chapter that is supremely self-satisfied will never improve. Optimism may be carried so far as to become a weakness. When you revise your letters, cut out ninety-five per cent of the self-satisfaction and all of the self-praise.
Try so far as is possible to give an adequate idea of the personality of the individual men com¬ posing the chapter. Single each man out and give a few details as to what each is like, where he came from, and what he has done, especially as to the new men, for you are presenting these brothers to a wide range of friends who do not know them but who would be glad to get better acquainted. Tell who recommended them, to whom they are related, and what work they are taking up. If King is the youngest brother of Elden’s wife, and if Cross comes from Warren’s town, these facts will help to introduce them, to individualize them. If Wallace was a high school orator, or Wright a cross-country star, these are good things to say. The correspondent has a fine chance to present the characteristics and personality of every man in
161
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
the chapter, and in so doing he will help to carry out the original purpose of the chapter letters which was, as I have said, to bring each chapter and each man in the chapter into closer personal touch with all the other chapters.
We are all intensly interested, I am sure, in the growth and development of the institutions in which our various chapters are located, and as for myself I am most interested in the life, the customs, and the traditions of these institutions — the local environment and the conditions which so strongly influence undergraduate life and which differentiate the character of one institution from that of another. How little of this tremendous difference is revealed by the chapter letters is unbelievable until one has read them in an attempt to discover it. Have you ever tried to determine, for example, how different undergraduate life and traditions at Albion are from those at the Uni¬ versity of Virginia or at Tulane from the Univer¬ sity of Minnesota? Have you ever thought to what extent undergraduate practice at an institution of more than ten thousand students like the Uni¬ versity of Michigan or the University of Illinois differs and must of necessity differ from that of a smaller college like Beloit or Muhlenburg? The chapter letters give us very little conception of these differences because the correspondent, per-
162
The Chapter Letter
haps, having in most cases been in but one class of institution, has taken for granted that matters are run in every institution as they are run in his own, and has not given the time or the thought necessary to make these differences clear. He does not realize how interesting and illuminating his letters would be if he would take such trouble. I have looked, for example, through many fraternity quarterlies in an attempt to get an adequate idea of the specific class scraps held in various institu¬ tions throughout this country, but though I find constant references to them, so little detail has been given that I have never been able to understand in what way one contest differs from another. The correspondent has simply taken for granted that we know all about it and lets the matter go at that. We read about the abolishment of the “tank scrap” at Purdue, or the “sack rush” at Illinois, but we get no idea as to what these contests were. The same thing is true of a thousand other details of undergraduate life.
I was very much interested, I can not say sur¬ prised, at a recent interfraternity conference when in conversation with a prominent fraternity man of New York, to find how little he knew of the Uni¬ versity of Illinois. He was wholly unfamiliar with its history, its equipment, its endowment, its cur¬ riculum, and its attendance. He did not know
163
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
whether it was located in Chicago or in Kankakee and the chapter letters he had read were calculated to give him very little information on these sub¬ jects. Before I commented too severely upon his ignorance I took time to ask myself how much I knew about the University of Oklahoma, or Rut¬ gers, or Miami, and before anyone who reads this article grows conceited I should like to inquire how much he knows about Cincinnati University, or the College of Charleston, or the Agricultural College at Manhattan, Kansas, or Tufts, or Bowdoin, and how concrete an idea is it possible for him to get from the chapter letter in his fraternity magazine. All this suggests to me that the letters ought to tell every year something about the college — its aims, its extent, its growth, its accomplishments, and the atmosphere which surrounds it.
I should feel it unfortunate, too, if the letters did not contain considerable specific reference to undergraduate activities. Athletics, dramatics, social events, college publications form a large part of the life of most undergraduates and a larger part of their interest. College papers are often criticized because they devote so large an amount of their reading matter to the discussion of these undergraduate activities and so small a part to the more important things of college life. It will always be so so long as those who have
164
The Chapter Letter
charge of college publications are young and inter¬ ested in youthful activities. I have frequently remarked that if a prominent professor should die on the day of an important football game, the college paper the next morning would very likely give the game the front page while the professor would be modestly stowed away somewhere on the inside of the sheet. Since this point of view is so common I should feel that the chapter letter would not adequately and truthfully represent the undergraduate point of view unless it devoted a considerable amount of the space allotted to it to college activities and not wholly to those activi¬ ties in which some brother was starring.
There was a time, I suppose, when a fraternity man felt that his duty was done if he knew his own fraternity and showed interest in it. I have even heard fraternity men say that they did not care to form the acquaintance of men of other organiza¬ tions, and that they had little or no interest in what other fraternities were doing. Such a feel¬ ing, fortunately, is about gone, and fraternity men all over the country are being drawn more closely together, are stimulating each other to mutual improvement, and are showing a real interest in each other’s welfare. Anything that has to do with fraternity life, fraternity relationships, and fraternity improvement and advancement in your
165
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
college ought to form an interesting part of the chapter letter. If fraternities come, as I think they will, into a higher place in our college life, it will be because they pull together, because they are willing to learn from each other, and because they are willing to recognize each other’s merits. If they go down, they will go down together. What I have said of self-praise does not apply, I believe, to praise of one’s neighbors, and the fraternity correspondent will have got a long way when he reaches the point of discussing interfraternity con¬ ditions and relations in his college and has judg¬ ment and generosity enough to recognize a rival fraternity’s strong points.
An adequate judgment of the chapter’s stand¬ ing and worth, a personal estimate of each mem¬ ber’s character, accomplishments, and personality, some details of college activities and college cus¬ toms, and an interested review of what fraternities in general are doing at the institution from which he writes are among the things which a corre¬ spondent can use to make his chapter letters more interesting and more beneficial than some of them now are.
I was visiting one of the large institutions of the Middle West just this week, and by invitation called at one of its beautiful chapter houses. Who should meet me at the door but “Swats” Bartelme
166
The Chapter Letter
still giving the glad hand graciously, and still riotously interested, I have no doubt, in college dramatics. I had no idea when I began this paper that I should ever run onto him.
\
167
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
BUILDING A CHAPTER HOUSE
Some learn only through their own experience, by hard knocks and not by suggestion; others pick up an idea or a method as soon as it is presented to them. Now that it seems to be the style, and I think it a good one, for every frater¬ nity chapter to have its own house whether it has any money or not, I thought it might be helpful to tell the story of how we got our house, in the hope that my tale might serve as an incentive to others to do as we did.
I don’t remember who it was that first suggested the idea of building a chapter house. I presume it was Wes King, for Wes was a lawyer down town who had worked collections on the side and who had learned to wring money from the most reluctant debtors. He was a man who under difficulties got results. One of the brothers was responsible for the statement that Wes had stopped in front of a wooden Indian one day, and by flattery and cajolery had induced him to pay a bill which had been long owing by the proprietor within, so I feel sure it must have been Wes who first made the suggestion. Whoever it was, he had nerve.
When our chapter was first organized we did business, as the other chapters did at that time, in
168
Building a Chapter House
a suite of rooms down town over first one restaurant and then another. These rooms were reached by a dark and untidy box stair, and though they seemed to us at first quite elegant and palatial, they were, in point of fact, bare and barn-like and uninvit¬ ing. They were too remote from the campus to serve as a convenient meeting place, and they did not furnish the slightest semblance of a home as a fraternity house is today supposed to do. The members of the chapter were scattered about the town, and there was little chance of their all getting together in the rooms excepting on Friday and Saturday nights, and even then there was little to be done excepting to pound the piano, which was usually out of tune, or to sit around on the stiff uncomfortable chairs and smoke, and smoking made some of the brothers sick. The rooms were rather scantily furnished, and as I look back at them now through the vista of twenty-five years, they were pretty close to impossible as a loafing place or a living place. It was only the companionship of congenial friends that made them seem something like an imitation of home.
We all had keys to these apartments, and we used to wander up to the rooms every day or two alone or with some pal and sit round and imagine we were enjoying ourselves. We held our initia¬ tions there — pretty rough some of them were with
169
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
very little regalia and very much less parapher¬ nalia; we invited our girl friends in sometimes, under proper chaperonage, but it was after all a poor substitute for real fraternity life.
We stuck to this sort of thing for three years, I believe it was, and then, following the example of some of the older fraternities, we rented a house near the campus, on Green Street, bought, bor¬ rowed, or stole a little furniture, and became from that time on a real part of the college community. I have often wondered just what form of mental aberration was afflicting the man who designed the house into which we moved and in which we lived for the next few* years. It was not particularly suitable for a dwelling house or a summer hotel or a hospital ; it had rooms of the most curious shape, and of the most unheard-of arrangement; it had an unusable basement which we converted into a dining-room, this latter room approached by a dark unventilated passage way ; there was no attic and few closets; but we disposed ourselves in it with a good deal of comfort and satisfaction and began soon to realize for the first time some of the possibilities of the right sort of fraternity life. If the house had been better and more convenient, perhaps we should not so soon have conceived the idea of having a house of our own. At any rate one might as well look with optimism upon the
170
Building a Chapter House
experiences of life, and derive some satisfaction and profit, if possible, from its discomforts.
It may have been when the plastering fell in the hallway and nearly killed one of the brothers, or when the furnace went out of business, or the plumbing threw a fit — I have forgotten. At any rate some domestic disaster caused us to get together and wonder why we could not have a house of our own. The Phi Delts were building, and though we were not so old as they and did not have a cent of money to our names, we could not see why we should not follow as advanced ideas as they. It was the optimism of youth and of inexperience.
It was in the spring of 1901 that we grew desper¬ ate and did something. A few of our local enthu¬ siasts got together and worked out a system of chapter house notes. It was a simple system, and any optimist quick at figures and skillful at push¬ ing a lead pencil could easily figure in a few minutes that it would take us only a short time to have the amount raised, the house built, and a reserve fund out at interest.
In brief, the plan was to induce each brother, active and alumni, to sign ten notes of ten dollars each, one note a year to be due for each of ten successive years. There was to be no objection raised if any brother insisted on paying the entire
171
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
series of notes in advance. Wes King was elected general manager of the note signing business and was to take special care of the alumni, and I want to record mj statement right here that in getting fellows to promise to pay sums of money, he has no equal this side of Los Angeles. In point of fact he induced a good many people to promise to pay who have not paid and who, I am now convinced, never had any intention of doing so. They simply signed the notes or wrote the letter to get rid of him. I have a collection of these notes and letters in the upper right hand drawer of my desk now that I often look at and read with the greatest interest, but with a somewhat weakened and wan¬ ing faith in the promises of man. Some time if I become desperate I may publish these, if the writers continue to ignore their promises, but I still retain a few rags of hope that I may ultimately get real money from them. Hans Mueller had the job of running the members of the local chapter into the corral and getting them to sign, and he, too, proved a good solicitor.
I drew the job of treasurer and general custo¬ dian of the notes, because I was a guileless college professor who knew no better. In contemplating the job of treasurer from a distance I must con¬ fess that it has its attractions. It has all the symptoms of what the undergraduate calls a
172
Building a Chapter House
“pipe.” I remember asking a six year old neigh¬ bor boy of mine whose father is a bank president just what the older man did for a living. “He just gives money away,” was the reply, and this answer with slight verbal changes expressed my idea of the business of a treasurer. I thought that he simply received money that was sent him. In retrospect, however, such a position takes on a very different aspect. If anyone who reads these paragraphs has had in mind accepting the position of treasurer of a corporation organized not for profit and composed largely of under¬ graduates who propose to build a fraternity house, my advice to him would be the same as that offered by Mr. Douglas Jerrold to young men about to get married — “don’t.” It is a delusion and a snare. That simple innocent job of treasurer has caused me more pain, has caused my fraternity brothers more annoyance, and has required more letters to be written which have never been answered than I ever dreamed of. I have held it twenty years, because I did not dare to drop it, and there was no one else foolish enough to take it away from me.
We got twenty-three sets of notes at the first canvass, and though this seemed pretty good, many of the old fellows did not sign them and have not since shown any material interest in the house building scheme. A number of these brothers
173
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
have been back to enjoy and to admire the house after it was built, but their appreciation has not gone further than laudatory words. In recent years it has been the policy of the chapter to require each one of the initiates to sign a series of these notes, though each man is allowed to set the date when his first note is to be paid. It was our hope when this scheme of house notes was devised that some of the brothers would pay them out quickly and that with the first money we accumulated we should invest in a suitable site for the house.
I remember with what delight I received the first payment. It came from one of the brothers who was getting well or working or enjoying himself at some German health resort, and who sent me a postal money order for fifty marks. I had never had any occasion previous to this, excepting when in the grades, I was working out my problems in compound numbers, to satisfy my curiosity as to how much real money one can get for a mark, but I find that the first entry I made in the ledger which I immediately started is $11.80. I guess I got the full worth of the order as marks go now.
The house notes as they came due were paid with reasonable promptness. Some fellows who had little money and who, therefore, had to manage their financial matters carefully, sent in the
174
Building a Chapter House
money before they received a notice, but for the most part it required one or two reminders before the response came. A few — not many — of these men have been receiving two or three notices a year for the past fifteen years without my getting a single response. I am an optimist so I keep hoping. By the spring of 1904 we had accumu¬ lated one thousand three hundred and fifty dollars, but long before this some of the other brothers had had their eyes on two good looking lots near the campus which we were sure would be just the place to build our house. In order that we might be able to hold property legally we realized the necessity of forming a corporation, and this we did in the spring of 1904. This corporation consists of nineteen members, eleven members of the active chapter elected by the chapter each spring, and eight life members elected from the alumni. The real business of the corporation is done by a Board of Directors, seven in number, four from the active chapter and three from the resident alumni. When all this preliminary organization had been accomplished Wes King went over and hypnotized the old German — or was it his wife — who owned the John Street lots and stole them from him; that is, he got a contract from him to sell them to us for three thousand dollars, we to pay down five hundred dollars and to have the
175
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
privilege of reducing the remainder of the debt by the payment of such sums as we should be able to raise at any time we wished. We were able to clear the mortgage in less than two years largely with money collected from our house notes.
I said that the money was collected largely from the house notes. The rest of it came from the issuing of gold bonds, two thousand dollars of which were really disposed of. The original intention was to sell five thousand dollars worth to launch our enterprise, but the brothers did not fall for the gold bonds with the enthusiasm that we had anticipated ; it struck them as a good deal like putting good money into mining stock. In point of fact, the gold bond idea had the least in it of any of the bright thoughts which came to us in working up the house scheme. We have found these bonds harder to handle than any other indebtedness, and I feel that they were perhaps a mistake. Some of them have been given to the corporation, by the holders ; now and then one has been paid when we had made some lucky collec¬ tion and had the money; and the rest still remain to be cancelled as we prosper sufficiently to take them up.
With our lots paid for we felt that we were in a position to begin to build our house. There was only one trifling handicap that held us back, and
176
Building a Chapter House
that was the lack of money. Some of the inter¬ ested members of the Board of Directors had made investigations as to the possibility of our getting money from some of the Chicago houses which make a business of lending money to those in need, but the project of building a house for irre¬ sponsible undergraduates in college was a new one, and no one was willing at first to take the risk. Building and Loan Associations would not then consider the proposition for a moment, though now that the building of such houses has become common and has been shown to be a safe enter¬ prise in which to invest capital, it is not especially difficult to persuade either private individuals or Building and Loan Associations to lend money for such a purpose.
It was one of our local members, abetted by two other wide-awake lawyers from our alumni, who finally presented the scheme to the Chicago Sav¬ ings Bank with such a rosy aspect as to win their favor. They had it all worked out to a minute when we could pay it back and all planned to a T where the money was coming from. I was reading over the proposed schedule of payments just a few days ago, and it surely looked beautiful on paper. We have not done the business at all as he worked it out, but we have done it in quite as good a way if in a different one. As I intimated this Chicago
177
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
firm agreed to lend us twelve thousand dollars for twelve years at five and one-half per cent on a first mortgage, and this amount made it seem possible for us to begin the house. We had hoped to get by with eighteen thousand dollars and since a local business man agreed to give us three thousand dollars on a second mortgage, we felt that the house was as good as built and began to save money for furniture.
As soon as the money was in sight a committee was appointed with full power to select an archi¬ tect, approve of plans, and get things moving. This was in the spring of 1906. We had a number of sketches presented. It was thought at first that for the sake of sentiment and perhaps to save a little money, it would be desirable to have one of our brothers design the house; but I had learned long ago that no one is likely to save much money by letting his relatives work for him, or in fact, in working for them, and it was not long before we were all agreed that the wisest plan for us was to employ the best architect we could get, even if we had to go to Boston to find him. This we did, and he made us a plan which was simple and dignified and which still causes our house, although it is nearly the oldest one about the campus, to be admired and praised by visitors to the University for its beauty and convenient ar-
178
Building a Chapter House
rangement perhaps more than any other house which has been built. I have since advised all my friends to engage a good architect even if they contemplate building only a woodshed or a dog ken¬ nel.
We were not easily satisfied with our plans; like all builders with limited means, we wanted a large number of big rooms within a limited floor space, and we wanted everything on the first floor. When everything had been adjusted to our satis¬ faction so far as this was possible we submitted the plans to contractors for bids. If any archi¬ tect has ever submitted plans to a contractor and had the bids come within the original estimate I should like to have the name and address of both. At any rate the bids on our house ran two thousand dollars beyond anything which we had in our wild¬ est moments considered. We had to cut, and we did it generously, and then let the contract. In round numbers the total cost of the house includ¬ ing lighting fixtures, walks, and everything neces¬ sary to its completion was twenty-one thousand dollars. It will be remembered that the amount of money we had borrowed was fifteen thousand dollars and this left six thousand dollars unpro¬ vided for. We had during the interim since our house notes were first issued saved two thousand five hundred dollars from this source, and the re-
179
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
maining three thousand five hundred dollars we borrowed from the contractor and from four of our alumni. When the house was done in the fall we had money enough to meet all of our outstand¬ ing obligations. ^
Even now when these scattered obligations have all been' met I am convinced that we spent too much on the house. The paying of the extra three thousand five hundred dollars strained every nerve of the three or four fellows responsible for its collection. I don’t know now how we ever se¬ cured it. We got some of it from the house notes, we saved a little from the rent ; we insulted some of our well-to-do alumni until they gave it to us to get rid of us, but ultimately we paid it — in fact we paid it exactly when we agreed to do so. Our house was so large that it required a big chapter roll in order that it might be full and the rent be easily paid, and I have yet to be convinced that a
chapter roll larger than twenty-five is likely to be
*
the most efficiently managed. I think that most fraternities lack the courage to build a house well within their means and best suited to their needs. They are all afraid that if they do not build a house larger than their neighbors, people will think them poor; just as some men are afraid to buy a Ford for fear that some one will imagine they cannot get by with a Cadillac.
180
Building a Chapter House
When the time came for moving into the new house we had very little furniture. The old stuff we had had in the Green Street house had been hardly dealt with for nearly ten years. We gave it all a complete over-hauling, presented some of it to the Associated Charities, sent some to the repair shop to be gone over and refinished, and consigned the rest to the bedrooms. We had been gradually collecting a furniture fund, but it was entirely inadequate. Here again we fell back on the local chapter and the alumni. Some of the younger fellows were more than ordinarily skilful in handling tools and these agreed to make in the engineering shops some of the larger pieces of furniture for the living-room and library, such as the tables and the big lounging chairs. We found that by this method we could materially reduce the cost and in addition introduce a little element of sentiment. The fellows who had worked the hardest to raise the money for the house gave the most liberally toward buying the furniture or gave rugs, chairs, or curtains as they chose. The place looked mighty good to us when late in the fall of 1907 the curtains hung, the rugs down — I thought that the living-room rug was especially handsome because Frank Scott and I had paid for it — and the furniture placed, we moved in. No one knows so well how to appreciate an accom-
181
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
plishment of this sort as when he has done his level best to bring it about.
But our troubles were not all over when we had moved into the house; in fact as treasurer of the corporation I was soon convinced that they had only just begun. The regular payments had to be made. The money for these was to come from the rent which we received for the house from the local chapter, and from the income from the house notes. The rent we set at one thousand five hun¬ dred dollars a year, and the notes should have brought us another thousand. We have always received the rent, but the notes have often brought us no more than two-thirds of what they were estimated to do.
The fellows often lose interest when they get away from college. Their duties multiply, their obligations increase, and they are likely to forget the chapter house. The best help to keep every one in touch with the house and the active chapter has been a chapter quarterly paper sent to every one who has ever been connected with the chapter, and containing personal items about all the brothers, and news of the college and the campus. It took us several years to find this out, and I think in consequence we have lost several thou¬ sands of dollars that we should have collected had we started the quarterly earlier. The main idea
182
Building a Chapter House
is not to let one forget or lose his hold upon the old life.
At the end of two years we saw that we should have to raise the rent to two thousand dollars a year if we were to meet our payments, for repairs became necessary almost at once, taxes and insur¬ ance were high and growing higher, and we had no sooner built than the city authorities passed ordinances to pave on four sides of our block. The improvement increased the value of our property, it is true, but it also increased the drain upon our exchequer. All this increase of expendi¬ ture made it the more necessary that the chapter roll be kept large. It was again in my mind an argument in support of the statement that we had built rather too generously.
It was in 1910, I believe, that we decided to increase the rent paid by the chapter. Our in¬ debtedness had by this time been reduced to fifteen thousand dollars, all the loose bills and personal debts having been taken care of. At the same time, it seemed best to those who had looked most care¬ fully into our financial affairs that if possible we should pay off our two mortgages and take out one loan of fifteen thousand dollars from a Build¬ ing and Loan Association. After some negotia¬ tions we were able to do this, and our monthly payments in this association were for the next five
18 8
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
years one hundred sixty-two dollars and fifty cents a month. This amount we were able to meet from the rent, and the income from the house notes took care of the taxes, improvements, and repairs. It is true that we sometimes ran pretty close to shore but whenever my bank account ran down near the five hundred dollar mark, I began to re¬ trench or to put the pressure upon the delinquent brothers. I was forced to resort to all sorts of tactics to get the notes paid, but we were always able to pay the bills when they were presented. I do not believe the fellows out in the world and far away from college have realized in any sense what a responsibility it meant to carry the house. They have argued that it would be all right if they paid when it was convenient; they have been angry often when they have been “dunned”; they have thought me at times sarcastic and insistent, but they did not consider that there was the regular monthly assessment to be met, and the regular bills to be paid, and behind it all only the rent and the promises which they had made. The fact that I always kept in the bank this surplus of five hundred dollars has more than once saved the corporation from disaster.
Later we decided that it would be best again to refund the loan which had now, through our regu¬ lar payments, been reduced to something less than
18L
Building a Chapter Home
nine thousand dollars. Without much trouble we were able to make this refund, and so to reduce our monthly payments to less than one hundred dollars a month. This reduction in our monthly payments made it possible to reduce the rent exacted from the local chapter to one hundred and fifty dollars a month for ten months, and later to one hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, and so to relieve the chapter of a burden which for so many years it had been carrying without com¬ plaint. It has never seemed to me that we should quickly relieve the property of debt. The more people who have a part in helping to bear the burden, the more will these men after they become alumni appreciate the value of the house. Per¬ haps later it may seem desirable again to refund the loan in order that the rent may be reduced to one hundred dollars a month, an amount which the chapter could always easily pay.
There is no likelihood that we shall for many years at least abandon the house notes. There are constant improvements and repairs which need to be made on the house ; as it grows, older these will proportionately increase. We realize that the best possible economy is to keep the house in first-class repair, and all this takes money and a good deal of it. Besides this, the house notes give every man an interest in the house and a sense of
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
f
ownership. His regular payments for ten years recall to his mind his undergraduate days and bring him back to see the fellows and to live over again the details of his youth. I am sure the house notes are a good thing.
We now owe about eight thousand dollars on property which valued very conservatively is worth fifty thousand dollars ; we have the pay¬ ments arranged in such a way that we can meet them without putting an unreasonable burden upon any one. Our house is a real home, it is in good repair, and is one of which we may well be proud for many years to come. I shall be gone very likely before there is a new house built for the chapter, for though I am not yet a patriarch, I am still the oldest of the small group of men who worked to bring about the completion of this house. Those who come after me and who may have a part in building a new and a better house for the chapter, have my kindest wishes. In more ways than they think, their labor will be a labor of love; but I hope that they will feel as I have felt that the struggle is worth while, that the effort put forth is more than compensated for in the satisfaction of seeing the result. It has cost me some worry and not a few postage stamps, as it has cost a number of the other brothers. I have written thousands of letters and have had,
186
Building a Chapter House
I have no doubt, scores of replies, but I never walk down the street in which the house is situated without feeling a glow of satisfaction that we did it.
There are others, who read this, who if they had the courage and nerve and persistence, might do even better than we have done.
187
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
THE MAN WHO DOES NOT JOIN
“I was never asked to join a fraternity when I was in college,” a young fellow said to me not long ago, “though many of my intimate friends were, and I have always had a feeling of regret and loneliness when I have gone back to visit my Alma Mater. I have wondered if there might not have been something the matter with me, something about me not quite normal. I find it now often difficult to explain to people just why I was not a member, for it is as embarrassing for me to say that I never was asked as it must be for a maiden lady when explaining why she has never married.”
The fact that a young man while in college does not join a fraternity or is not asked to join is not of necessity an argument against the man or against the fraternity. The number of fraterni¬ ties in any institution with which I am familiar is too small to admit of everyone’s being invited, and the reasons which induce men to stay out or which prevent them from being asked are as varied as the men themselves. Why have you not joined the Elks, or the Odd Fellows, or the Ancient Order of Hibernians, or the Christian Science Church? Why are you in the profession which you are now following? It is not at all likely that you can
188
The Man Who Does Not Join
answer, for it is next to impossible for any one to determine just what series of causes lead to any specific action which he may have taken.
There are a great many people, some of whom belong to fraternities and others of whom do not, who have the feeling that there are only two types of people in the world — those who are elected and those who are damned, those who get in and those who stay out, those who join and those who do not. My experience has led me to the conclusion that there is mighty little difference, and that the man who does not join usually came out of the same dust heap as the man who does.
An acquaintance of mine, herself a member of a college sorority which she considers the best on the market, related to me not long ago the details of a tearful interview through which she had just passed with one of her sisters in the bond. The incident which had been the instigating cause of the lachrymal outburst was the announcement of the engagement of a third sister. Now an engage¬ ment is ordinarily no cause for weeping; quite the contrary in fact. In this case, however, the hor¬ rible and disgraceful fact had been divulged that the young man in question was not a member of any fraternity. This misguided young woman had somehow absorbed the erroneous impression that
189
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
unless one belongs to a college fraternity he is hopelessly lost in a social way.
As I said at the outset, very few colleges have organizations enough to take in all the new men who arrive at each fall opening. In point of fact there are not enough Greek-letter fraternities in existence to supply such a demand. In theory, perhaps, it might be a good thing if there were; but in practice I am afraid that difficulties would frequently arise. I have known undergraduates in college who would disorganize heaven if they ever got in — or hades, and who, like some of our recent political candidates, would never be happy or contented in any organization unless they were themselves the whole of it. I have never investi¬ gated the results in those colleges where an attempt has been made to break up all the student body into groups, but I have little faith in it as a suc¬ cessful unifying and harmonizing process. Some men do not want to belong to anything ; they wish most of all to be let alone, to form no associations with either students or faculty. They come to college to get an education, they say, and that means to study books and to acquire facts.
Such men have little that is gregarious in their make up. They like to work by themselves, they are restless and unhappy if they have a com¬ panion, and they would not join anything, not
190
The Man Who Does Not Join
even the army or the church, unless they were forced to do so. One of these I recall at this moment quite vividly. He was a quiet, studious fellow, an only child who at home had had his own room and followed his own methods of work. He had never been interfered with; neither his books nor his bureau drawers had ever before been over¬ turned. When he wanted to study or to meditate he sought the quietest isolation. When he came to college he was at once caught in the maelstrom of rushing, and before he came to himself he found that some one had decorated his lapel with a parti¬ colored pledge button. But this fact brought no joy to him: he was restless, discontented, melan¬ choly, revolutionary, and the outcome of it all was that he gave back the button, found a room by himself, and settled down to a quiet, hermit life such as pleased him. There are many like him, and if they want to be happy, rather than to form friendships, they do not join.
There are those, too, who do not like to be mixed up in things. If something exciting is being per¬ petrated they would rather go in the other direc¬ tion. They never run to a fire; they pursue a doctor’s degree or a hobby; they enjoy the out¬ skirts rather than John Street. Such a man the fraternity would undoubtedly help to educate far more than many another agency, but he usually
191
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
manages to keep his feet out of the snare. If he is invited out he has an engagement; he has little desire to be done good. At the present time with us the tendency is to crowd about the campus ; the more congested things are the better the ordinary student likes it. If he lives east of the campus during his freshman year where life is quiet and regular, by the time he has become an upper¬ classman he has moved to the west side where all the men’s organizations are located and where there is something doing. Yet with all this tendency there are still some fellows who prefer the isola¬ tion which may be found beyond the towns, and of their own initiative seek out those places which are far removed from the crowd.
The selfish, headstrong man often does not join when he is asked, and I did not mean to suggest that either of the two sorts I have previously mentioned are to be counted in this class. One has to yield his own desires if he gets on comfortably in any partnership or organization, even in mar¬ riage or the grain business. Brotherhood even of the most unsentimental character is a matter of daily if not of hourly concessions and considera¬ tion of the profit or the comfort of others. If one is incapable of such sacrifice and of the real happi¬ ness and satisfaction which results from it, he ordinarily is wise enough to go his own way, and
192
The Man Who Does Not Join
he keeps out of a fraternity. I remember a young fellow of this sort who came to college some two or three years ago. He wanted the honor and the prestige of belonging, he had an attractive ex¬ terior, and he was pledged in a short time. The life got on his nerves at once, however. He could not stand the restraint of the house, he could not bring himself to submit to rules, he could not yield, or follow directions. He wanted his own room, he objected to the food, he wanted his own comfort and his own way. He tried living out of the house for a while, but nothing was right; so he went back to his own isolated selfish life. The next fall he was bid by another fraternity, but it was not in him to get on unselfishly with anyone. So he soon gave up the pledge button and left college.
A great many men entering college would like to join a fraternity but feel that they cannot afford the expense which such a procedure would entail. Their going to college demands sacrifice on their part and on the part of the home folks, and they very wisely are not willing that this sac¬ rifice should be made heavier simply for their own pleasure. It is true that every chapter at the University of Illinois, as at many other institu¬ tions, I have no doubt, contains members who have little means or who are partially or wholly self- supporting, but it cannot be denied that the ex-
193
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
n
pense of living in a fraternity is greater than is required for one to live outside, and many of the best men in college who have plenty of opportunity to join stay out because they feel that they must live as economically as possible. These men often miss the close friendship and comradeship which they would find in the fraternity; often, however, they gather around themselves outside groups of friends who are bound as closely together as are the members of any fraternity organized. I have often heard it deplored that the fraternity is so organized as to shut out any worthy man, but as society is now organized similar instances may be found in any community to illustrate the fact that many of the good things which we would enjoy we are deprived of because we cannot afford to pay for them. The man who is forced to work his way through college, as many of us know from experi¬ ence, cannot always ride in the Pullman or attend the formal party. He may gain something in in¬ dependence and self-reliance, but he will of neces¬ sity have to sacrifice many much desired pleasures.
Not a few fellows who would like very much to be fraternity men never have an opportunity. It is against fraternity conventionalities for anyone to express interest in joining or desire to join. It would be considered quite as unpardonable a breach of etiquette for a freshman unasked to
194
The Man Who Does Not Join
express a willingness or a desire to join a frater¬ nity as it would for a young girl to propose mar¬ riage to a male friend, perhaps in these days more so. The outsider from an unknown town has too little show. I know a young fellow coming to col¬ lege next fall who will be scrambled for by a half- dozen fraternities while his intimate friend who is coming with him will be scarcely likely to get a look in unless through the necessity of asking him in order to get his friend. When, as in large in¬ stitutions, there are so many eligible fellows who are personally known by the members of chapters or who are introduced to them, there will always be a great many excellent boys who are overlooked because there is more good material than can be utilized.
Undoubtedly the fact that a man comes to col¬ lege unknown is not the only barrier to his being asked to join a fraternity. Personal traits of character and personal appearance influence the matter materially — the latter considerably more than it should I often think. The man who talks too much or who refuses to talk at all ; the fellow who has too much self-assurance or the one who has too little — all |iave difficulty in getting by. Crude manners a* crude dress are always bars to admission. OlSen it is the man’s fault, and at other times the fraternity is finical and critical
195
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
and hard to please. Often, too, since an election must be by unanimous vote it is the prejudice or the stubbornness of one man in the fraternity that prevents a man from being asked. It may seem to some that it is unfair for one man’s vote to keep out an otherwise acceptable freshman, but that is generally the custom of the fraternity. I know men who have worked every possible device, who have pulled every available string, who have even had their relatives come to town in order that their influence might be added to that of the individual himself who wished very much to join. It has even gone so far at times as for interested outside friends to try to influence the college authorities in behalf of their friends who could not get in. The man who resorts to these devices, however, very seldom profits from them. Every year I see the disappointed faces of young fellows who have come to college with the highest hopes of making a fraternity only to find that they had built their hopes upon a wreak foundation.
Sometimes a freshman is asked by the wrong crowrd of fellows, and he has the good sense to recognize this fact and the courage to decline the invitation. Only this week a boy came to me to say that he had had an invitation to join a certain group of men and was not quite certain of their character. He asked me to tell him frankly just
196
The Man Who Does Not Join
what they were like and what they stood for. After I had done so as fairly as I could, he said, “Thank you for telling me so straightforwardly. I don’t believe from what you say that they are the sort of men that I should like to have for my inti¬ mate friends in college, and I shall decline their invitation.” It took pretty staunch principles for him to reach this conclusion, for he is a boy who would very much enjoy the sort of life he would find in a good fraternity, and he knew very well what it means at the end of the freshman year to decline an invitation to join. Such instances are not at all rare of men who rather than join the wrong fraternity elect to join none at all but try to make for themselves a happy independent life.
Not infrequently the opportunity to join a fra¬ ternity comes to a man too late. He would have liked the opportunity earlier in his college course ; but if it comes to him in his junior year, he often prefers to stay with the coterie of friends whom he has gathered about him than to adjust himself thus late to a new set. Only this year two juniors at the University of Illinois were invited to join two different fraternities. They were decidedly among the most influential independents in college. They were strong politically, they were respected socially, and they had a wide circle of warm friends. They did not feel that it would be quite
197
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
loyal to these friends for them to break away so late in their college life. “If I had been asked in my freshman year,” one of the boys said to me, “I should no doubt have been glad to accept. I have fought my way up alone, however, and have made for myself a satisfactory position in under¬ graduate affairs, and I feel without conceit that I should be doing the fraternity a greater honor in joining it now than it has done me by inviting me.” I felt the same way as he did about the matter, and I have frequently felt so with refer¬ ence to men who have been asked to join fraterni¬ ties when they had gone beyond the sophomore year. A young friend of mine a few years ago was in about the same position, he said, as Thackeray was with the taffy. When as a child he very much wanted it, he did not have the shilling that it cost ; later he had the shilling but he did not care for the taffy. When this boy friend of mine entered col¬ lege, he very much wanted to join a fraternity but he did not have a chance ; later in his college course he had the chance, but he had formed his friends and he did not have any desire to join.
It is interesting to see what becomes of these men who do not join. Those who do not wish to do so, of course, live their own lives, form their own small circle of intimate friends and have no quarrel with any one. They get out of college
198
The Man Who Does Not Join
what they came for, and they seldom have any feeling of jealousy or envy for the man who gets something else. These men have the kindest feel¬ ings for the men in fraternities and see no reason why if these men have the time and the money and the desire for such things they should not go into them. The man who really has no interest in join¬ ing and who enjoys another sort of life is not mixed up in any fight against organizations. He likes his own life and is willing for the fraternity man to like his.
Some of the men who are disappointed in not being asked are too weak and too lacking in inde¬ pendence to adjust themselves to their surround¬ ings and to form a group of friends of their own. A young boy came in to see me not long ago with some evident trouble weighing on his mind. I tried to get it out of him with little success for a time, but finally I asked, “What is worrying you, Fred?” “What I want to know,” he burst out, “is how I can get a bid to join a fraternity.” He was really pathetic, he would have taken anything offered him. All that he wanted was a pin. I tried to tell him frankly that his chances were not very great ; he was not quite the sort of man to attract inter¬ est by fraternity men, he had no friends to push him. I tried to show him that happiness and suc¬ cess were very little, if at all, dependent upon his
199
The i Fraternity and the Undergraduate
joining! a fratemity^that was only an incident in his life in college which could be omitted without seriously disturbing anything; but he could not see it that way. He had come to college appar¬ ently for the sole purpose of joining a fraternity; his friends at home expected it ; his happiness de¬ manded it. If he could not attain his purpose at once he would go home, and he did. His college life was closed in a month all because he was too weak to live his own life. He was the sort of man who had too little force to help an organization had he become a member of one, and there are not a few like him.
Most of the men who do not join adjust them¬ selves at once to the situation. They find other activities and associations which present to them opportunities for friendship and social exercise. They go into athletics, they work in the churches, they find interest in the professional societies which are established in every college. They go into dramatics and debating and military and poli¬ tics and competitions of all sorts, and so get satis¬ faction and compensation for the life they for one reason or another have missed. It is interesting in going through the senior section of our col¬ lege annual to notice how few members of the class are unattached to some organization or activity. Even this list of activities and organiza-
200
The Man Who Does Not Join
tions which every senior gives is inadequate, for it does not take into account the little house groups which are formed everywhere about the campus, and which in a large degree take the place of the real fraternity life which the Greek-letter man lives.
Most of the independent political leaders whom I now know in college are either men who have been asked to join a fraternity and chose for one reason or another not to do so, or they are men who would have liked to be asked, but for some reason missed the chance. They have had force and initiative enough to make their own plans, to gather about them their own supporters, and to conduct their own political and social campaigns. The enterprises they undertake are not nearly so easy of accomplishment as are those of the frater¬ nity man, because the fraternity man has definite backing, a well-organized support. He is ma¬ terially helped in the accomplishment of any un¬ dertaking which he begins, while the independent is not. The latter, therefore, if he wins in any .undertaking must be the stronger, the more self- reliant, the shrewder of the two, and he fre¬ quently shows that he is. Two of the strongest men in the junior class at the University of Illinois this spring are independents, and I believe they are decidedly among the best men in college. They
201
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
have made friends everywhere; they have been leaders in whatever they have undertaken, and no man in the junior class has undertaken more. They are good illustrations of the leader in col¬ lege who is left out and yet who is in no way dis¬ couraged by that fact; neither one I am sure would be willing for a minute to admit that he had been left out.
It is usually the men who are not asked to join fraternities or who are not pleased with the invi¬ tation they receive who are responsible for the organization of the local clubs or of groups of men which eventually become Greek-letter frater¬ nities. I have known a dozen such groups of men at my own institution which were organized as church clubs, or as purely local clubs, in most cases with the averred intention and determination never to become more, and yet I have never known one which did not eventually petition a national organization for a charter. This is quite the nor¬ mal procedure really, for a national organization can make a more careful selection of its men and has a stronger form of government than has a local club, and the fellows soon come to appreciate this fact.
Occasionally there is jealousy and ill feeling among those who would have liked to join and who do not have the chance. Not finding it possible
202
The Man Who Does Not Join
to get in themselves, they immediately conceive reasons why no one else should be allowed to do so. Their imaginations conjure up all sorts of evils and irregularities and undemocratic situations within the fraternity; and they are at once and for all time against the system. When I was a boy on the farm I was fortunate in owning a riding horse and saddle. The boy who lived across the road had neither, but he spent a considerable part of his time in showing up to the other boys the evils and dangers of horseback riding. His father would willingly get him a horse, he said, if he wanted one, but he did not want one ; he thought it was a very bad thing and a very dangerous thing for a young boy to have a horse of his own. And so he salved his feelings and comforted him¬ self by railing against me. He deceived no one but himself. It is somewhat the same sort of atti¬ tude that the man who does not join a fraternity occasionally takes by way of explaining why he never got in. It is a common method in society of explaining things, but it is usually an unfair and ineffective one.
If the men who are waging an active war against fraternities had usually been active members of these organizations and acquainted with the pur¬ poses and the real life of fraternity men, they could make a considerably stronger case. As it
203
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
is, I do not know an agitator against fraternities who has spent the four years of his undergraduate life in such an organization, and further than this, I do not know one who had a chance to do so. Most of them know little or nothing first hand. Either they or their children were disappointed in gaining admission, and for this reason they vir¬ tuously take up the fight as George Ford in my boyhood was opposed on principle to riding horses. The only trouble is that they sometimes succeed in deceiving people into believing that they are promulgating truth.
The reason that there are not more strong leaders among the independents is explained by the fact that as soon as a man begins to show qualities of leadership in the sophomore class or in the junior class, he is immediately picked up by a fraternity. The strongest independent leader in our present sophomore class is not likely long to lack opportunity to join a fraternity. A half- dozen organizations have been inquiring about him within the last month, and before college closes he will be wearing some fraternity button unless he elects to live an independent life throughout his college course.
The main difference between those who join and those who do not is a temperamental one. I have no sympathy with those who preach that it is
204
The Man Who Does Not Join
wholly a matter of money or pull. These things sometimes help, but there are in every organiza¬ tion with which I am familiar, men who have neither. It is largely a desire for comradeship, for association with his fellows, and adaptation to such a relationship that causes one man to join and another one to be left out. It is very often a genius for leadership ; and if a man has this, if he fails with one sort of organization, he gets into another or makes one of his own.
The independent who pushes his way to the front and who attains leadership by his own efforts is more often than otherwise the strongest man in college, because he has fought and conquered against the greatest odds. There is more honor and training in winning alone but far less chance. The man who doesn’t join usually does not care to do so, or is unsuited to fit into an organization life. It is the occasional exception, only, who overrides the handicap and proves himself the strongest man in college.
205
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
THE TRANSFER
One of the most difficult problems for frater¬ nities to solve, in large institutions at least, is how best to offset or utilize, as the case may be, the influence of the numerous transfers from other chapters which make up so large a percentage of undergraduate life. Whether they are formally affiliated and become active members of the chap¬ ter or not does not solve the problem entirely, for their mere presence in the college, so far as the college public is concerned, constitutes an affiliation and makes the local chapter responsible for their conduct and for their influence. I have sat at fraternity conferences and heard uttered the commonplaces and platitudes about “once a Phi Kap always a Phi Kap,” just as I have been taught since my childhood the Presbyterian doctrine of the election of the saints — once in grace, always in grace — but there is in this case as in many oth¬ ers a vast difference between theory and practice. The doctrine that when a man is taken into a fra¬ ternity he is entitled to its privileges wherever he goes and with whatever chapter he may come into contact, sounds all right, and is quite easily de¬ fensible until one comes up against concrete ex¬ amples, and then the theory goes to pieces.
206
The Transfer
I have seen a chapter disrupted by transfers ; I have seen its whole policy and character disor¬ ganized. I have seen it deteriorate into little more than a mere boarding house. I can at present think of but few cases in which the affiliate really proved a benefit to the chapter, got into its spirit, and became a strong unifier and leader. We have this year at the University of Illinois such an in¬ stance, but they are so rare as to attract unusual attention. This fact does not seem to me strange. The transfer, coming from a different chapter has learned its methods, its customs, its traditions, its spirit, and he can not lay these aside at once. In point of fact he seldom desires to do so ; he wishes rather to transplant them into other soil. He comes from another college, also, and he finds it as difficult to relinquish its customs as he does those of his chapter.
There is a pretty general opinion prevailing among undergraduates that all the members of one fraternity, their own, perhaps, are in large degree alike — alike in ideals, in temperament, in personal appearance even. Only a few days ago I was speaking to a young sophomore in my office, and I happened in the course of the conversation to refer to his chapter. “How did you know what fraternity I belonged to?” he asked with much interest. “Oh, I usually know,” I said, “I can’t
207
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
always tell how.” “Do you know,” he continued, “I believe I could tell a member of my fraternity anywhere I should meet him in this country. It seems to me that we look alike, that we are differ: ent from other fraternity men.” I did not think it worth while to disagree with him, but, although I think I have met as many and as great a variety of fraternity men as anyone of my age, I am sure I should not be able to tell a Deke from a Lambda Chi Alpha, and after I have been to a fraternity congress I know that there is as much difference between an Alpha Tau from Michigan and one from Georgia as there is between friends any where. It is this great variety in ideals and tastes and training that makes the problem of the trans¬ fer so difficult a one to solve satisfactorily, and the wuder the range of territory from which the trans¬ fers come, and the greater the difference in the character and traditions of the institutions con¬ cerned, the more difficult it is to harmonize and unify the fraternity interests.
The character of the men who are likely to transfer from one college to another is often not such as to cause them to be helpful additions to a chapter roll. A good many of the fraternity men who come to us from other institutions come because they have been urged to do so or invited to do so by the faculties of the institutions where
208
The Transfer
they have previously been registered. Their work or their conduct it is frequently thought would be improved by a change. Even when the man comes of his own desire and planning, he is not infre¬ quently uncertain of himself, vacillating, not satis¬ fied with his course or his surroundings, anxious to do something new or something different from what was offered in the college in which he had previously been registered. Such a malcontent is not likely to fit in harmoniously with the men of the new chapter, and not likely to be a help if he is affiliated. Of course there are men who change colleges as they change their minds, thoughtfully and carefully, because they feel that the change will help them better to accomplish the very defi¬ nite purpose which they wish to accomplish. These men are likely to fit in when they come to a new chapter and likely to show interest and initia¬ tive ; their number, however, is small as compared with the total number of those who transfer.
“But the whole purpose of the fraternity is changed and frustrated,” a junior said to me today, “if a man loses his influence and his stand¬ ing in a fraternity by going from one chapter to another. In my fraternity the doors are always open, and any brother who wishes may enter and receive a warm welcome.” This doctrine is all very well both as to sound and sense, if the fraternity
209
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
has few chapters and if these are located in small colleges. When the family increases and expan¬ sion is the watchword, and when the chapter is located in a big university, then most organiza¬ tions find themsfclves forced to adhere to a different doctrine. The affiliation of a man from one chan-
x
ter with the fellows of another is to me a good deal like a second marriage. I have seen many success¬ ful ones, a few really happy ones, but the tender sentimental feeling of youth is usually lacking. It is too often a practical, unemotional, business arrangement. A man usually has but one real col¬ lege experience. After that, no matter where he goes or how many other chapters he n ay have affiliation with, when he drops into reminiscence it is always, “Our chapter at Albion,” or “We had a pretty good system at De Pauw.” He can never forget his first love.
The fraternity with few chapters is not likely to find great difficulty with its transfers, because there are few undergraduates to transfer. The total number of active men at any one time is small, and the likelihood of any considerable num¬ ber of them leaving their own chapter and going to another one is extremely slight. . It is perhaps for this reason that such fraternities have in most cases adopted the practice of affiliating all broth¬ ers who come to them and do not seem to be able
210
The Transfer
to understand why another fraternity should do differently. I had a warm discussion only a few days ago with a man who felt that when a brother came from another chapter there was only one thing to do, and that was to rush out to meet him, fix him a place at the table, send his suitcase up¬ stairs, and to take him in with open arms. This method is quite safe with his fraternity, for since its installation several 3Tears ago it has had but one affiliate, and though he did the chapter no good, he was not able unaided to do it much damage. He came and went without many people’s guessing that he was a member.
Such a practice, however, in a large institution might wreck a fraternity like Beta Theta Pi, or Kappa Sigma, or Phi Delta Theta, each of which has a large number of chapters, and so is likely to have a good many transfers. In an institution like Cornell, or Michigan, or Illinois, there are scores of students every year transferring from the smaller colleges or even coming from the larger institutions. Many of these are fraternity men. One of our fraternities last year had thirteen transfers from nearly as many different institu¬ tions. I have heard of one fraternity in a large university which had a year or two ago twice this many. The effect of so many men coming with different ideals and experiences and different
211
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
methods of fraternity management is seldom a good one. Factions are created almost at once, and unity of action is next to an impossibility. It is as nearly impossible for an affiliate to refrain from telling the fellows how much better things were done in his home chapter as it is for a man who has been married twice to keep from referring to the admirable qualities of his first wife, and the effect of such reference on the harmony of the home is not particularly different in either case.
As I have seen for the past fifteen years the effect of affiliation upon our local chapters I am convinced that on the whole it is not a good thing. There are a few instances in my mind which would prove the contrary, but these are overwhelmingly in the minority. I could cite many instances where it would have been far better for the chapter if the transfer could have been kept away from the house excepting upon special occasions when he was in¬ vited. I am sure that in most cases it is far better that the transfer be not invited to eat regularly at the house, though with us it is usually easy for the fraternities to take care of all their transfers in this regard if they wish to do so. There are few places about the fraternity house where the home life is more strongly emphasized than at table dur¬ ing meals, and no better chance to promote harmony or introduce discord than during the half
212
The Transfer
hour when the men gather about the fireplace fol¬ lowing dinner.
My objections to affiliating a transfer and thereby making him an active voting member of the chapter are that so far as his knowledge of the workings of the chapter into which he is going is concerned, he is a freshman who should do freshman duty and keep a freshman’s place. This, however, is exactly what he has no intention of doing. If he comes from an eastern institution to one in the Middle West, for example, even though he may have been dismissed from college for inefficiency or irregularity, he begins at once to show how the chapter should be run, to point out how superior conditions are at Cornell or Dart¬ mouth or Brown and to object to authority and regulation. I can not now recall one such man who was willing to be subordinate, to take dictation, or to admit that the chapter with which he had become affiliated was superior or even equal to the one which he had left. Even if he has had but one half year’s experience in the chapter into which he was initiated, he usually considers that experi¬ ence quite sufficient to enable him to assume direc¬ tion of any new group to which he may join him¬ self. I recall a case which occurred only a few weeks ago where a critical situation arose in one of our local chapters which concerned the pro-
213
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
posed dismissal of one of the active members for moral irregularities. The problem required for its solution experience, judgment, and tact; all the alumni and every active member of the chapter were concerned. The most active man in the con¬ duct of the prosecution was an affiliate who knew little of the chapter, who had been in it only a few weeks, and who was least capable of managing a difficult situation with diplomacy. I could not make him see that the modest thing for him to do was to sit back quietly, to express his opinion when he was asked, and to vote when the time came. He was determined to drive or he would not ride in the machine at all. He was like a new professor who came to us last year from the Empire state, who desired at once to reorganize the University, who objected to all of our regulations, and who condemned everything from our marking system to our thunder storms, because they are managed differently from what is done in New York. He wanted to run things, and he wanted to do it in exactly the way it is done in the community and in the institution of which he was first a member. The affiliate too often feels the same way.
One cannot quickly transplant the customs or the traditions of one institution or organization into another, and when as is the case of chapters having a number of transfers, the attempt is being
214
The Transfer
made at one time to bring the tradition of a half dozen different institutions into one chapter, the thing is impossible. There is nothing truer than that an undergraduate learns the customs of a college quickly and that he accepts these as the customs of all colleges. The freshman is trans¬ formed between September and the Christmas vacation; he goes home a new man — not always intellectually new, so much more the pity, but he has learned the routine of college life — its cus¬ toms, its traditions, its clothes, its limitations. If at the beginning of the next semester or the next year he enters another institution, his nerves receive a shock when he realizes that the fellows in this second institution may never have suspected the things that he has been led to believe are uni¬ versal college customs. He is like a man who has all his life been brought up to feed himself with a fork and who, going to another part of the world, finds that quite refined people do the same thing with their fingers or with chop sticks. We might not object to have such a man as a visitor, but we should hesitate to put him into a position of authority where he would have charge of affairs.
Sometimes the affiliate does not care to assume control, he is satisfied to sit back and criticize — to tell how things are managed in his chapter, to suggest how a real fraternity is run, to be super-
215
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
cilious and superior. Such a man does little harm excepting, perhaps, to become chummy with the malcontents, to help to develop factions. It is this sort that I should not have about the house excepting upon invitation, and I should make the invitations at long intervals.
The most difficult problem, with the college office at least, is with those transfers whose ideals of life are not all that they should be. Outside of the fraternity house they are bad enough, but when they become active members they are im¬ possible. They feel less responsibility to the chap¬ ter with which they have affiliated than they did to their own, and the chapter has over them less power of control. They seem like ill-bred uncon¬ trolled step children who do not wish to obey and who stir up the other children to all forms of disobedience and derelictions. I have never felt able to consider them as entirely divorced from the fraternity, nor yet have I felt like holding the fraternity responsible for their actions while all the time I knew that they were no help to the strong men and were a constant menace and evil influence as regards the weak ones. Whether they are affiliated or not, they visit the chapter, they become intimate with the weaker members, and they often waste a good deal of their own time
216
The Transfer
and the time of anyone who will consort with them.
As I said at the outset, the problem of the transfer is not solved even if the man is not affiliated. If he is a good man, the chapter gets the benefit even if he has not been taken in; if he is a bad one, the fraternity must bear the disgrace without being in more than an advisory position with reference to his conduct. I have in mind now one of our fraternities whose transfers, even though they have not been affiliated, have been of service to the chapter both for the advice and help they have given regarding the conduct of affairs at the house, as well as in themselves rais¬ ing the scholastic average ; I recall an instance in another chapter where the transfer damaged the chapter irreparably by his bad conduct, and even after he was dismissed from college came back at intervals to commit improprieties which reflected immeasurably upon the good name of the chapter. The active men held, of course, that he had not been affiliated, that they were not responsible for his actions, and that they had no control of his habits ; but these statements did not get them any¬ where. The general public knew that he was a fraternity man, and the local chapter received the credit for whatever he did.
In view of all these facts I believe that it
217
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
is ordinarily unwise for a fraternity to have a general regulation requiring a chapter to affiliate a transfer from another institution. I believe that the action taken should be determined by each chapter for itself. It is desirable that every chapter should have knowledge of the men who transfer from other institutions, and that they should be shown some courtesy and some atten¬ tion. Whether they should be taken into the chap¬ ter, whether they should even eat at the chapter house table or visit the house often, should depend entirely upon the character of the men and the desire of the chapter. Usually I have found that the chapter has acted wisest that did not affiliate the men, and that had as little official connection with them as possible. When a chapter finds one man that will help and be of real service it will find a half dozen that will prove worthless or a real incubus. While I have been writing these paragraphs I have had a talk with a man whose fraternity requires that all transfers be affiliated, and I asked him to tell me frankly what the result in his fraternity had been.
“On the whole we have lost more by it than we have gained,” was his reply, and that is the way I have come to feel about it. If a chapter establishes a custom of taking its transfers in, it will be impossible not to do so even when it is
218
The Transfer
quite apparent that such an action will not be for the best; if it decides each case upon its own merits, and takes few or none, it will be in a much safer position. The fraternity which does not affiliate any of its transfers will be most likely to get on agreeably. It will avoid internal dis¬ sensions and factions, it will be more easily able to carry out a uniform policy of chapter manage¬ ment, it will miss the help of an occasional good man, but it will save itself from the annoyance of many a poor one.
If someone suggests that this method is not quite fair to the transfer, I will say in reply that the transfer has little ground for complaint. He has had his day; he chose his college and his col¬ lege home, and if circumstances make it inadvisable or impossible for him to continue where he began, well, he simply is paying the penalty as we all must do in every walk or department of life for the errors we make or the misfortunes we encoun- ter.
219
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
THE MEN WHO DO NOT GRADUATE
Every year at the opening of college the papers are full of the accounts of the large number of freshmen who are flocking to the various colleges and universities. I do not know what percentage of these entrants persists through the four years of their undergraduate course and come up for their degrees, but I suppose that it varies in different parts of the country and in different types of institutions. An investigation made recently by the assistant dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois showed that at this institution approximately forty per cent of those entering the freshman class of that college continued through the course and received their degree at the end of the four years. A few, perhaps, returned later to finish their work or occupied five years in the completion of their courses, but even counting these in, the percentage of matriculants who ultimately graduate would not exceed forty-five per cent. I presume that if statistics were compiled in the other colleges of the University, the result would not be particularly different from that which was shown in the College of Engineering. A good many reasons might be alleged for this large percentage of mortality,
220
The Men Who Do Not Graduate
but very likely one of the strongest is that going to college was never so universally popular as it now is, and a large number of young people, there¬ fore, enter college in the fall who find out before spring that they are not particularly fitted for the work or interested in it. These often do not return.
One of the most serious problems the fraternity has to solve is concerned with the men who do not graduate. There is a very large class of fellows who enter college, goin a fraternity, and then at the end of the first semester, or the first year, or the first two years, give up their college work and go at something else. This class of men causes the fraternity a considerable amount of trouble from the fact that while they are in college they are often unstable, dissatisfied, and irresponsible, and after they leave college they are unlikely to meet their obligations to the fraternity or to show much interest in it. Fraternities are coming to see that when they are rushing men one of the first things to discover about them is whether or not they have serious intentions of remaining in col¬ lege for the entire course. The student who does not, is more likely than not to be a poor asset for the organization.
A fraternity is strong or weak under the present system in accordance with which fraternities are
221
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
managed, as its senior class is strong or weak. I have in mind a number of instances of frater¬ nities at the University which have started in with what was thought to be an excellent fresh¬ man class, and have come to the end of the four years with one or two or occasionally with not a single one of the men who were originally pledged. Such a fraternity is unquestionably weak. With no seniors it has little organization, and it reveals the fact that for some time it has had little, or there would have been someone to save a few of the upperclassmen from the wreck. The organization which by one means or another can carry a large percentage of the men through to the senior year and graduate them, has a strength that is worth much to the organization and to the institution of which it is a part.
It has been a matter of interest to me to make some investigations at the University of Illinois relative to these men who join fraternities and who do not finish their college course. Recently I sent to the local secretary of each of twenty- three national fraternities a questionnaire asking the number of initiates over a period of four years in each fraternity, and also the number of these initiates who finally graduated. Through our class annuals and the registrar’s office I was able to check results which came in reply to these inquiries,
222
The Men Who Do Not Graduate
so that I feel sure that my figures as to percentages of men who do or who do not graduate are reasona¬ bly accurate.
I included in this inquiry also a question rela¬ tive to the reasons which had induced the various men to leave college before graduation time. For sixty-three per cent of these men no reason was alleged, and I am not inclined to put much faith in the accuracy of the replies to the thirty-seven per cent for which reasons were given, although I include these. The men who answered the ques¬ tionnaires were of necessity acquainted with only a very small number of the men concerned, since they were not in college when most of these other men were, and could know but little other than that which comes through hearsay or tradition as to the influences which induced their brothers to withdraw. Neither the records of the fraternity nor of the University ordinarily indicate why a man has withdrawn or failed to return to finish his course, so that at best it must be a matter of con¬ jecture or of memory in drawing any conclusion as to the causes operating. Since I have known practically all these men personally to whom reference was made in the questionnaire, I am inclined to think that only general conclusions can be drawn, and that it is impossible accurately to set down percentages.
223
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
In reply to the question as to why these men had left college before graduation, for four hundred and fourteen, or 63.2 per cent, no reason was given. The reasons alleged for the two hundred and forty-one, or 36.8 per cent, remain¬
ing were as follows :
Reasons Percentage
To enter business . 49.9
Lack of money . 17.4
Failure in studies . 13.3
Indifference to work . 9.1
Dropped from course . 4.9
To get married . 4.0
Trouble at home . 1.3
As I have said before, I am not inclined to put much confidence in these last replies, excepting that the reasons alleged are usually the reasons one or another of which induce men to leave col¬ lege before graduation. “To enter business” is a reason which may mean almost anything, and might with propriety be asserted of any man who following his failure to come back to college had secured a job.
A study of the table of percentages of those who graduated and of those who did not brings out a few interesting facts. The percentage of graduates is about five per cent higher than was shown by the College of Engineering, even grant¬ ing that five per cent of the students of this col¬ lege who did not graduate ultimately cleared up
224
The Men Who Do Not Graduate
their work and received their degrees. The percen¬ tages of graduates varied from 75.3 to 15.2 which is pretty wide, but is partially explained at least on account of the varying conditions in the dif¬ ferent organizations.
The internal organization of those fraternities which had the higher percentage of graduates has also been stronger and the unity of feeling more marked than in those fraternities which occupy the lower half. My conclusions are that the fra¬ ternity that can keep up its scholarship, that can choose men with a serious definite purpose, and that by a well knit organization can hold its men together will always have a high percentage of graduates.
It will be seen that the average percentage in these twenty-three fraternities of initiates who graduate is approximately fifty. If before I had begun my investigation I had been asked whether the percentage of fraternity initiates who graduate is larger or smaller than that of men in general, I should have been inclined to believe that it is smaller. Even though the figures show that with us the percentage is larger, I am quite sure that it is not so large as it should be nor so large as it will be when the fraternities realize the importance of pledging men whose purpose it is to graduate.
I am not sure that the reasons which keep fra-
225
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
ternity men from graduating are different except¬ ing in degree, perhaps, from those which are instrumental in keeping other men from continu¬ ing in college. The percentage of fraternity men placed on probation for poor scholarship or dropped from the University is practically the same as the percentage of other men. I am sorry to admit that a somewhat larger percentage are dropped for other irregularities, but this fact may be accounted for, I believe, because, it is almost always easier to find out what a man in an organiza¬ tion is doing or has done than it is to find out similar facts concerning the isolated individual.
The social life of the men in the fraternity is on the whole considerably more intense than is that of the men outside, especially in a coeduca¬ tional institution like a state university. The young man who associates regularly with girls is likely to fall in love, or at least he is likely to think that he has done so, and a young collegian in this state of mind seldom does much with his studies. The experience steadies and stimulates a few men to better work, but the large majority whom I have known can not attend to their books and to their love affairs at the same time. The fact that these young people do not marry — and there is little likelihood that the college man in love in the early years of his college course will marry
226
The Men Who Do Not Graduate
the girl who has made the impression on him — does not settle the question. The man in love is restless, dissatisfied, unlikely to stick to his work. He usually fails in some subject, becomes dis¬ couraged or dissatisfied, and does not return the next year.
Few men with us fail to graduate because of dissipations or bad habits unless the habit of loaf¬ ing may be included in this list. I cannot now recall a dozen men whom I have known in fifteen years who were kept from graduation by bad habits. Young fellows may be indiscreet, they may do irregular things, but they do these irregular things so irregularly as to have very little damaging effect upon their college work. The week-end party may have its bad effects upon the character, and it no doubt does lay the foundation of objectionable habits later in life, but it has seemed to me seldom to have an immediately damaging effect upon the man’s studies. It is undeniable, however, that the fraternity house is usually a comfortable place to loaf, and it is generally possible for one adept at this recreation to pick up someone at almost any hour of the day or night who will help him at the game. There are too many loafers at our fraternity houses and too little discouraging of loafing. The loafer is not always dropped from college by the authori¬ se
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
ties, in point of fact he is dropped only in a small percentage of cases. He is in many cases like a young friend of mine who had changed his occupa¬ tion rather often during the first five years he was out of college. “What was the matter, Paul?” I asked. “Were you dismissed?” “Never but once,” was his reply, “but every other time I saw it was going to happen, and I beat them to it, and resigned.” A very large percentage of the loafers in college usually see what is coming to them in the future, and rather than reform they decide to quit college before they must.
I think it is fair to say that although there are in every fraternity with which I am acquainted young fellows who come from families of little means and who must themselves be self-supporting, yet on the whole the man in a fraternity has more money behind him than has the average man in col¬ lege. I think it can be shown, also, that a larger percentage of fraternity men than other men expect to go back home when they leave college and go into business with their fathers or with some other member of their family. Though many fraternity men must strike out for them¬ selves when they leave college and build up their own business or profession, there is, however, a good percentage who know that a first-rate job is waiting for them when they leave college. Though
228
The Men Who Do Not Graduate
the fathers of these men usually want their sons to finish a college course and get a degree, yet since not many of them have themselves had a col¬ lege education they do not always feel strongly the importance of their son’s finishing his work.
“My son does not have to have a college degree,” the father of a twenty-year-old sophomore who wanted to quit college and get married, said to me this spring. “He’s had two years of college. That’s more than I ever had; and there’s a good well-stocked farm waiting for him whenever he comes home.” Why should a son like that stay out of agricultural affluence and matrimony in order to finish a college course? It were foolish, indeed. This financial state and general state of mind I am sure is not uncommon among parents, and I am convinced is responsible for the unfinished courses of a good many fraternity men.
A good many men, however, do leave college because of financial matters. It costs more to go to college than most people think it does. There has been an impression extant for a long time that one can live more cheaply in college than at any other place in the world. It is an error. It costs more to live in a college town than in a big city; and it costs a fraternity man more than it does a good many other men, because he lives better than they do. Some fraternity men have more
229
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
money than others, and it is rather hard some¬ times for the man with little money to live con¬ tentedly with the man who has more. Rather than economize, rather than struggle along and finish what he has undertaken, even though it demands sacrifice, a good many men quit and go to work.
Indifference drives other away. I am surprised over and over again at the lack of purpose or real interest in many men who enter college. They come because it is the thing to do, because their friends are coming, because nothing better presents itself after they have graduated from the high school. They have no special interest in books, they do not enjoy study, and they have formed no specially definite plans for their own future. Sometimes these men wake up and find an object in living and a purpose, but if their indifference continues, they usually give up the intellectual business — I can not call it a struggle — and go into something else.
The salvation of the fraternity is in the men who graduate, who have the definiteness of purpose and the willingness to work which will ensure their finishing their college course. Less society, less loafing, a more moderate expenditure of money, and a simpler method of living when this has been extravagant will keep more men in college. A good
230
The Men Who Do Not Graduate
many of the mistakes which fraternities make could be solved at rushing time if the fraternity would take the trouble and the time to find out a little more definitely what the purposes of the new men are. The time of the fraternity is usually wasted if the men do not stay beyond the first or second year. Accidents happen, of course, the unexpected comes to pass, and things occur which make it necessary at one time or another for every man to change his plans, but it is possible, I believe, if the facts are found out at rushing time, and if the organiza¬ tion of the fraternity is properly looked after and the scholarship kept up, to graduate seventy-five per cent of the initiates rather than fifty per cent as at present.
231
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
FRATERNITY EXPANSION
The question of expansion is probably one of the most vital and regularly discussed questions before the general fraternity world today. It has been discussed freely at meetings of the Interfraternity Conference, and the consensus of opinion has been in favor of it. The reasons are quite obvious.
The attendance at colleges is increasing by leaps and bounds. At many institutions the attendance during the last few years has doubled. The effect of this increase has been to reduce the percentage of undergraduates who could belong to fraternities, for the increase in the number of fraternities has not, in any way, kept pace with the increase in the number of students.
Most young men like to belong to a college organization. A good many of them feel, perhaps, as the freshman did to whom I was talking not long ago. “I don’t give a damn to belong,” he said, “but I would like to be asked.” And with the increasing number of students in our colleges the percentage of men who can be asked is growing smaller and smaller.
It is interesting to note that the opposition to fraternities which has sprung up all over the coun¬ try and the talk against fraternities is not led by men who have belonged to fraternities in any case
232
Fraternity Expansion
so far as I know ; but by men who have been outside of the membership, and this is likely to continue to be so. As we increase the number of chapters of fraternities we reduce the strength of the opposi¬ tion to them.
The Interfraternity Conference has recognized all these facts. At a recent meeting it appointed a special committee, whose work should be to en¬ courage expansion in fraternities already or¬ ganized, to investigate institutions where it would be advantageous to have more fraternities, and to encourage the organization of new national frater¬ nities. All this is to be done with the hope that it will result in benefit to fraternities now existing.
Echoes have come to me from the various fra¬ ternity conventions held lately, through the re¬ ports of delegates from chapters at my own institu¬ tion, of the discussion which took place at these meetings concerning expansion. There was much said that was unfavorable. Judging from the re¬ marks which took place in my own convention upon this pertinent topic, I infer that what was said was often both interesting and personal. Many undergraduates oppose expansion, and it is the undergraduate who largely decides fraternity policies. But the undergraduate seldom keeps himself informed upon general fraternity con¬ ditions. His vision is limited; he sees very little
283
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
beyond his own chapter. He usually knows little about his own fraternity chapters, and he knows still less about others. The larger fraternity prob¬ lems he seldom grasps or considers seriously, and his arguments are superficial and not always based on facts.
He calls attention to the rapidity with which the roll of chapters has increased within the last ten years; he enumerates the chapters which have been installed since he awoke to the fact that Greek-letter fraternities existed ; and he begs with all the dramatic art and fervor gained in a college class of public speaking (I taught public speaking once) that we give our serious attention to inter¬ nal development and build up the chapters we now have before we add further to our list. “Strength¬ en those we have,” he says “before adding more.” His inference is that as we add to our list of chap¬ ters we weaken those we already have and that the increase in numbers is likely to result in less effi¬ cient internal organization.
This sounds well and it is in favor with the boys, but it is bunk. Internal organization of fraternities is better now than it ever was before. It is only within recent years that there has been anything worthy of the name of internal organiza¬ tion in fraternity management. Traveling secre¬ taries, district or province managers, the regular
234
Fraternity Expansion
visitation and supervision of chapters, was a thing unheard of or thought of until long after I became a member of a fraternity. It was impossible, in fact, for the fraternity did not have money enough to finance such a project. While the number of chapters in each fraternity was kept small there was little or nothing to hold them together. There was no supervision and no unity. Frater¬ nity organization was of the loosest kind. The effort to build up individual chapters and the binding together of each fraternity into a unified whole has come much faster than has expansion, and our newest chapters are the most influenced by it. It is very difficult to get the oldest chapters in any fraternity to realize that their organization is a national one and that they must conform to national regulations, that they must submit re¬ ports, that they must yield to control and obey regulations ; it has not been the tradition for them to do so. Newly organized chapters do not feel so. It cannot, therefore, be shown that increase in numbers has weakened organization or is likely to weaken it. Quite the opposite effect has resulted. If the fraternity roll has increased in numbers, fraternities generally have developed closer super¬ vision, better organization and control, and a closer unification.
The statement is made that our newest chapters
235
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
are our weakest chapters. From what I know of Alpha Tau Omega and from what I have observed of other fraternities, this is not true. It is more often the oldest chapter which has developed the least business sense, which fits the least easily into the organization, which most often fails to ap¬ preciate the fact that the fraternity is a national organization and not a local club, which knows the least about the fraternity as a whole. My experi¬ ence has been that our new chapters have got to a wonderful degree the spirit of the fraternity. They understand its organization, they appreciate its ideals. I have only to go back to the last two Congresses to which I was a delegate to find abun¬ dant illustration of these facts. What is true of my own fraternity is true of others. The Secretary of Delta Kappa Epsilon admitted to me not long ago that next to his own chapter the strongest chap¬ ter in his fraternity was organized only recently. I have had the same admissions from the officers of other conservative fraternities. They agree with me that their new chapters are not their weak ones, either in the institutions in which they exist or in the fraternity at large.
It is argued also, by those who plead for culture, that when we expand into the West, especially into the agricultural colleges in the West, we leave culture and refinement behind us. We take
236
Fraternity Expansion
into our brotherhood, they argue, “The uncouth, barbaristic, low-browed denizens of the moun¬ tains and manicurists of the corral.” I suppose it was once true that we were justified in thinking that those who came from the farm or from the west might be expected to be crude and unculti¬ vated, with little appreciation of the finer things of life. I myself was born in Illinois and I came from the farm. But it is not so today. The farmer travels, he reads, he has all the accessories of civilization, as he once did not have, and he takes advantage of them. The westerner may not go to Europe so often as the man from the Atlantic coast, but he has traveled more, he has been in more states of our union, and he knows more about the people and the customs of his own country than does the New Englander. The crudest, most bu¬ colic hayseed in college today does not come from the farm, but from New York, and Boston, and St. Louis, and Chicago. It is the city and not the country that breeds crudity and bad manners. If you will study your own college community and your own fraternty, you will agree with me.
I have visited within the past three years a con¬ siderable number of western colleges and I have seen the agricultural students of Washington and Oregon and Iowa and other state on either side of the Rocky Mountains. The student in the Liberal
237
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
Arts colleges has nothing on these men either in good manners or refinement, or knowledge of the world, and these men have in addition a force and a power of initiative which win our respect. They have learned to work and to respect labor. They know why they have come to college and they make the most of their opportunities. Their clothes are well tailored, an important fact in the mind of the fraternity man, their speech is careful, their ideals are as high as any man’s in the oldest chapter in the oldest fraternity in the country. Only yester¬ day I read to one of our students uncertain as to the wisdom of expansion into such institutions as I have referred to, a letter from one of these sup¬ posedly ill-trained and ill-mannered westerners. It was well phrased, well written, refined, in thor¬ oughly good form and good taste and showed a cul¬ tivation and a courtesy not ordinarily met with.
“I don’t know how many men in my chapter could write each a letter or would do so,” the man said when I was through, “but I know one who couldn’t.” And the man who wrote the letter was born on a ranch in a far western state and is a student in his own state university.
The westerner and the agricultural student, these anti-expansionists say, are crude and uncultivated. Perhaps ; but I have always thought the opposite. His life in the open brings the farmer into the
238
Fraternity Expansion
closest relationship with the grandest and the most beautiful things in the world — flowers and birds and growing things ; sunshine and fierce storms, the earth under his feet and the great sky over head. What tends more than these things to refine¬ ment and cultivation?
David, I hope his name is not an unfamiliar one, farmer, sheep, herder, hunter of wild beasts, musi¬ cian and poet, watched the stars at night and the clouds by day and wrote of them as no man before or since has done, but I presume that if David and his friends had applied for a charter of some national fraternity they would have been turned down as not worthy to be known as brothers by the more scholarly and refined city dwellers because of their lack of cultivation. And yet it was David who became King.
There is one way of keeping down the number of chapters, which I believe every fraternity might with profit occasionally employ, and that is the elimination of worthless chapters. Every fra¬ ternity has a number of chapters which have little spirit, little vitality, little appreciation of frater¬ nity progress. They are as loosely organized as a high school club and have no understanding of what it means to belong to a great national or¬ ganization. Their connection with the grand of¬ ficers and with the central office is remote. Their
239
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
■ y . fWa*
main interest lies in their own local problems and pleasures. They are often behind in their taxes, careless in the observance of regulations, and ignorant of general fraternity matters. They should be labored with, they should be given oppor¬ tunity to pull themselves together, they should be shown wherein they are failing, but if they do not change, their charters should be withdrawn.
At the last Congresses of my own fraternity the representatives of our newer chapters have been the most active and aggressive. They have shown themselves capable of taking and holding their places in discussion and in social affairs. They have been the outstanding men of the Con- gess. The Wyoming Chapter put on the clean¬ est, cleverest and most acceptable show we have had at a recent Congress and proved to the grati¬ fication of every clean-minded, sensible delegate that it is possible, even at a fraternity convention, to have a smoker which holds the attention, which is amusing, and which is neither dirty nor vulgar.
The arguments against expansion are not ten¬ able. Fraternities are taking care of the individual chapters better now than they have ever done be¬ fore. Internal development is strengthening and will continue to do so. Fraternities are spending more money for the supervision of the various chapters than they have ever done in the history
240
Fraternity Expansion
of these organizations. The new chapters that are going in everywhere are made up of men of char¬ acter, of purpose and of possibilities. It is not true that there is not cultivation in the agricultural college. Every curriculum in the agricultural col¬ leges of the country gives wide opportunity for elections in science, in language, in literature and in the humanities in general. National fraternity officers recognize more than ever before the neces¬ sity of increasing the number of chapters of every fraternity. Our future is dependent upon it.
I believe strongly in expansion, — conservative, intelligent expansion. I believe in fresh new blood. If any fraternity feels the necessity of controlling or reducing the number of its chapters it should begin with the dead ones. It should either resusci¬ tate them or bury them. As they now are, they are an incubus and a handicap to the best interests of fraternity life.
There was a day when only the elect went to college. In those days the fraternities could afford to be exclusive. Conditions have changed com¬ pletely now, and the group of men who make up the attendance at the average college is the most cosmopolitan in the world. It represents every class of society and almost every nationality ex¬ tant. If the Greek-letter fraternities are to hold their place they must meet the changing conditions
241
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
in college. They must carry the gospel of brother¬ hood and good fellowship to the whole college world. They have no more right to be exclusive then has the Christian church. The undergradu¬ ate members must recognize this fact, as the alumni members and grand officers of most fraternities have done for some time. It is a choice between expansion or a more determined and general op¬ position than we have previously met.
Expansion is often hindered, where the consent of the chapter nearest the petitioning group is required, by jealousy, by rivalry, or by petty pre¬ judices. I could give numerous instances which come to my mind where a chapter in a large institu¬ tion will not give the slightest consideration to a petitioning group in a neighboring smaller college purely from prejudice or from a misconception of the ideals and accomplishments of the smaller col¬ lege. And the same thing is true of the smaller college with reference to the larger institution. Petitioning groups have been held up for years at the University of Illinois, because chapters already established in smaller institutions near by imagined that the character of the students at the larger institution was inferior to the character of those in the smaller one. “I didn’t know how to milk a cow and so I couldn’t get into the state University,” one of these intelligent young city dwellers ex-
242
Fraternity Expansion
plained to his friends. He knew a lot about a state university.
I believe in expansion because I believe in the fraternity. I have lived with it every day for thirty years or more and few men know more fra¬ ternities and fraternity men than I have been privileged to know. I know it has faults as has every organization composed of human beings, and I have not hesitated when occasion gave me oppor¬ tunity to point these out, but I believe that on the whole the fraternity is a good thing for the men who belong to it and for the colleges where chap¬ ters are located. It holds up to young men high ideals. It gives them opportunity for leadership, for taking responsibility, for the development of their characters in the right direction which they are not likely to get otherwise. I know what its enemies have to say about it, but I know, too, that in a very large degree these things are false.
243
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
THE FUTURE OF THE FRATERNITY
There has been a good deal of discussion during the last few years, in college and out of it, by those who are members of fraternities and by those who are not with reference to the stability of the college fraternity and its probable future. A prominent physician said to me not long ago, “I believe it will not be many years until all of these college fraternities, either by the enactment of state laws or by the regulations of college authorities will be debarred from our educational institutions and will have to go out of business.”
If the fraternity is not meeting a real need of the college, if it is not contributing to the better¬ ment of the undergraduate and of the college com¬ munity generally, I believe my friend is correct in his predictions, for the fraternity would then have no legitimate reason for continuing, but I believe that it is meeting such a need and that it does so contribute, and that in the future it will do more than it has done in the past.
The conditions under which students in college lived when the fraternity was organized and the character and training of the young men who entered college then as compared with the charac¬ ter and training of those who now enter were as
244
The Future of the Fraternity
different as it is possible for a changing civiliza¬ tion to make them. The fraternity has perhaps been slow to recognize these facts and to adjust itself to them, but it is waking up to its obliga¬ tions ; it is recognizing its duties, and it is meeting the situation and I believe will continue to meet it.
The last few years have brought considerable opposition to the fraternity in a number of states, and this opposition we have probably not seen the last of. It has arisen for the most part in institu¬ tions like the state universities where the number of students is large, where the student body is cosmopolitan, and where the number of fraternities is not sufficiently developed adequately to take care of and to furnish a home and associates for those undergraduates who might under more favorable conditions reasonably expect to be invited to join such an organization ; or it has come in institutions where the authorities were ultra-conservative or narrow-minded. Because of these facts jealousies have arisen, opposition has developed, and those who under normal conditions, would have had nothing against the fraternity, piqued by the fact that they have been left out of it, have ignored the strong points of such an organization and have engaged in an attack upon its weaknesses.
It is an incontestable fact that the Greek-letter fraternity has had and still has flaws in its manage-
245
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
ment and weaknesses in its organization as every other organization has with which I am acquainted.
^Originally the fraternity was a small club which met at intervals, which was composed of congenial spirits with similiar ideals, and which made as little stir in the college community as is now made by an honorary society or the dramatic clulj; now it is a home which shelters often far too many souls for easy management, it is a social force, a politi¬ cal unit, a group which stands out and which many fellows have a desire to become a part of. When it was organized the class of students going to college was very different from the class that now goes to college with different parentage and dif¬ ferent ideals. The fraternity could be exclusive then without attracting attention to itself ; it can¬ not do so now, and it is coming to recognize this fact. As conditions changed a certain lowering of standards crept in. Scholarship became a less necessary qualification for membership, moral standards were less rigid, social finesse was more generally demanded, the financial standing of a man’s father came to count for more than the fellow’s own personal character and worth; ex¬ travagance and dissipation were not uncommon. With all these conditions criticism was easy and criticism was just.
But this criticism, this opposition to the con-
246
The Future of the Fraternity
tinuance of the fraternity has been the best thing which could have happened to it, for it roused the active members of the organization, and, better still, it stirred the strong alumni who, though they were interested in the organization, had yet al¬ lowed that interest to wane and had drifted some¬ what out of touch with their own respective chap¬ ters. Whatever the Interfraternity Conference may or may not have accomplished, it has at least stimulated the interest of some of the strongest and most forceful fraternity men of the country and has set them to an attempt to solve the problems of their respective fraternities and to help meet the opposition against fraternities in general. The fight against fraternities has caused fraternity men old and young to study the situa¬ tion, to realize the evil practicies which had crept in and to go at the elimination of these as quickly and as forcefully as possible.
Still another thing which this opposition has done has been to cause fraternity men to realize that, no matter what organization they may belong to, whether it was founded in 1824 or 1902, their interests are similar and each needs the help of the other. Less than ten years ago I heard a prominent fraternity man say that he had no special interest in what other fraternities were doing or what their difficulties might be; he was
247
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
quite satisfied with his own and quite contended to give his attention to its problems. No sensible fraternity man feels so today. He realizes that if fraternities rise or fall they will do so together; the interests of one are identical with the interests of another; no organization is so old or so well established, or has such assured standing as to be self-satisfied or immune from danger or from dif¬ ficulty if such may come to the Greek-letter fra¬ ternity in general. We are all in the same boat, each needs the other’s help ; we shall all sink or land safely together. Opposition has had its difficul¬ ties, but it has shown us our weaknesses, it has pointed the way to improvement, it has brought us friends, advocates, and champions, and it has already brought about changes and reforms that would have been undreamed of ten or fifteen years ago. The late war tested the strength of frater¬ nities more than any event within fifty years. It stimulated the indifferent, it threw responsibility upon those who have previously evaded it, and in the end it proved a help to these organizations.
What of the future? I have the greatest faith in the future of the college fraternity. It is founded upon right and noble principles, it has an opportunity to do a great work in the colleges of the country, and I believe it is doing such a work. If it is to realize its greatest possibilities,
248
The Future of the Fraternity
however, it seems to me it must change in certain ways, it must adjust itself to certain new condi¬ tions, it must strengthen certain principles. Its future depends upon these things.
The fraternity is going, more and more, to give attention to scholarship. Colleges were founded and exist for the purpose of training men intel¬ lectually, and the fraternity must show that it is one of the agencies which is helping toward that end. For a long time it was thought to be no disgrace if fraternity men were found far below the average scholastically, it was even by some con¬ sidered almost a matter of self-congratulation if there were no grinds or high grade students in the chapter; but that day is past. It is every¬ where a matter of unpleasant comment, as it should be, if the Greek-letter organizations do not keep the scholarship of their members on a par with the scholarship of other men. But this is not enough. If it cannot be shown in the future that the fra¬ ternity is helping men on toward better scho¬ lastic ideals, that a man’s scholarship not only does not suffer on account of his joining a frater¬ nity, but that on the contrary it is improved, the fraternity will not have taken the step forward that I feel sure that it is going to take. There is not a general gathering of fraternity men any¬ where in the country in these days at which the sub-
249
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
ject of scholarship is not discussed, there is not a fraternity official who visits an active chapter who does not dwell upon the subject of scholarship with feeling, and there is scarcely an active chapter which does not have its committee or its organiza¬ tion whose duty it is to encourage and to develop better scholarship. Such an active campaign can in the future result only in one thing, and that is in bringing the scholarship of fraternity men to a higher and more satisfactory standard — a standard that is above that of the average man.
The fraternity of the future is going to give more definite and practical attention to its moral ideals than it has done in the past. The ideals of the Greek-letter fraternity have always been high, but they have not always been taken seriously by the undergraduate. He has too frequently looked upon them as theoretical rather than practical. They were, he thought, perhaps, good for initia¬ tion night, but not to be followed and exemplified in his everyday life. There is less and less every¬ where the feeling that initiation into a fraternity is with propriety followed by dissipation or an orgy. The initiation service is rather made so serious and so real that the initiate is given an impulse to self-control and an inspiration to a higher life. In evidence of this fact one need only compare the character of the dinner and all that
250
The Future of the Fraternity
goes with it following the initiation of today with what was said and done under similar cir¬ cumstances ten or fifteen years ago. Risque stories, vulgar suggestions, and drinking are almost en¬ tirely a thing of the past at such gatherings, and though there is much still that is humorous and enlivening, as there should be, yet the general effect is serious and inspiring to higher ideals. Practically all fraternities have passed regulations forbidding the bringing of intoxicating liquors into chapter houses, and every year the number of fraternity conventions that legislate against in¬ toxicants at fraternity banquets is growing larger. The fraternity of the future will eliminate intoxi¬ cants of all sorts from its chapter houses and from its gatherings, and the men who insist upon drinking at such places will have little vogue and little influence. As surely as time is advancing the college fraternity is becoming a temperance organization. Its future depends upon it.
The college fraternity of the future will have no uncertain attitude toward the immoralities which tempt and injure young men. It is interesting to see how frankly and how generally the effects of gambling, loafing, and sexual irregularities are now discussed in fraternity literature and how little these sins are condoned. The alumnus who during his undergraduate days has been used to
251
■s
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
considerable liberality with reference to these things is now not infrequently surprised when he returns to his chapter to find that the order of things is changing.
“When we pledged our freshmen this fall,” a fraternity president said to me not long ago, “we gave them the idea that we are trying to be a moral bunch, and we intend to make good on it. If any of our alumni come back and start irregu¬ larities we’re going to ask them to move out,” and that is what is going to be generally done in the future. I have in mind another fraternity ^which last fall at the time for the annual return of the old men handed each man a printed slip as he entered the chapter house warning him that no drinking or gambling would be tolerated in the house. Some of the men were irritated for a while, but their good sense prevailed, and they said that the result aimed at by the active chapter was the only one that could be justified if the fraternity was to live up to its principles and if it was to do its part, as I believe the fraternity of the future is going to do, in the strengthening and the develop¬ ment of character.
“I got a vision of the future,” a senior just returned from a national fraternity convention said to me. “I had previously looked upon my fraternity as local, circumscribed in its influence:
252
The Future of the Fraternity
its principles had touched me only vaguely, super¬ ficially. As I listened to the addresses made, and as I saw the interest and the sacrifice shown by mature business and professional men in the progress and development of the fraternity, I felt that these principles were worth while, that they were vital, and that with such forces behind them the fraternity in the future is bound to outstrip anything that has been accomplished in the past” ; and so I feel.
Fraternity men are coming to have a more democratic viewpoint. The whole trend of frater¬ nity legislation is to emphasize the importance of careful business methods, of the conservative use of money, of sane and sound business principles in the conduct of fraternity affairs. The fraternity man is being taught to look after financial matters, to pay his bills, to keep out of debt, and to avoid extravagance. Systems of accounting, and the regular auditing of chapter accounts are all influ¬ ences to help the fraternity man to appreciate the value of money and to keep his expenditures well within his income.
“I thought the fraternity was a brotherhood,” a father wrote not long ago when his son was being pressed for the payment of a long overdue house account. “It is a surprise to me that you would
2 53
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
embarrass a brother by forcing him to pay a debt before it is convenient.”
“You are right in thinking that the fraternity is a brotherhood,” the officer addressed wrote in reply, “but we are of the opinion that the kindest and most brotherly act which we can perform is to impress upon our members their obligations to pay their debts, to live within their income, and for each to do his part in carrying the financial obligations of the fraternity.”
As time goes on the fraternity is going to impress these lessons of business integrity more and more strongly upon its members, and we shall hear less and less of financial extravagance, of bills unpaid, of debts incurred which cannot be met, for the fraternity man will learn that the fraternity is a business organization as well as a brotherhood, and that brotherly love is best expressed by one’s first meeting his financial obligations.
//The fraternity, as I said, is coming into a broader democracy, (it is bound in the future to take men for what they themselves are, quite as much as fctr what their fathers have been) A fra¬ ternity officer came to the University of Illinois not long ago to look over a group of young fellows who were petitioning for a chapter of his frater¬ nity. (They were strong, healthy, wideawake fel¬ lows with good manners and good morals and
254
The Future of the Fraternity
excellent scholastic standing. They were well thought of in the community, and they were inter¬ ested in all sorts of college activities. } There was a mixture of foreign names in the list of member¬ ship. The ancestors of some of them had come from Sweden and Holland, and Germany and Southeastern Europe. Some of the men were working in the various positions that are open to students who find it necessary to help in their own support.
“In what sorts of business are the fathers of these men?” the officer asked me when he came from visiting the club. I told him, and they were all respectable businesses as we democratic Americans count respectability.
“My fraternity will never grant a charter to men of that type,” he said. “They are not gentle¬ men, and my fraternity is an organization of gentlemen.” y If this man’s statement expresses the feeling of many fraternity men today, then the fraternity of the future will have to modify its ideas with regard to what the characteristics of a real gentleman are.
There are two young freshmen in my own insti¬ tution with whom I have become pretty familiar this year who, as fraternity men now look at life and define “good material,” have little chance to get into any such organization. They are both
2 55
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
well mannered, well dressed, and excellently pre¬ pared for college. They have good minds and are doing excellent work. They have self-possession and reserve, and would not show embarrassment or self-consciousness in any ordinary social situa¬ tion. They are interested in athletics, and each will make an athletic team before he is in college long. But they come from the common people, too common, the fraternity man might say, for one is the son of a mechanic and the other is the son of a janitor and neither is ashamed of his parentage.
“But you couldn’t take a man like that into your home,” a man said to me not long ago.
“Why not?” I asked him. “You do introduce into your home regularly men with cruder manners and with far lower intellectual and moral ideals. Why?”
Such men as I have referred to are as sus¬ ceptible to the influences of a fraternity as is any man. They would make as good friends, they would develop into as good fellows, and they would exercise a stronger influence in building up and strengthening the fraternity than many men who are now eagerly sought for. The fra¬ ternity of the future is going to take account of these men; it is going to accept them for what
256
The Future of the Fraternity
they are, for what they are doing, and for what they are able to do.
In the future the fraternity will need to do something more than merely to look after itself. It will not be enough that it bring up its own scholarship and look after the social welfare and the characters of its own members, or even that it cooperate with similar organizations in the gen¬ eral uplift of fraternity men. It must go farther than this. In the larger institutions of learning like the state universities even if chapters of all the Greek-letter fraternities now in existence were to he found, the number would still be far and awav inadequate to furnish opportunity for member¬ ship to more than a small percentage of the under¬ graduates registered. In my own institution there are already established forty-eight Greek- letter fraternities, which even with unwisely swollen chapter rolls could not take in more than one-fourth of the men enrolled. In such an institu¬ tion the future safety of the fraternity is in the first place dependent very largely upon so increas¬ ing the number of local clubs and fraternities that as large a percentage as possible of those men who would enjoy membership in such an organiza¬ tion may have a chance to do so. I believe, there¬ fore, that in the future for its own protection, if for no other reason, fraternities will take more
257
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
kindly to expansion than many of them have previously done, but even expansion will not solve the difficulty.
The fraternity in the future must become to far greater extent than it has in the past a real and a vital influence for good to the entire college. It must be possible where fraternities exist, even for the man who does not belong, to realize that through the presence of fraternities and frater¬ nity men he derives some tangible and recognizable good. It is a new America in which we are living. It is an America made up of the contributions from all the various states of Europe. The list of names of students which one may see in the col¬ lege catalogue of today is suggestive of almost every country and nationality on the globe. Only a few days ago I acted as judge of an intercol¬ legiate debate between the students of two of the great Middle West institutions. The names of the contestants represented five nationalities — Swedish, French, German, Dutch, and English, and the foreigners were the distinctly superior men both as to their thinking and as to their delivery. It is this sort of citizen that the frater¬ nity will have to reckon with, and if it will not take him into its ranks, it will have to do some thing to make college life more enjoyable and more profitable for him. The general public will ask,
258
The Future of the Fraternity
“What has the fraternity done for the college and for college students in general?” and the organization will have to answer. It cannot afford to be selfish, it cannot afford to be self-centered, it must prove its worth by doing something for the “other man,” it must be possible to show not only that the fraternity is a good thing for the men who are in it, but that it is a vital and a con¬ structive force for the betterment of those who are out of it.
Even in the making of his friends the fraternity man of the future will not confine himself as narrowly as he has previously done to the men of his own chapter. He will go outside of these. Any man who belongs to a fraternity ought to count it a privilege to have men outside of the fraternity house as his friends. He ought to show to them what friendship to a fraternity man means; he ought to invite them to his home and let them see what real home life in college is like ; as the fraternity has in so large a measure con¬ tributed to his happiness and development he should utilize it so far as possible to contribute to theirs.
I believe that the fraternity in the future will recognize its duties and its obligations. If it does it will merit the general support of college authori¬ ties, it will win the loyalty and friendship of the
259
4
The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
men outside of the fraternities, it will do a thing which will bring credit to the organization and which will disarm criticism. I believe that it will see its opportunity, that it will adjust itself to changing conditions in college, and that it will become an increasingly powerful force in under¬ graduate affairs.
260
N v/ \ *
S' _ .
*
■ '
;':l " 1 i • - ■
*
■Sk ’
.
■ , . .
*
s'
/
■
■
M-.v'-' V ■:
kV'V*: '
I
I
I
* -
•*
'
/
/
(
tufts university libraries
3 9090 002 401 251
V
I
i •*