Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/205

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

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 fraternity man, because the fraternity man has definite backing, a well-organized support. He is materially helped in the accomplishment of any undertaking 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 frequently 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