Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/218

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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 conduct 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