Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/38

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 independents. 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 possessing 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 anyway, and reveal by so doing a friendly cosmopolitan spirit, which, to a westerner like myself, is very gratifying. At the dignified New England