The Fraternity and the College (collection)/College Activities
I suppose if we could get at it in any intelligible way we should find that the general opinion is that college activities are bad for a man' studies, and that the young fellow in college who goes out for athletics or who gets on the glee club or the college paper is to that extent injuring his college work. In the same way, perhaps, since I do not myself play golf, I have never been quite able to understand how my physician, who is reasonably prosperous, can find the time to spend the most of an afternoon every few days chasing those silly white balls across a forty acre field. I should naturally expect his business to go to ruin, but it does not. Volumes of newspaper humor have been based upon the fact that the college athlete, especially the football man, is a poor student. We have all laughed blatantly at the worn joke of the college man who could pass nothing successfully but the ball. When a college man, who is in no way connected with college activities, fails very little is made of his delinquency. A personal warning, a note home to father, or the severing of his connection for a brief period, settles his case for the time being; and it is unknown or forgotten by the public. When an athlete or a man in other college activities slips up it is different. His failure is heralded from Dan to Beersheba, and may even be made the subject of an associated press dispatch. We all read, look wise, and say piously that athletics is becoming the curse of our colleges.
Many college instructors honestly believe that students are injured intellectually by engaging in outside activities, and not only advise their students not to go into them, but are really prejudiced against the fellows who do not follow their advice. "Are you still on the Siren board?" I asked a senior last spring. "Yes," was his reply, "but it would not be safe to let the Dean know it. If he found out, I am sure I should flunk his course." I was quite convinced that there was more truth than poetry in what he was saying, for I have known many instructors who found it difficult to "see" the man who was in any way prominent in college activities.
My observation over a period of several years at the University of Illinois of the men engaged in all varieties of college activities does not warrant this general belief, however. With us the average of scholarship of the men engaged in practically every form of college activity is higher than that of the men not engaged. This has been true of the men in football, in baseball, in track, on the college papers, in the literary societies, and in the various lines of undergraduate activity. It should not be forgotten, of course, that the University requires a scholarship qualification of all the men who represent it in any of these activities, but that qualification requires only that a man carry all of his work or at most that he carry it with an average grade of eighty per cent while the general average of men is about eighty-two per cent and the general average of those men engaged in college activities somewhat higher than that.
There are adequate explanations of why men engaged in college activities should maintain a higher scholastic average than other men. Knowing that they can not continue in these activities unless they keep up their work, they put forth sufficient effort to stay well within the line of safety. If they enjoy the college activity, they would rather work than to give it up; just as when I used to make my pupils in the graded schools rewrite their work if it was untidy, I found that they would rather do it neatly the first time than suffer the pain and inconvenience of doing it the second. There are other reasons, no doubt, why men engaged in outside activities are able to maintain a better than average standing. Having their time pretty well taken up they learn to employ it to advantage. They have no opportunity to become loafers; they develop concentration; they know usually how to make the most of a minute. Of them it can be said that the more they do, the more they can do.
It may usually truthfully be said that the men with the very highest scholastic standing in college are seldom found in college activities, though it is possible every year to point to the names of Phi Beta Kappa, and Tau Beta Pi, and Sigma Xi men who are at the same time leaders in college affairs. The reason that there are not more of these is because ordinarily if one would be a superior student or stand among the very highest ten per cent or five per cent of his class he must give himself unreservedly to scholastic matters. Last year, however, at the University of Illinois the valedictorian of the graduating class and some others of the honor men in scholastic lines were all found in outside activities. This was true in football, in track, in debating and in the college publications, We are just about as likely to find honor men in college activities as we are to find flunkers.
There are some dangers, of course. It is the man who is so carried away by outside interests as to neglect or ignore his college work and so to make a disgraceful failure, who brings discredit upon all those who go into college activities. One such conspicuous example will do more to confirm the opponents of college activities in their opinions than a dozen good students can offset. When the editor of the Illio or the President of the Athletic Association or the business manager of the Illini goes to pieces scholastically he not only injures his own interests, but he injures the cause of all students who shall later try for such positions. Those who argue against college activities will forget the scores of men who have done their college work well while carrying on legitimate outside work, and will remember only the two or three who failed to do so.
Some men overestimate the importance of college activities. They do not realize that however worthy such interests may be they must always be secondary to the real work of college. "I would rather be editor of the Illini than get my degree," a junior said to me only a short time ago. "I don't care particularly for my college work," another man confessed. "I really want to make the baseball team, and I am willing to do what work I must to accomplish this." Neither of these men had the right point of view. They were mistaking the real purpose of college activities and missing the main object of college training. A man might as well go into the drygoods business without the thought of earning anything but merely for the purpose of meeting a few attractive girls.
The custom now in most colleges, at least in most colleges of any size, is to award positions in college activities only after a somewhat prolonged competition, the position to go in the end to the man who seems best fitted to fill it. The method seems to me to be a good one, and as regards athletic teams where physical skill is the main feature, I am sure that usually the sooner the student enters into the competition the better it is for him. In such competitions as those which are engaged in by the students who are trying out for positions on the college papers, or who desire to be appointed to the position of manager of any one of the athletic teams, and in any situation where the man's appointment is likely to be influenced by the amount of time he has put in, I have frequently thought that it might be better if the competition were not opened until the beginning of the sophomore year. If a boy begins such a competition in his freshman year, he will find often a very strong temptation to slight his college work in order that he may show up well in the competition, and even though he may carry his work, he will have developed rather loose superficial habits of study from which he may suffer later. A case in point is that of a young fellow prominent in college activities who in his senior year went completely to pieces scholastically. The only explanation of his lapse is that he devoted himself so early and so completely to his outside interests that he never learned to study or to do really first class work. He came to his senior year with the development of a freshman and so could not do satisfactorily the work expected of him.
Another of the dangers which are attendant upon the going into college activities is the temptation which comes to not a few active students to attempt more outside work than it is possible or wise for one man to do. If the captain of the track team essays at the same time to be editor of the Agriculturist or the President of the Young Men's Christian Association assumes the additional obligations of baseball manager, both interests which each man represents will be likely to suffer and the men's grades will start rapidly toward the zero mark. College authorities are coming gradually to see that no matter how beneficial extra curriculum activities may be to the individual, it is the wisest policy to limit the number of activities into which any individual student may go. It will not be long, I believe, until this "point" system will be generally adopted by colleges so that the possibility of a student's injuring his work by too much attention to other things than his studies will be reduced to a minimum. Although as I said at the outset, I am a believer in college activities and am convinced that when entered into sanely they tend to develop good students with better than average grades, I should not want to ignore the dangers which lie in an unwise or a too active participation in outside affairs, and these dangers I have attempted to touch upon in the preceding paragraphs.
Under ordinary circumstances as they exist in college the fraternity man is more likely than other men to get into college activities and to control student affairs. At the University of Illinois about twenty-five per cent of the undergraduate men constitute the membership of the social fraternities, a large per cent of these being members of national Greek-letter societies. Sixty-five per cent of all men in student activities come from these fraternities. This means that there are proportionately more than seven fraternity men in college activities to one man not so connected. So far there has been no feeling that fraternity men are exercising undue control over affairs and no especial likelihood that there will be such feeling. Nor has there been any thought that the men belonging to a fraternity have been given preference unjustly or undeservedly by those who select the students who are to have charge of college affairs. It is simply that the fraternity men work harder for these places and are usually better prepared to fill them than are other men. There is a reason for this.
In the first place the fraternities are attracted more strongly to men who have done something in the high school to bring them into public prominence and to make them known before they come to college. Sometimes it may seem that they are attracted too much by these things. Even in the better fraternities which have an eye out for a man's scholastic standing, other things being equal, the fellow who has made a name for himself in athletics, in debating, on the high school paper, in dramatics, or in any of the various class activities has a better chance of being rushed and finally bid than has the man with no such high school record behind him. Though with us the man who goes through the first semester of his freshman year without being pledged to a fraternity has relatively little chance of making such an organization later, yet there are few men who come to the front in college activities early in their college course who do not have a chance to join one or more organizations even if their ability is not shown until the end of the sophomote year. The case of one of our prominent track men will illustrate the situation. He was an "unknown" when he came to college but developed rapidly during his freshman year. At the end of his first year he was bid by a local organization but refused; during the first semester of his sophomore year he had a chance to join two national organizations but declined, and at the end of his sophomore year accepted the invitation of a third fraternity. His athletic successes kept him before the student public and made his seem a desirable man.
In addition to the fact that men are sought out by fraternities because of their reputation in extra-curriculum activities, most fraternities encourage their men to go out for something, or even compel them to do so. With equal ability only the fraternity man has a greater chance of success than do other men. He has behind him the enthusiasm and the support of an entire group of men; if he needs advice there is someone to give it to him, and if he becomes discouraged and begins to lag in the race there is always the fraternity brother to prod him back into the line and to insist that he stick. I have seen many a capable fellow who was not connected with an organization and who had every chance of winning a competition drop out because he had no one to urge him to keep in, no one to get behind him and push. There was with him fighting alone no possibility of team work. The winning of honors in undergraduate activities is seldom a matter of "pull"—it ought, of course, never to be—it is largely a matter of using one's head and sticking to the game. The fraternity man is made to stick and so most frequently wins out. There is frequently in the case of fraternity men such a pressure brought to bear upon them to keep them in college activities that occasionally I am forced to show men that after all their college work is their first consideration, and if something must be slighted it should be the outside work and not the studies. When a boy comes to the point of thinking that his extra-curriculum activities are of more importance to him than his studies he has adopted the wrong viewpoint.
There is too often in the cases of all college men who go in to these activities a desire to make money, and sometimes a desire to make money at the expense of the activity concerned or to its detriment. The man goes out for the job for what there is in it, not for what he can get out of it exclusive of the money remuneration. I believe that the work done in many college activities entitles the student to remuneration, but I do not know one in which the money is the main thing or should so be considered. The money which a student may earn in any one of the journalistic jobs about college for instance, in my mind is one of the least benefits which may accrue from the holding of such a position. When students in college activities become too grasping for the shekels they have missed the real advantages which should come from these enterprises.
I have been in favor of student activities because I believe that notwithstanding the dangers to which I have referred they are in a vast majority of cases helpful to the student. It can easily be shown that the fraternity men who are engaged in the general activities of college are in only exceptional cases the men who pull down the scholastic average. The real facts are that they help to raise the average; it is the loafer and the fusser who pulls it down. There is one college activity at least which can not be said to be helpful to a man's scholarship, and that is the sentimentally social one. The freshman who takes on a steady girl might almost as well begin looking for a job. He at least has little chance of helping to raise the fraternity average. The fellow who spends his evenings at the sorority houses polishing the furniture, or who early in his college course develops a "case" is almost invariably an unsuccessful student. The "merry, merry ring time," is for him usually not far from the time when he gets out of college either by request or through a waning of interest in his studies.
The successful man in any profession or line of work must have a knowledge of human nature, he must be able to adjust himself to all sorts and conditions of men. His success will depend quite as much often upon his knowledge of men as upon his knowledge of his profession. The young fellow who enters sanely into college activities develops resourcefulness, widens his acquaintance, and cultivates self-reliance. A friend of mine, a successful attorney and a prominent politician, said to me at one time that he got more real training while conducting his campaign at the University of Michigan for the presidency of the athletic association than he did later when he ran in his home district for the state legislature. There is a training, also, in restraint which is beneficial. The man in college activities has less time to waste than other men. If he keeps his work up as he must if he continue in these activities, he therefore has less time to loaf, less time to squander in silly or harmful ways, and so comes out of these activities with more concentration, more self-dependence, and a stronger character.