The Fraternity and the College (collection)/Fraternity Home Life
When I was in college, there used to be living near the campus a half dozen or more kindly souls to whom fate had shown little consideration and who, thrown on their own resources, had chosen to earn their living by keeping a boarding house. Theirs was not the sort of sordid mercenary business which is now generally carried on by those who provide meals for students. It was on the whole a kindly, motherly service which they performed, not half of which we were ever able to pay—for. They took us into their houses and tried to give us a home as well as to see that we were fed. Often when we were living with them we would find that the gaping holes in our hose which our careless feet had torn would be neatly mended; lost buttons would find their way back again, and some evening when we came back to our room tired and hungry from a long tramp we would discover a plate of gingerbread or a bowl of Winesaps waiting. It was almost like living at home with mother.
They did not lose sight of our moral welfare either. There was no indifference to our derelictions, and no overlooking of of our shortcomings; we were guarded and called to account as if we had been their own children. It is: only a few days ago that one of my old classmates was recounting to me an escapade of his undergraduate days which illustrates well the point I have in mind. He was something of a joker, and thought it would be great sport to make his landlady think that he had been drinking. He came stumbling up the stairs one evening before she had gone to bed, simulating all the antics of one intoxicated. An empty whisky bottle found in his room next morning confirmed all her suspicions, and she called young Brown into the parlor that evening for a private talk. It was no berating, however, which she gave him, but a gentle, appealing, motherly talk which so touched him that he never forgot it. He was so taken aback by her kindly interest in him that he did not have the courage to let her know that it was all a practical joke he had been playing; but if he had ever had any thought of doing irregular things, he said, they were by her influence banished from his mind forever.
But these days and these kindly souls are going from our rapidly growing colleges. The relations which exist between the student and his lodging keeper are more strictly business-like than they used to be. There is not often much sentiment wasted by either upon the other. I asked a recent graduate the other day where he lived when he was in college, and he answered that he did not remember. If the young man who goes to college now desires anything that even simulates home life he must make it for himself. No institution has done more in recent years to throw around young fellows just entering college some of the atmosphere and the influences of home than has the fraternity. In fact the chief justification of fraternities in my mind is not that they make for higher scholarship, or greater social prestige, or stronger political influence, but that they aim to furnish for their members a lodging place and associations that are something more than those of a mere boarding house but which have many of the restrictions, and safeguards, and influences of home.
Mr. Norton T. Horr, in a recent address before the eightieth convention of Delta Upsilon, expresses something of this idea when he says: "The college fraternity, aside from its social features, is designed to provide by organization such restraints upon individual conduct as will directly add to the good order, harmony, discipline, and general welfare of the school, but which would otherwise be lacking. The choice of associates for the years of college life may well be the most momentous event of the young man's career. His fraternity is to provide him with playmates, frequently with a home, and his associates, particularly the upperclassmen, become the only active supervisors of his fidelity to the serious business of school. Mutual obligations are thereby created which have a deep and lasting influence upon character, if properly exercised. Not only is the novice bound to give to his new association the best that is in him, but the fraternity chapter is bound to reciprocate, or it fails in its organic purpose. If this be all true, as we believe it to be, colleges should encourage the establishment of more chapters, and more fraternities, to the end that all the students of companionable instincts and decent behavior may find the intimacy and the benefits of close association."
The problem which is before the young fellows who are at the head of a fraternity, and who undertake to establish and to maintain in the chapter house the conditions which surround healthy home life is not an easy one. The undergraduates in a fraternity house are usually inexperienced, they do not differ widely as to their ages, and their time is largely taken up with other things; they are young and do not always take life seriously, and so the responsibilities of managing the house either weigh on them heavily, or they are likely to neglect them. If they succeed it will be because they are closely united in sympathy and because each man does his part to bring about the desired result. Such a home life for them would be impossible if wrangling and jealousies and factions develop. It must be wrought out through diplomacy and personal interest; by example rather than by autocratic rule. Just as it is impossible to have an agreeable home life without unity of feeling, so it is not to be expected that there will be comradeship in the life of the fraternity unless the men can pull together.
Indifference on the part of individual members is most disorganizing. It is usually better to court open opposition than to endure indifference; for an open opponent can be met and his arguments refuted, but there is little possibility of doing anything with the indifferent member. "I don't care what the fellows do," a fraternity officer said to me not long ago, "just so they don't bother me." It was a selfish attitude and one which is subversive of all good government and all satisfactory home life. Everyone must care, and everyone must work for the best interest of the house. If one man is to do all the work, it will be badly done.
Any successful home life, and to this rule the fraternity is no exception, is founded upon concessions; some one must always be giving up. It is an unselfish life in which one member must be constantly willing to yield his own preferences and desires in deference to the wishes of the other members. It is a life in which even cherished habits are to be broken and chronic practices changed. It is sometimes a pretty hard experience for an only child who has so far yielded to no one and has been used to having every member of the household, from father to the family dog, come when he called; but it is a helpful experience, and it is well if one has it early. I recall a young fellow last year, the only child of a prominent physician, who was pledged to a fraternity—but gave back his pledge button because he could not have his own way in all things. He had from his childhood, if not from infancy, run the household at home, and he was unhappy when he could not do the same thing in college. Later in the year he was pledged to another fraternity, but even yet he was too set in his ways and too selfish to adjust himself to the life, and he got out of it this time by going home and entering another institution. When he gets a home of his own he will very likely browbeat his wife and abuse his children. He has little idea of the sacrifices demanded in a real home. The fraternity home life is a life of adjusting oneself to all sorts of things which are trifling, perhaps, but which may not at the outset seem pleasant. One must learn to eat what he does not like and when he does not like it; he must go to bed and get up and go out to suit the convenience of others; he must sometimes study when he would like to play, and polish the floor or mow the lawn when he would like to be strolling on the back campus, and he must do so willingly and cheerfully if he contributes his share to the real home life. If at home, as is usually the case, it is mother who is responsible for the details which make an actual home, it is because she makes sacrifices easily, does not think always if ever of her own comfort, is pleased when the others are happy and comfortable.
There can be no real home without a recognized head, as there can be no effective organization without some one whose business it is to manage it, and who attends to this business. We hear a good deal these days in opposition to autocracy in institutions and organization and families, but I have never seen an institution or an organization or a family that was worthy of the name that did not have some one at its head with power to direct it, and with judgment and energy to use that power when necessary. It was that sort of family in which I was brought up, and I have never known a happier or a more harmonious one: and it is that sort of institution in which I have been educated and in which I have worked, and I have no objection to make as to its management; when I want to get something done, I know where to go, just as I knew in my boyhood that when father came to a conclusion the matter was settled. It would be a dangerous situation in any business if everyone connected with it had a right to come and go as he pleased, or to formulate his plans of action in accordance with his own personal wishes. Some one must be in control. The fraternity home must be run in the same way, but the man who is at its head must be broad-minded and sympathetic and strong willed. He must be the head in fact as well as in name. I could give innumerable illustrations of men elected to the head of fraternities because they were popular, because they were good athletes, because they had been the longest in the chapter, because they were good fellows, but without the slightest fitness to be in control of the house. Sometimes the only reason seems to be that the man is "entitled to it," but we shall not get far until we decide that no man is entitled to a position until he can fill it satisfactory. A large percentage of the failures in fraternity management and so in fraternity life come from the fact that there is a weak or inefficient or undiplomatic man at the head of the chapter.
The influence of the size of the chapter upon the possibility of realizing the ideal home life in the chapter house has been variously estimated. There are those fraternity officers who think a chapter roll of twenty is as large as it is ever desirable to allow; others argue for a larger number. With us at the University of Illinois the chapters of those organizations which live in their own houses have sometimes run nearly or quite to forty, the only defensible excuse being that the larger the chapter the lower it was possible to keep living expenses, and that in a community where a majority of the students come from families of moderate means, it is not wise that expenses should be made prohibitive. It is doubtful whether or not it is ever expedient to make a house so large as to require an active chapter of forty in order that the house expenses may be met and yet kept within moderation. The better solution would be to build smaller and less expensive houses. One rather significant fact has been brought out by our investigations of scholarship records at the University of Illinois, however, and that is that scholarship has been affected very little by the size of the chapter, those chapters which have the highest enrollment having ordinarily quite as high scholastic standing as do the smaller chapters. It seems to me quite evident, however, that the possibilities for harmony, and unity, and general good-fellowship are lessened as the chapter roll grows beyond a certain point, and that the difficulties of management may so increase as to be more than one man ought reasonably to be expected to undertake. My experience leads me to the conclusion that it would be better to have more organizations with a smaller enrollment in each than to allow the members to run as high as they have sometimes done with us. One man with whom I spoke not long ago whose chapter has been unusually large this past year, said that the chapter house had seemed more to him like the headquarters of a convention than a home.
I have never been able to develop any great liking for the young fellow who was disloyal to his father—who evaded duties placed upon him or disregarded regulations which had been mutually agreed upon. I have always felt that a certain respect was due the head of the house which every child should recognize and give willingly. I have in mind a home where the father is a successful indulgent man proud of his sons. He is liberal with money and almost foolishly proud of any of the successes or accomplishments of his boys and girls. The children, however, seldom show him any consideration or respect. If they help in any way about the home or in his business it is a concession on their part they think, and they must be paid liberally; his opinions are ridiculed, his suggestions are ignored; his plans they never help to carry out, and they seldom regard any of his wishes. Their chief desire is to get from him money and privileges and to shirk personal responsibility. It is not a happy home, and there is in it very little that suggests real home life. When added to this disrespect of the younger members of the family there is the lack of coöperation of the older members, the family degenerates into merely a poor boarding house. These things are equally true of the fraternity. Unless there is a real respect by the members for the head of the house and coeperation with his plans and ideals the fraternity home life will go pretty well to destruction. Within the last year I have seen many illustrations of this in our own fraternities. The various factions which develop under these circumstances have their effect upon everyone in the organization. "We have been able to do little with our freshmen this year," an upperclassman said to me at commencement time. "They are disorganized, disrespectful, and unmanageable." I could easily see the reason. They were like a family of children when father and mother are constantly quarrelling. There had been no harmony among the upperclassmen, no respect for the president, no real support of authority, and it was no wonder that the younger members were rebellious. When the upperclassmen develop jealousy and dissension, the freshmen are usually not strong for the spirit of unity.
There must be rules in a well ordered household which every member is under obligation to respect and to observe. These regulations may not necessarily be printed, but they should at least be definitely understood. There have never been any printed regulations in my own household, but I have no doubt but that it might be helpful to the happy conduct of affairs if I could see somewhere a gentle reminder to use the door mat before entering, or to turn off the light when leaving my bedroom or the basement, or to have my laundry ready every Monday morning when the wagon comes. There are a score of practices upon which there should be agreement and uniform proceedure. In the fraternity home life where the members of the family are so numerous, and the head of the family is so frequently changed, it is much safer if the regulations are down in black and white. I presume that most fraternities have some where on the secretary's books a set of definitely devised and specifically phrased house rules just as every benedict has had at some time a marriage certificate, but where these documents are, both the fraternity president and the married man are often in blissful ignorance. Just last fall the president of a prominent fraternity said to me, "Do you have a copy of our house rules? One of our old men said you were given a copy a few years ago, and I don't believe we've ever had them around the house since." I fished them out for him, but they are probably lost again before this time. Unless the rules are definite, and regularly reiterated, and unless they are constantly and seriously enforced they will count for little.
Too many fraternity men are of the opinion that house rules are for underclassmen only, and that if an upperclassman should occasionally ignore a rule of the house he is simply availing himself of a privilege to which his age and his position entitle him. In point of fact youth and thoughtlessness have always been considered the best reasons for leniency in the enforcement of rules, and on this ground the freshman and not the upperclassman should be excused for delinquencies if any one is to claim immunity. There is a common feeling also that at vacation times and during the summer when only a few men are living in the house there should be a more liberal interpretation if not enforcement of rules. I have had really mature fellows whose judgment ordinarily one could depend upon argue, apparently in good faith, that most indiscreet if not immoral things might be done with impunity in a fraternity house just so they were not done during regular term time. Such men are ignoring principle; they fail to see that it is the worst thing done in a house, and not the best, no matter at what time during the year it occurs, that gives it its character. Since I began the writing of this paragraph a fraternity officer has been to see me with regard to certain conduct in his house. All the men living there are mature fellows. "It is pretty hard," he said, in an attempt at the justification of certain irregularities which had been going on, "for mature men to submit to restrictions of any kind." And yet the mature man ought to be the first one to see the necessity of regulations and the obligation he is under to be governed by them; but as I have said in another article, it is often the older men, and not infrequently the alumni who most willingly yield to a violation of house rules, and who justify themselves because, as they say, they are old enough to know what they are doing.
House rules should be sensible. They should be such as it is possible to keep, and excepting as regards study hours, perhaps, they should usually be applicable to all members of the organization. It should be the purpose of such rules to preserve the quiet and order of the house, for every fraternity home should be a place where men can live comfortably and where undisturbed they can do the serious work of college quietly. Such rules also should look out for the general welfare; it should not be possible for one man to annoy or disturb all the rest, or to do anything which will upset the regular routine of the house. They should enforce a certain respect for the good name and reputation of the house and should prohibit the doing of anything in the house at any time which would bring discredit upon it or upon its members. All these things should be matters of principle rather than matters of expediency or of diplomacy. I have no sympathy with the man who says that it is of course better not to violate house rules, but if one does do it he ought to do it so skilfully as not to be found out. A fraternity man ought not to countenance the doing of anything in his chapter house that is out of keeping with the dignity of any home or that he would not approve of in the other home of which his mother and sister are members. Gambling, drinking, vulgar and profane talk, and immoral women have no place in a real home of any sort, and so should not be allowed to contaminate a fraternity home. If young fellows could be made to feel something of the sacredness of home and to apply this to their fraternity homes we should be able to banish easily from our fraternities some of the things which are now kept out only by exercising the greatest vigilance, if they are sometimes kept out at all.
It has been interesting to me to see how this idea of reverence for the home has been developed in many of our fraternity men by their going into their own houses. I presume it is less easy for the ordinary adult to look upon a rented house or a house in which he is living temporarily in anything like the same light as that in which he regards the dwelling which he has helped to plan, which he has himself built and furnished, and in which he has the pride of ownership. Be that as it may, the fraternities with us who now own their houses have with a few exceptions tightened up on their house rules and have become much more rigid in their enforcement than was the case when they were living in quarters which they rented from year to year. "We are not going fo have nearly so much trouble in keeping the fellows straight, now that we are in our own house," is a remark which I frequently hear, and which I think is based upon the facts. This attitude comes largely, I am sure, from the increased feeling that the fraternity house has for them become a real home which they respect and protect.
My general objections to lunch counters and to the other unconventional opportunities which are offered about almost every campus for satisfying hunger are that they tend to develop bad manners. There is no restraint in such surroundings; there are no standards set, and no one to hold the student to them if there were such standards. Even the ordinary boarding house keeper may find it difficult at times to hold her boarders to anything like conventional manners. At home it is different, because violations of good manners may be noticed and the attention of the one guilty of such unconventions called to the fact. We expect mother or father or older sister to act as a sort of overseer of our manners even when we make open objection to what they may have criticized in us. It is their right, and in this regard as in others the fraternity may well emulate the home. Table talk and table dress, and table behavior will usually follow the standards set by the older men. A good old lady I knew in my boyhood used to remark that her boys always behaved themselves better when they were dressed up, and I have frequently noticed that as fraternity men have held themselves to careful dressing and careful talk at table their general manners were improved. The more carelessly dressed a fraternity permits its men to come to the breakfast or the dinner table, the more slovenly and crude will their talk and their general behavior at table be. If there is no other way of stopping various bad practices at table a system of fines for violations of conventions may be imposed.
The fraternity cannot emulate the example of the home better than in the cultivation of friendly social relations with men in other fraternities and with men outside of any fraternity. If the home life of fraternity men is such as it should be they cannot put themselves in a better light before those who are somewhat skeptical about the influences of fraternities than to let this home life be seen. The practice followed by many fraternities of one evening a week inviting a certain number of men in to dinner is a good one especially if all the members enter into the spirit of the practice and do their part at entertaining the guests. My observation of such a custom has been that often much of the pleasure of the occasion is spoiled because many of the fellows leave as soon as dinner is over, others show little or no interest in the invited guests, and the whole responsibility of their entertainment is thrown upon the man who invited them to dinner or at best upon two or three members of the fraternity.
If it is true that you can tell very little about the real character of an individual until you see him in his home, it is equally true that you can tell very little about a fraternity until you see how it entertains its guests. On the whole I have felt that the training in manners in the fraternity house is careful, and that the guest who goes to one of these houses is pretty sure of receiving the most courteous and thoughtful consideration. But even good manners are not always inborn, and there is much to be learned when we are young, both from precept and from example. That not all fraternity men have so learned a few illustrations will at least suggest. I have gone to fraternity houses to dinner only to find that the man who had invited me was dining somewhere else; I have been at other houses where only a small percentage of the members even took the trouble to speak to me. I was the guest of someone else they apparently thought, so why waste their time on me. At first such neglect was something of a shock to me, for I had been taught even as a child that the guest of any member of my family was for the time being my guest, and was entitled to respect and consideration. I have not yet got to the point of feeling that this is not equally true of the guest invited to a fraternity house. Freshmen should be taught to speak to everyone who has been invited to the house or who is in any way the guest of the fraternity.
I have been at any number of fraternity parties within the last few years where few if any of the freshmen even spoke to the invited guests, and very frequently even the upperclassmen ignored them. I remember with distinctness a fraternity party which I attended a few years ago. It was being held in the chapter house and we arrived at the time indicated. The door bell had gone out of business and after vainly trying to announce our arrival from the outside we walked in. No one gave us any attention, but knowing the house well we found the dressing rooms and ultimately joined the other guests. Only two or three of the older members spoke to us, we were allowed to find the supper table ourselves, and during the entire evening we were not molested. We found our way about and entertained ourselves as best we could, and when we had had enough we came home.
Not long ago, being in a college town in another state, and being a grand officer of my fraternity I thought it would be a courteous act to call upon the members of the chapter which was located in that town. Accordingly I did so. I explained who I was to the indifferent young man who came to the door of the house in response to my ring and was permitted to enter. It was Saturday afternoon and the house was full of men, but I was introduced to none of them, nor did any one excepting the man who met me at the door speak to me. I stood in the hallway a while and then, I think, I found a bench and sat. I did my best for a quarter of an hour to be cheerful and to show interest, but my host was helpless and did not know what to do with me. Since no one essayed to come to his rescue or mine, and since I still retained my overcoat and held my hat I found it not difficult to withdraw. These are, of course, extreme examples of the carelessness of fraternity men in recognizing the social obligations of their home life, but I meet similar situations every week. Sometimes the cause is ignorance of what is required, sometimes it is selfishness, but most often it is thoughtlessness. Here again the head of the house should take the responsibility or should see that someone else does, and no member of the household should be in doubt what to do with an expected or an unexpected guest. Every guest who is invited to one's house, whether it be the President of the University or the most insignificant freshman who has come in to see an old high school friend should be treated with courtesy and thoughtfulness, and should at least be spoken to by every member of the organization. Even though the guest does not expect it, the members of the fraternity owe it to themselves to show this much good breeding.
In the relationships which exist between the individual members of the fraternity in the home itself lies the real and potent influence of the fraternity. There can be no actual brotherhood unless there is something more than a mere me chanical union between the men. The running of the house may be pretty completely a business proposition, but in the personal relations between the men there must be something of sentiment, some affection, some warm regard of the one man for the other and vital interest in his progress and welfare or the home life will lack much of being what it should be. "I never realized what these fraternity brothers of mine meant to me," I heard a man say only a few weeks ago, "until I bade good-bye to them when we parted in leaving college; and I did not fully realize what they meant until I came back after an absence of several years and renewed the old acquaintance. There was a unity of feeling which I know I shall never find anywhere else, a comradeship which has bound us as closely together as if we were real brothers. There is nothing else life it in the world." If the fraternity man feels this sentiment he will have little difficulty in adjusting himself to the conditions within a fraternity house, and he will soon develop for his chapter house and the men within it a feeling that is very closely akin to the sentiment which he felt for the home of his childhood and for those who were within it. If he has this feeling he will respect the house and he will guard the good name of each member of the organization as he would defend the reputation of his own brother or sister.
The true fraternity man will hesitate before discussing with an outsider the differences of opinion or the unpleasant relationships which are likely to develop in any chapter. Every fraternity as every family has its skeleton, its blots on the escutcheon, but these should not be paraded before the public. Every year I am surprised and often shocked at the very private matters of fraternity life which become general campus gossip. It is a badly organized family the members of which air its private difficulties in club rooms and at card parties; so it is a badly organized fraternity that cannot keep its own unsavory affairs within its own chapter house walls. I am sometimes asked how it is that I am acquainted with so many of the private affairs of the various fraternities upon the campus, and I always reply that it is because fraternity men talk so much. If the fraternity is to have any home life worth while its members should respect the private matters of home.
The perfect home life anywhere is not attained excepting through adherence to high ideals; it is not possible excepting through sacrifice and unselfishness and constant concessions. The selfish man will never have a happy home, though if every one yields to his wishes he may be satisfied with it. So in the fraternity. Its home life must be based upon ideals; it must be wrought out by unselfishness, by sacrifice, by daily concessions, and if it is so done the fraternity man can look back upon his life in college as a sweet memory where the home companionship and the home influences were as real and as enduring as any which he ever experienced.