The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (collection)/The Fraternity and the Undergraduate
The history, the organization, and the purpose of a college Greek-letter fraternity are about as vague in the mind of the average native of my state as are his ideals of Greek life and customs in the time of Sophocles, and I do not believe that the natives of my state are in great degree more ignorant than are the citizens of adjacent states. Unfortunately the large majority of those who have written about fraternities, more especially those who have written against them, have had very little first hand information. What they say ought not to be given too much weight in discussing fraternities. Their invectives remind me of an experience of my undergraduate days.
The state university which I attended was, in fact, a pretty orderly, quiet, steady institution whose faculty almost to a man held no unorthodox views, but placed the highest ideals before us and themselves worked in the churches as regularly as taxes. There could not have been a safer place theologically to send a boy. Most of us went to church and the Y. M. C. A. meetings regularly and said our prayers without molestation as we had done at home. Among the religious denominations throughout the state, however, an opinion had become extant that at the State University atheism ran riot. In my junior year there was a gathering at the seat of the university of the state organization of one of the Protestant churches. A few of the more venturesome delegates, led by deviltry and curiosity, wandered over to visit the university. As they stood on the first floor of the main building awed and fearsomelike because of their surroundings, I heard one of them say, "One can simply feel the spirit of infidelity here as he enters the building." And yet up on the third floor an undergraduate prayer meeting was going on at that moment. Their ideas of the awful life students were living at the state university had about as much foundation and were entitled to about as much credence as what men write about fraternities who have not themselves had a reasonable experience as members. A large part of the opposition to fraternities is the result of jealousy and ignorance.
A young fellow was telling me recently that when he came to college it was with the idea that the Greek-letter fraternity was simply a breeding place for loafing, and extravagance, and immorality When he was asked later to join a fraternity he hesitated, but finally he consented. In his senior year his father came to visit him and found him as president of the Young Men's Christian Association living in the Association dormitory. The old man had by this time become acquainted with the fraternity and was considerably attracted by the fellows in it. When he looked over his son's surroundings in the Association building, concerning which there was no reasonable ground for legitimate complaint, he became thoughtful for a time and then said very seriously, "You know, Jack, I believe you'd be better off down at the fraternity house."
There are boys in the secondary schools, also, who look upon the fraternity as an organization in which they can have the greatest moral and social freedom. The fraternity house is a place where they can study when they like, sit with their hats on and their feet on the mantel, and engage in rough house until the plaster falls. They know the college man only as they see him on the stage in his most exaggerated forms. A freshman in one of our fraternity houses was being called to account not long ago for his rough and boisterous conduct when he seemed quite astonished that any one should object to his breaking up the furniture and acting like a savage.
"Why, I thought that was what a fraternity was for," he ventured quite apologetically. His view is not an unique one.
"I don't believe I want my son to be a fraternity man when he gets to college," the father of a high school senior remarked to me recently, when I was calling at his house.
"Why not?" I asked.
"It's an undemocratic life," he said, "and one very different from what he lives at home or from what he will live after he gets out of college. Besides, there are a good many new dangers likely to be encountered."
"Well, is it," I replied, "and are there? What is he doing now?" He was, as I supposed, out with his chums, the regular group of boys with whom he associated and who formed a regular part of his daily life. He was following the same sort of procedure as he would follow if after he got to college he should join a fraternity, excepting that in the organized one. It need not be less normal and it usually is not less so than the life he lived at home in association with his friends and his home folks.
Fathers write me every fall in an endeavor to find out what fraternities are like, what they stand for, how the men live, what influence the organizations are likely to have on their sons should they join. They drop into the office with their freshman sons to discuss the relative merits of various organizations, and the relative advantage of going in or staying out. The amount of parental ignorance that I have a chance to dispel is really remarkable. Boys confused and embarrassed by the strangeness of the new life and the new problems of living see me daily at the opening of each new college year, and I have many a chance to put them right as to college customs, college traditions, and college organizations. I should like in this paper to give college sons and college fathers some intelligent idea of what a Greek-letter fraternity is, and what it does or may do for the boy who goes into it.
I have not yet got quite to the point of advising freshmen to join a fraternity any more than I feel like advising my next door neighbor to buy an electric for his wife or to install a pneumatic cleaner in his house, but I feel sure that there are advantages and benefits likely to accrue to the one who joins, and I am frank in saying to the freshman as he enters college that if I were in his position and were beginning my college course, knowing all that I now know about college fraternities, their weaknesses and their strong points, I think I should want to join one, just as, if one is religious, I think he is foolish not to join a church, and if he is interested in politics, not to ally himself with some political organization. If I had a son in college, I should offer no objection to his joining.
The Greek-letter fraternity in college is of comparatively recent origin. The oldest fraternity cannot look back quite one hundred years, and a good many of these years were pretty dull so far as educational development was concerned. The most of the Greek-letter fraternities are less than sixty years old. The purpose of their founders was usually self-development, the cultivation of ideals, good scholarship, and good-fellowship. Many of these organizations at first were similar in character to our modern literary societies and encouraged and cultivated debating and public speaking and literary composition. The idea of furnishing a home and of developing home life for its members was at first unthought of and unnecessary. The living conditions in the college in which fraternities were first organized were satisfactory. In many instances students lived in dormitories provided by the college, and it was not necessary for the fraternity to furnish the home life for its members. During the last fifty years conditions have been rapidly changing. Colleges everywhere are providing in the regular curriculum the training for which the fraternity originally stood, and the fraternity in a large number of cases must now look after the housing and feeding of its own members, and so provide its own home life—a duty which the college formerly performed.
There is little that is subtle or unusual in the organization of the modern college fraternity. It has a ritual—simple, dignified, and full of high ideals usually, but the ceremony of initiation when carried on seriously as it now is in most fraternities worth consideration is one which tends to inspire the initiate and to make him thoughtful rather than otherwise. It has its secret work—innocent, harmless, and appealing to the imagination of youth for the most part; but if all the secrets which are a part of the initiation ceremonies of such fraternities were published in the daily press, if all the grips and signs and pass words were forgotten, the fraternity would not be materially affected. These details are not a vital influence either for good or for evil. They simply appeal to the youthful imagination; they throw a certain glamour of mystery and romance about the organization, that makes a strong impression upon youthful minds. Anything that is locked or that is hidden by a curtain always arouses curiosity. It is the same sort of innocent appeal that is made to every young person by the so-called secrets of the fraternity.
A good many fathers look upon a fraternity merely as a lodging house and a boarding club, and though it is both of these it is much more; it is a home. The college student, young, inexperienced, and away from home usually for the first time, lives under peculiar conditions. He wants friends, companionship, and the associations of home; he wants sympathy, encouragement, and direction, and it is these which the fraternity can give him. It is the most natural and normal thing that the young man in college should develop his own peculiar organization for the cultivation of such characteristics of the home as are in college possible. The Greek-letter fraternity is such an organization.
The criticisms that are made upon the fraternity by those who are not members of it or who know little or nothing about it, are that it is undemocratic, that it encouarges extravagance and immorality. Men argue that in college, especially in an institution supported by the state, no organization should be allowed to exist which it is impossible for any student to belong to should he so desire. I read a letter not long ago from the father of two boys who had graduated from college protesting against fraternities on the ground that, though he did not want his sons to join and could not have afforded to have them do so even if he had desired it, it was unjustifiable that there should be any organization at a state university which was not open to his sons and to every other student. It seems to me as reasonable to argue that if I belong to the Presbyterian church or to the Republican party, I am under obligations to have the most intimate social relations with every member of each one of these organizations, and if I give a dinner party, I must ask each one of them to my house.
The number of intimate, close, personal friends which any one man can have is limited by his time, by his tastes, and by his temperament. He has a right to choose who these shall be, with whom he shall live, and with whom he shall associate, and the fact that he does not find it convenient or desirable or pleasing to choose me does not argue against me or against his democracy. With the marriage laws as they are no one is likely to be able to marry all the attractive girls he knows, nor can any fellow in college develop an intimate friendship with every one else. There is no lack of democracy in such a situation nor any sane reason for thinking a man exclusive because of these limitations.
The charges of immorality and extravagance have little foundation. The extravagances and dissipations of an organization are much more evident than are those of an individual, and much more talked about. For that reason, they are more readily corrected. If they are not corrected, then the college authorities who permit these things to continue are to blame quite as much as are the organizations which are guilty of them. I should be foolish to argue that there are not immoralities in college fraternities, and I am willing to grant that when these exist among the members of such an organization the evil result may be more far reaching than when such irfegularities are seen in an individual, but these things are not inherent in the fraternity any more than they are in our public schools.
It costs more to live in a fraternity house than in the ordinary boarding-house, because men usually live better, live more comfortably, have more privileges. But priviliges bring obligations in this case as in others, so that the undergraduate who joins a fraternity will find himself restricted by this action. When he chooses a certain group of men for his particular friends, for his college family as it were, he shuts himself off naturally from a similar association with other men or at least with many other men. This does not seem to me more deplorable or regrettable than the fact that when my friend, Tom Brown, married Jane Bailey and thereby acquired Jane's mother as a mother-in-law he made it impossible to hold Mrs. Babb in the same relation, though Mrs. Babb was a delightful lady and from my point of view rather more desirable as a parent-in-law than the person Tom acquired. It is a pity, but one cannot under circumstances existing at present, have every attractive, middle-aged woman as a mother-in-law. Well, there are limitations in college, and the man who thinks there should be none must have rather a thin coating of gray on his brain.
The fellow who goes into a fraternity takes the group for better or for worse, just as when one gets into a family he finds that the fortunes and the reputation of the family are his. I know a lot of fellows who have gone ahead with the idea that when they say "I will" to the minister's questions, it applies only to the girl at their side, but they soon wake up to find that it took in the whole family even to the most remote and most disreputable second cousin. It is just like that in a fraternity; the group you elect is yours, good or bad; and having chosen, you must make the best of it.
There are those who feel that this fraternity relationship should be easily broken just as they might feel that our divorce laws are too stringent. They argue that if a member of a fraternity proves himself undesirable, it ought to be a simple matter to get rid of him. I cannot feel so. It seems to me that the relationship is such a close and binding one that only under the most critical circumstances should it be severed. The home relations in the fraternity should be considered sacred relations.
It is just as well to keep in mind that a fraternity man is held responsible for what every other man in his chapter does and that the character of the chapter is determined by what the worst man in it does. A very good chapter of one of the oldest and most respected fraternities at the University of Illinois is at present about as unpopular and about as thoroughly disliked as any chapter on the campus, and all because a few of its men are always on hand to recount tales of personal deviltry at the popular loafing places, and are eager to be known as "men of the world," whatever that suggestive phrase may mean. The whole chapter has the name of being loafers and rounders, just because three conceited men have taken courses in public speaking and are able to put their stories across.
I have sometimes thought that I should be better satisfied if the method of picking out the brothers in a fraternity were characterized by a little more sanity. The rushing systems of most fraternities with which I am acquainted are on the whole unlikely to give the freshman a true conception of the real character of the fraternity and its members, as I shall show later. In choosing between the local organization and the national fraternity, I have often advised fellows to join the former if the make-up of the latter organization seemed not likely to be congenial or helpful to the best development of character. A man's fraternity life is lived largely while he is in college, and he should go with the group that will give him the best chance to live a healthy, happy, effective, undergraduate life.
"Why should a boy entering college join a fraternity?" I am asked again and again. "What does he get out of it, and what does it do for him?" As the system is now in most of our colleges, only a limited number of entering students can join such an organization, because the number of such organizations is small and the membership of each must be kept within reasonable limits. The president of a large institution said to me not long ago, "When are you going to stop increasing the number of fraternities? Do you think it is a good thing to have more and more fraternities in college?" My answer then was in the affirmative, and as I have since then given the matter more serious thought, I have not felt like changing my mind. I wish that every boy who comes to college might find an organization suited to his particular needs, and might have done to him and for him the service which a well-organized and well-managed fraternity does for its members.
First of all the fraternity gives the undergraduate friends just as he is needing the most. The thing about which parents usually concern themselves when their sons leave home to enter college is that they will be thrown at once upon their own resources. I think this is a good thing, but independence and isolation are not identical nor equally necessary. The fraternity man does not run his own affairs, but he is associated closely with the fellows of his own age and tastes who are doing the same thing. Not long ago a young fellow came into my office, lonesome, homesick, pretty close to friendless. He had come from a country home a thousand miles away from the college, he had entered the second semester, he knew no one, and he had no one with whom he could talk, no one with whom he might spend his leisure time, and no personal means of recreation. A fraternity man saw him talking to me, picked him up, and took him to dinner. A few days later he came into the office wearing a pledge button. He was happy, contented, interested in his studies, interested in the college because he had found friends and a home. The fraternity had furnished for him the center of a new life.
The fraternity throws at once upon the undergraduate certain responsibilities about the house, and I believe in no small measure prepares him for the duties which he will later have to assume or direct when he has a home of his own. The young fellow freed from the tasks incident to keeping up a house often becomes indifferent to these things and almost unconscious that they have to be performed. It is a good thing for a boy to learn early that no house furnace has yet been designed that will long successfully stoke itself, that floors need to be polished occasionally if they are to look respectable, and that dust and dirt and litter of all sorts must have someone's personal attention if they are to be discouraged or materially abated. I have never been strongly an advocate of the system which permits upperclassmen to order freshmen about just for the sake of showing that they can, or of beating them just to keep one's muscles in shape, but I believe the system is a helpful one which requires each underclassman in a fraternity house to take his share of the responsibility in doing the chores about the house and in seeing that the house is kept in order. It is simply another opportunity to impress upon the undergraduate the obligations of good citizenship. A man appreciates better the size of a yard after he has run the lawn mower over it for a few times; he has more civic pride after he has raked the parking into condition and picked up the loose paper about the premises. He has an altogether different idea of life from what the undergraduate has who lives in a mere boarding-house and who can be made to assume none of the responsibilities. When our towns have a "clean up" day in the spring, I am never surprised to see what a large percentage of fraternity men get out and help, for these men have had a thorough local home training in such matters and have learned to take an interest in them and to appreciate their importance.
One of the first things that a young learns when he gets into a fraternity is that if he would be happy, he must know how to get on with people. The boy who at home has run the household, and I the only child who has never had to yield his rights or his playthings to anyone, the sensitive or the selfish fellow, will be taught a good many things before he has been in a fraternity long. While I was writing this paragraph the mail brought me a letter from a worried father begging me to ask the officers of the fraternity of which his only son was a member to be kind to the boy, to humor his idiosyncrasies, and to say nothing to him unkind concerning his personal peculiarities which I, before he had been in college a week, had discovered were not few. It was a foolish letter for a father to write, and a useless one. The fraternity officers would have paid no attention to such advice had I been silly enough to give it to them; their purposes are to educate. One of the main functions of a fraternity is to mould the undergraduate, to correct his faults, to change his peculiarities, and to help him to become normal and to live comfortably and happily with normal people. It is largely a matter of observation and adjustment, of yielding one's own preferences or prejudices for the comfort or good of others. The fraternity is a helpful agency in the development of this sort of unselfishness. If the young boy whose father wrote me stays in college long enough, he will be pretty sure to learn how to stand in with the various members of his fraternity or how to manage them; he will learn by experience that his sensitiveness and his selfishness and his peculiar manners hinder him and handicap him, and if he has sense he will correct all these personal peculiarities in order that he may acomplish his purposes—in order that he may get on with people.
A little fellow I knew once, an only child, had had no restraint at home. He was ill tempered, bad mannered, profane, and generally disagreeable to every member of his family, all of whom humored him, waited on him, and endured him. It was only when he started to school and saw that these traits of character made him unpopular and disliked, ostracised and isolated him, and so made him unhappy, that he corrected his faults and did for himself that which neither his parents nor his friends had previously been able to do. It is some such service as this that the fraternity performs for the undergraduate.
"College has made a wonderful change in Fred Gates," one of his townsmen said to me not long ago. "Every one notices that he is quieter, more thoughtful, less selfish." "It was his fraternity that did it," I replied, and I knew how difficult a task it had been to accomplish.
In a peculiar way, I think, the fraternity teaches the undergraduate to respect the rights of others. If twenty-five or thirty men are to get on happily in a house there must be some regard on the part of everyone for "mine" and "thine." The carelessness or thoughtlessness of one man may annoy or injure all of the others. The man who sleeps late in the morning or comes noisy into the dormitory at night, who plays the piano when other men want to study, will not live long in a fraternity house before he is called by the umpire. In the use of other men's time, or dress shirts, or theme paper, or tobacco, the fraternity man ultimately learns that the fellow who does not respect the rights or preperty of others is not a good member of a fraternity household.
The fraternity teaches the undergraduate a good many things about social conventions which he would be long in learning in the ordinary boarding house. Not every freshman who comes to college, and not every freshman who joins a fraternity has a perfect working knowledge of the conventionalities of life. I have seen the freshman even in a fraternity house reach for a slice of bread with his fork, pass the toothpicks, or fail to "ship his oars," but he did not do it often before some thoughtful brother called his attention to the error. A man may be good fraternity material without having polished manners, but if the fraternity is well organized and well managed, an undergraduate cannot be a member of it long without learning to show more respect for the proper social conventions, without cultivating self-possession and developing poise. I was not long ago with: a friend at dinner at a fraternity house. My friend was a woman of broad experience who had traveled widely all over the world and who had associated with cultivated people everywhere. The young men met her without embarrassment, they talked easily, and their dinner was served in the utmost good taste. She marveled to me at their finesse, and I, who am used to seeing fraternity men do these things so well, have scarcely ceased to marvel myself. They were country boys, many of them, or boys from country towns. Some of them, it is true, had been brought up in the city, but these, in many cases, had had quite as little social experience as the others. There is a certain tradition about it all; it is a kind of ritual handed down from one generation to the next. The freshman learns from the upperclassman and then in turn passes the lesson on to succeeding undergraduates. However it is done, the man who goes into a fraternity of the right sort is sure to learn something of social form, of politeness and courtesy and good manners that will be to him in later life no mean asset.
It has been a criticism upon the fraternity, and it has not been an altogether unjust one, that it has led its members rather more actively into social activities than was good for many of them. If I were arguing on this side of the question, I should not be at a loss to find illustrations to prove my point, but I believe as I go back over my experience that the instances in which the social life and activities of fraternity men were a benefit to them are so far in excess of those in which they were a detriment, that it can safely be held that the social activities into which the modern Greek-letter fraternity introduces its members are, on the whole, an excellent thing. Most of the men who enter our Middle West educational institutions are from very modest homes in many of which the social life is unconventional and in not a few crude. If these men do not get proper social training in college, they are little likely to acquire it after they get out. A member of a good fraternity has an easier entree into the best social life which the college offers than does any other man. In no college with which I am acquainted do the fraternity men usurp the best social life, but the fraternity man always has someone to introduce him, someone to help him plan, someone to push him if he lags back or lacks nerve. We may be emphasizing social life too much in our colleges at the present time, and especially in our coeducational institutions, but be that as it may, a healthy, moderate social life no one in college can afford to omit, and the fraternity furnishes the undergraduate the easiest aproach to it. I heard a well-known successful engineer say at one time that more engineers had failed in getting a job because of soiled collars and badly selected neckties than from any other reason. I should not be inclined to take his statement too seriously, but I am convinced that social associations of the right sort do teach a man many things worth while about dress and manners and social precedure, and that these lessons will be profitable to him as long as he lives.
The fraternity, in the Middle West at least, leads its members pretty generally into all forms of student activities. In the University of Illinois the extra-curriculum activities of students are fully three-fourths, I believe, in the hands of fraternity men. The fraternities urge their men to get out, keep after them constantly, and help them in every way possible. The man who does not belong to a fraternity has no organization behind him, no one to goad him if he gets lazy, so even when he has a good chance of winning, he often becomes discouraged and drops out. There again in this matter of outside activities there is often a difference of opinion. Some conservative college officers hold that the fewer extra-curriculum activities in which the student engages the better off he is. If the only object of a college education were to teach a man facts, to acquaint him with scientific principles, and to fill him with book knowledge, I should agree with this view fully. I am convinced, however, from my own experience as well as from a long period of observation, that I though study and books are the main thing, the value of a college training lies almost as much in what the undergraduate gets outside of the classroom as in what he gets within it. Association with men, the solving of the practical problems of life, independence, self-reliance, poise, finesse are all developed through outside activities. I believe that the number of activities into which any student may go and the amount of time which he may spend upon such work should be limited by the college, but I believe that most students who stay entirely out of extra-curriculum activities make a mistake, and I think that the fraternity in urging the undergraduate to spend a reasonable amount of time in such work is doing him a service.
The effect of the fraternity upon the studies of the undergraduate has not been until within recent years all that it should be. Interest in scholarship, however, is increasing everywhere among the faternities, and fraternity averages all over the country are coming up. One of the difficulties to be met, and one which has not previously been given the consideration it deserves, lies in the fact that it is not an easy matter to have a high scholastic average among groups of men exceeding twelve in number. Even men of the highest scholastic standing seem to lower their average when they get into groups exceeding a dozen. It has been remarked at the University of Illinois that the members of Tau Beta Pi, one of the best known of the honorary engineering fraternities, very often have a drop in their scholastic standing when they move into the Tau Beta Pi house. Whether this drop in their scholarship may be attributed to the fact that, having proved their worth by their election to an honorary society, they become self-satisfied and relax their industry, or whether it may be explained by the fact that the most of the men have previously lived in houses where there were few students and so find it difficult to work among so many, it is difficult to say; at any rate it is certain that the scholarship in such cases does usually drop. Statistics show this year at the University of Illinois that the scholarship standing of men outside of the fraternities who lived in houses accommodating more than a dozen men was not so good as that of the fraternities whose membership with us averages about thirty. This fact of lower scholarship was seen in the Young Men's Christian Association dormitory, in College Hall, and in practically all the places where a large number of men are housed. It seems evident from these facts that if a man is going out for high scholarship, he will most easily attain this result by living by himself. Only three or four of the twenty-five men ranking highest in the University of Illinois last semester lived in houses containing more than a half-dozen students, and in not a few cases there were no other students in the house.
It can be seen from the facts given also that the fraternity is solving its scholastic problems better than are other groups of men whose difficulties are not so great as those of the fraternity. The fraternity has house rules and fixed study hours, and so far I can see there is a reasonable and serious attempt to enforce these rules. The scholarship average of our fraternities last semester was as high as the average of men living outside of these organizations and, as I have said, considerably higher than that of other men living in large groups. The scholarship of fraternity freshmen was also higher than that of other freshmen. The fraternity man who wants to study learns to do so even if the conditions surrounding him are not ideal. He comes to the point of not being disturbed by a little noise or confusion. Before he gets through college the fraternity man is usually so immune to the effects of having people about him that he could write his theme or solve his problem in mechanics as easily in the trenches of Verdun as in his own room.
From my point of view this is a good thing. It is one of the regrets of my college life that I lived alone and that I learned to study and to work alone. Now I find it next to impossible to do any serious work with people about me. I have powers of concentration, but I can control these powers only when I have complete isolation. This fact is a great handicap. If in college I had lived in a fraternity house instead of living at home with my mother, I am quite sure, that I could have learned to adjust myself to other conditions, and that such adjustment would be to me today a great help.
I ought not to ignore the fact in this connection that there are dangers to young fellows, especially to those who are easily led, or who have no strong definite purpose in coming to college, in living in a fraternity house. There are easy I chairs and open fires, and pleasant companions about. There are inducements to loaf and opportunities to spend money, and temptation on all I sides to take life easy. The fraternity, like every day life, is a test of character. If a man is weak and purposeless, he may have a hard time of it; but df he is weak and purposeless, he has little place mi college at all and little chance anywhere. Fraternity life is no more severe test of his character than any boy finds who goes away from home as a boy should and tries to make for himself a place and a home among other men.
I believe that the greatest service that the fraternity does for the undergraduate is to set before him high ideals of living. It is true, for youth is thoughtless and impulsive, that these principles are not always adhered to; they are frequently ignored or forgotten, but ultimately, I am Presbyterian enough to believe, they sink in, they leave their impression, they have a greater or a less influence upon the moral life of every man who has taken the oath of the organization. One can not hear the ritual read or go through the ceremony of initiation without having a greater regard for truth and honesty and virtue and brotherly love, and this impression one unconsciously carries into the routine of the business of his every day life. As I came back from the biennial congress of my fraternity some time ago, I could not help noticing the impression which the meeting had made upon the undergraduates who were on the train with me. All of them were young, and some of them were careless, and a few were controlled by the passions of youth; but just then they were serious, thoughtful, impressed with the obligations which membership in the fraternity placed upon them, and determined, too, to go home and more conscientiously to live up to the principles for which the fraternity stands. The fraternity had done them all good.
And so I say, as I said at the beginning, if I were an undergraduate in college again, I think I should want to belong to a fraternity; and if I had a son in college, I should be quite contented to have him a member of such an organization.