# The Fraternity and the College (collection)/Fraternity Ideals

We had been listening to one of the grand officers of the fraternity as he presented forcefully and appealingly the best things which the fraternity had done and the best things for which it stands. We were silent for a moment after he had finished, overcome, perhaps, by the power of his words. My companion broke the silence.
"I had never realized" he said, "how real and vital these principles are which we advocate, how closely they touch the best things of life. Unless it has ideals and lives up to them, the fraternity has no place in college life." And so we all say, I have no doubt, if we have given these matters serious consideration.
The men who organized our Greek-letter fraternities were almost without exception men with a vision of the future. They had high conceptions of right and honor and scholarship, and they wrought these principles into the rituals and the ideals of the organizations. For the most part they were religious men with reverence for God and with respect for the principles of the Christian Church. Some of the regulations of these organizations went so far I am told, and still do, as to require membership in a protestant church as a necessary qualification for membership. The purposes of these organizations were social it is ​true, but they were much more than the word social would seem to imply; they had in view, most of all, the development of character, and they set before their members then, as they do today, the highest moral, social, and scholastic ideals.
It is true that I know bat one fraternity ritual well enough to speak with authority as to what these organizations stand for, but my relations with the members and the officers of a score of others have been so close, and I have learned so much from inference, that I am safe, I am sure, in saying that the principles laid down in all of these statements of faith and practice of Greek-letter organizations are not in their expression essentially different. I can say for the ritual with which I am acquainted that it sets for those young men who subscribe to it the highest and most exacting standards of living, the noblest ideals of life. I have every reason to suppose that the ideals of other similar organizations are equally high.
If fraternity men have failed at times to live up to the best for which their fraternity stands, as no doubt they have, the fault can not rightfully be laid at the door of fraternity ideals any more than the shortcomings of members of the Presbyterian church can be with justice attributed to the inadequacy of John Calvin's expression of faith. The fault may with greater reason be ​attributed to youth and thoughtlessness, and inexperience. It is the commonest experience of my every day work when I am struggling seriously to get at the reason why a young fellow has failed to respond to a call, or cribbed in an examination, or come home drunk, or taken a joy ride in somebody else's car, to get the reply, "I didn't think much about it." Fraternity principles and ideals are all right, but the initiates two often think too little about them. They are too often like the man who, when he was asked if he belonged to church, replied that he did, but that he did not usually work very hard at it.
There are a number of reasons why fraternity men do not always take as seriously as they should the ideals of the fraternity. First of all there is the condition of youth. The average young man who goes into a fraternity has had little experience either in governing himself or in directing others. He may even be a petted only child or a coddled youngest son who is having his first experience in self-direction. He will learn in time to take responsibility, but he may do so slowly. He may not take the principles of the organization seriously at first, but a very small percentage of those men who remain actively in a fraternity for four years fail to be impressed with the dignity and seriousness of the principles and ideals of the fraternity and with their own obligation to make's ​these principles the basis of their own conduct and character. It is more often those who have active membership for a few months only—the probationers as it were—who fail to get the spirit of the organization, and who while they are in college and when they return at intervals to help celebrate college functions take their fraternity ideals lightly.
As I have said in another paper, the undignified details which in many chapters precedeor accompany initiations do much to detract from the moral effect of the initiation service, and too often give to the initiate the impression that the ideals presented in the ritual, like the "rough stuff" that has accompanied the initiation, are all a part of a big joke none of which he is to take seriously. The whole psychological effect of an initiation is lost if the initiate does not come away from the ceremiony with a distinct conception of what the fraternity ideals are and a definite feeling that he must embody these in his own daily life.
The fact that young men are bound together in an organization such as is a Greek-letter fraternity, sometimes helps to hold them to ideals and sometimes hinders; it very often depends upon who the leader happens to be. If he happens to be strong and self-reliant and high principled, the organization is a great help; if he is unscrupulous or thoughtless and impulsive, it may be a detri​ment. I have in mind a group of young fraternity men who were taking an examination. The time was short, the last question was difficult, and all were confused. An upperclassman near the close of the hour glancing at the paper of his neighbor read what he supposed to be a correct answer to the question. Without thinking he wrote it down and whispered the solution to his needy brothers. It was an impulsive act of a thoughtless leader who succeeded in getting five men into serious trouble. He had for the time being forgotten his fraternity ideals.
I used to think that a good many fraternity men had little real conception of what the principles and ideals of their fraternities mean. I am not so sure now that this is true. I think, perhaps, that the real trouble lies in the fact that most men accept and believe the principles in a general way as we as we sometimes take the lessons of a sermon, but they think of them more as desirable for the human race than as applying to their own individual daily lives. Honesty, and truth and temperance and chastity and loving one's brother are admirable virtues in an impersonal abstract way and the fraternity man like other well-trained men accepts them without question. It is when it comes to the present personal application of these virtues that he stumbles or falls down. But if fraternity ideals are to be ​really worthy the name they must be more vital than that; they must be more than intangible, general principles which one may live up to as or when he pleases.
"I know that fraternity men are extravagant, and profane and snobbish and intemperate and dissipated at times," a fraternity man wrote me not long ago, "but the close brotherly relations which the fraternity fosters more than offsets these irregularities." I do not believe it. Unless fraternity men in large measure live up to their ideals, the fraternity has little justification.
Unless I misunderstand the purposes which actuated the high minded men who established the various Greek-letter fraternities of this country and unless I misinterpret the statements of fraternity principles and ideals as I read them in fraternity publications and fraternity literature generally or listen to their presentation at fraternity conventions and gatherings, the fraternity man is under an added obligation to what other men are to be honest and temperate and clean.
There lie on my desk now two letters from local business men which say, "The accompanying bills have been due for more than a year. Do you think that it is possible for us to collect from these men?" And yet both of the men mentioned have had plenty of money to meet all their necessary bills. They have simply run unnecessary accounts for ​flowers and cabs and candy and rather than practice economy or make a clean breast of it to father they have allowed the bills to go unpaid and probably intend to do so. If I should call them they would probably fall back upon the time-worn excuse that they hadn't thought much about it. The fraternity man who does not pay his debts, who borrows and forgets to return, who cribs on an examination or who even helps a needy brother to do so, who copies his themes from a book or who hands in another man's work as his own, has an erroneous conception of his obligations and is not living up to the ideals of his fraternity. If there is any undergraduate who should be depended upon to be honest and careful about keeping his word and meeting his obligations it is a fraternity man. The fact that in some institutions proportionately more fraternity men than other men are caught in dishonest acts and in financial irregularities, is not because fraternity men are less clever or more carefully watched than other men, but because they have been careless in living up to their ideals.
All over the country the cry is going up with reference to fraternity scholarship. Fraternities get the pick of graduates of the best high schools and preparatory schools, or at least claim to do so, and yet in many of the best institutions of the country we find that fraternity scholarship is distinctly inferior to that of the rank and file of ​these institutions. Even if fraternity men have no desire, "as many of them say, to be intellectual "high brows," they should at least not be contented to be rated as commonplace and as intellectual "bone heads." The fraternity which lacks scholastic ideals is pretty likely to be weak in moral stamina. If an institution is weak in scholarship it has little claim to standing in educational circles. It is rather difficult to see how a fraternity can have much claim to high standing which does not keep its scholastic average at least up to the average of the institution of which it is a part.
The fact that most fraternities have a chapter house regulation which forbids drinking in the house or the bringing in of intoxicants is conclusive evidence that the fraternity has not found the "booze party" helpful in the advancement of the organization. I have seen a good deal of drinking during my life, both in college and out of it, but I have no recollection of ever knowing any one who was helped by it, and I have known hundreds who were injured. The college student who drinks is almost always harmed by it, not so much in a physical way, but in the development of vulgar coarse associations, in the lowering of his ideals, and sometimes in the cultivation of habits which ultimately detract from his business efficiency.
​At our last Home-coming a young fraternity man whom I had not seen for three or four years came into my office to call on me. I remarked on how well he was looking and in reply he said.
"I ought to look well, for I have not drank or smoked for three years."
"Why the reform?" I inquired.
"The firm for which I work," he said, and it is one of the best known manufacturers of men's furnishings goods in the country, "would not keep me on a day if they knew I drank and I found that by cutting out both beer and tobacco I was able to do more efficient work than I had done before."
"I expect to give it all up when I get out of college," a young fellow said to me not long ago, "but a man has to have a little fun once in a while when he is young, and I don't take too much very often."
It is this sort of argument which lowers fraternity ideals and results in periodic "keg parties" and "booze fests"; it is responsible for the setting aside of house rules on occasion, and causes fraternities too often to look, with charity upon escapades which are really discreditable and harmful. When business men everywhere are beginning to see the detrimental effects of drinking upon their employees, when the whole country is being stirred to temperance reform, the fraternity ​can scarcely afford to set for itself less lofty ideals.
Intemperance in matters of society and extravagance in the spending of money are two often found among fraternity men. Freshmen are frequently considered eligible or otherwise in proportion to the amount of money they have at their disposal or the probability of their making a striking social impression. The fellow who can talk easily, dress well, and make good with the girls is not infrequently considered more desirable than the one who has intellectual ambitions and sterling moral principles but who is less characterized by social finesse. Here again the fraternity might with profit give a little attention to the principles and ideals underlying the organization before choosing between these two sorts of men. Whatever may be true in other institutions, however, the one in which I have worked for many years has no chapter of a fraternity which does not count among its members fellows who are under obligations to earn their own living and who come to college without social prominence. I have never been able to see that such men lost anything of respect or regard through lack of money or social prestige. If conditions in other institutions are otherwise, so much less credit to fraternity men who make them so.
​No fraternity man who reads his ritual thoughtfully will find in it any justification of the life that is not morally clean. No man who lives up to the ideals of his fraternity will find any place for irregular sexual relations or for low vulgar profane talk. It is not true that "We must expect these things" and that "Everybody does them, so why expect the fraternity man to be better than other men." The facts are that not everybody does do them, and besides the fraternity man has set for himself ideals supposedly higher than those which are held by "everybody," and he has obligations resting upon him to live a clean moral life which many other men have not assumed for themselves.
Here again in the choosing of men there is sometimes, I am afraid, too little thought given to the moral ideals of the men under consideration. The fact that a man is a "good fellow" with personal charm and attractiveness should not over balance the fact that he is a vulgar profane talker or that he has unclean habits. I have in mind now a much advertised high school graduate of low moral ideals. He was rushed by several organizations but bid by only one. The others dropped him, not because his character was bad, they said, they could have overlooked that, but because he had talked about his escapades and made them known to other people. If he had kept quiet concerning ​his dissipations and his diseases, even though they had been known, he might have been accepted by a number of other organizations.
Unless the fraternity gives men higher ideals of life it is not fulfilling the purpose which its founders had in mind. Unless its influence is such as to make men more honest in their work and in their business relations; cleaner in their lives and cleaner in their talk, more temperate in eating and more temperate in drinking, better students and better men and better citizens it is failing to do the work that it should do. If a man can be a drone or dissolute, or dishonest, or vulgar, and not lose standing in his fraternity there is something the matter with his fraternal ideals. The fight against fraternities is based upon the fact that people on the outside say that fraternity life leads men to dissipation and extravagance, makes them loafers and flunkers and snobs, and unfits them for the serious worthy work of life. The intimate relations which I have had with fraternities and fraternity men for almost half my life have not led me to such conclusions. It is true that individual instances may be found to prove all of the accusations which have been made against fraternities by those who oppose them, just as perpetrators of all sorts of crimes and violaters of law may be found in the church, but in the main I believe these accusations are false. Fraternities have grown ​too rapidly, perhaps; they were too loosely organized, they were allowed to drift away from their original principles, but they are coming back. In every organization with which I am acquainted there are high minded men who respect their obligations and not only live up to the ideals of the organization themselves but who do all in their power to help their brothers to do so. I believe that the fraternity is doing a worthy work, and that within the next few years, under proper organization and direction, it will do a much greater one. The purpose of every fraternity man should be to magnify the ideals of his fraternity, to make them something more than mere sentiment, to exemplify them more fully ini his own daily life, and to impress them more forcefully upon the undergraduate members with whom he comes in contact. It is only through the vitalizing of its ideals that the fraternity will come into the respect which it deserves.