# The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (collection)/The Man Who Does not Join

"I was never asked to join a fraternity when I was in college," a young fellow said to me not long ago, "though many of my intimate friends were, and I have always had a feeling of regret and loneliness when I have gone back to visit my Alma Mater. I have wondered if there might not have been something the matter with me, something about me not quite normal. I find it now often difficult to explain to people just why I was not a member, for it is as embarrassing for me to say that I never was asked as it must be for a maiden lady when explaining why she has never married."
The fact that a young man while in college does not join a fraternity or is not asked to join is not of necessity an argument against the man or against the fraternity. The number of fraternities in any institution with which I am familiar is too small to admit of everyone's being invited, and the reasons which induce men to stay out or which prevent them from being asked are as varied as the men themselves. Why have you not joined the Elks, or the Odd Fellows, or the Ancient Order of Hibernians, or the Christian Science Church? Why are you in the profession which you are now following? It is not at all likely that you can ​answer, for it is next to impossible for any one to determine just what series of causes lead to any specific action which he may have taken.
There are a great many people, some of whom belong to fraternities and others of whom do not, who have the feeling that there are only two types of people in the world—those who are elected and those who are damned, those who get in and those who stay out, those who join and those who do not. My experience has led me to the conclusion that there is mighty little difference, and that the man who does not join usually came out of the same dust heap as the man who does.
An acquaintance of mine, herself a member of a college sorority which she considers the best on the market, related to me not long ago the details of a tearful interview through which she had just passed with one of her sisters in the bond. The incident which had been the instigating cause of the lachrymal outburst was the announcement of the engagement of a third sister. Now an engagement is ordinarily no cause for weeping; quite the contrary in fact. In this case, however, the horrible and disgraceful fact had been divulged that the young man in question was not a member of any fraternity. This misguided young woman had somehow absorbed the erroneous impression that ​unless one belongs to a college fraternity he is hopelessly lost in a social way.
As I said at the outset, very few colleges have organizations enough to take in all the new men who arrive at each fall opening. In point of fact there are not enough Greek-letter fraternities in existence to supply such a demand. In theory, perhaps, it might be a good thing if there were; but in practice I am afraid that difficulties would frequently arise. I have known undergraduates in college who would disorganize heaven if they ever got in—or hades, and who, like some of our recent political candidates, would never be happy or contented in any organization unless they were themselves the whole of it. I have never investigated the results in those colleges where an attempt has been made to break up all the student body into groups, but I have little faith in it as a successful unifying and harmonizing process. Some men do not want to belong to anything; they wish most of all to be let alone, to form no associations with either students or faculty. They come to college to get an education, they say, and that means to study books and to acquire facts.
Such men have little that is gregarious in their make up. They like to work by themselves, they are restless and unhappy if they have a companion, and they would not join anything, not ​even the army or the church, unless they were forced to do so. One of these I recall at this moment quite vividly. He was a quiet, studious fellow, an only child who at home had had his own room and followed his own methods of work. He had never been interfered with; neither his books nor his bureau drawers had ever before been overturned. When he wanted to study or to meditate he sought the quietest isolation. When he came to college he was at once caught in the maelstrom of rushing, and before he came to himself he found that some one had decorated his lapel with a particolored pledge button. But this fact brought no joy to him: he was restless, discontented, melancholy, revolutionary, and the outcome of it all was that he gave back the button, found a room by himself, and settled down to a quiet, hermit life such as pleased him. There are many like him, and if they want to be happy, rather than to form friendships, they do not join.
There are those, too, who do not like to be mixed up in things. If something exciting is being perpetrated they would rather go in the other direction. They never run to a fire; they pursue a doctor's degree or a hobby; they enjoy the outskirts rather than John Street. Such a man the fraternity would undoubtedly help to educate far more than many another agency, but he usually ​manages to keep his feet out of the snare. If he is invited out he has an engagement; he has little desire to be done good. At the present time with us the tendency is to crowd about the campus; the more congested things are the better the ordinary student likes it. If he lives east of the campus during his freshman year where life is quiet and regular, by the time he has become an upperclassman he has moved to the west side where all the men's organizations are located and where there is something doing. Yet with all this tendency there are still some fellows who prefer the isolation which may be found beyond the towns, and of their own initiative seek out those places which are far removed from the crowd.
The selfish, headstrong man often does not join when he is asked, and I did not mean to suggest that either of the two sorts I have previously mentioned are to be counted in this class. One has to yield his own desires if he gets on comfortably in any partnership or organization, even in marriage or the grain business. Brotherhood even of the most unsentimental character is a matter of daily if not of hourly concessions and consideration of the profit or the comfort of others. If one is incapable of such sacrifice and of the real happiness and satisfaction which results from it, he ordinarily is wise enough to go his own way, and ​he keeps out of a fraternity. I remember a young fellow of this sort who came to college some two or three years ago. He wanted the honor and the prestige of belonging, he had an attractive exterior, and he was pledged in a short time. The life got on his nerves at once, however. He could not stand the restraint of the house, he could not bring himself to submit to rules, he could not yield, or follow directions. He wanted his own room, he objected to the food, he wanted his own comfort and his own way. He tried living out of the house for a while, but nothing was right; so he went back to his own isolated selfish life. The next fall he was bid by another fraternity, but it was not in him to get on unselfishly with anyone. So he soon gave up the pledge button and left college.
A great many men entering college would like to join a fraternity but feel that they cannot afford the expense which such a procedure would entail. Their going to college demands sacrifice on their part and on the part of the home folks, and they very wisely are not willing that this sacrifice should be made heavier simply for their own pleasure. It is true that every chapter at the University of Illinois, as at many other institutions, I have no doubt, contains members who have little means or who are partially or wholly self-supporting, but it cannot be denied that the ex​pense of living in a fraternity is greater than is required for one to live outside, and many of the best men in college who have plenty of opportunity to join stay out because they feel that they must live as economically as possible. These men often miss the close friendship and comradeship which they would find in the fraternity; often, however, they gather around themselves outside groups of friends who are bound as closely together as are the members of any fraternity organized. I have often heard it deplored that the fraternity is so organized as to shut out any worthy man, but as society is now organized similar instances may be found in any community to illustrate the fact that many of the good things which we would enjoy we are deprived of because we cannot afford to pay for them. The man who is forced to work his way through college, as many of us know from experience, cannot always ride in the Pullman or attend the formal party. He may gain something in independence and self-reliance, but he will of necessity have to sacrifice many much desired pleasures.
Not a few fellows who would like very much to be fraternity men never have an opportunity. It is against fraternity conventionalities for anyone to express interest in joining or desire to join. It would be considered quite as unpardonable a breach of etiquette for a freshman unasked to ​express a willingness or a desire to join a fraternity as it would for a young girl to propose marriage to a male friend, perhaps in these days more so. The outsider from an unknown town has too little show. I know a young fellow coming to college next fall who will be scrambled for by a half-dozen fraternities while his intimate friend who is coming with him will be scarcely likely to get a look in unless through the necessity of asking him in order to get his friend. When, as in large institutions, there are so many eligible fellows who are personally known by the members of chapters or who are introduced to them, there will always be a great many excellent boys who are overlooked because there is more good material than can be utilized.
Undoubtedly the fact that a man comes to college unknown is not the only barrier to his being asked to join a fraternity. Personal traits of character and personal appearance influence the matter materially—the latter considerably more than it should I often think. The man who talks too much or who refuses to talk at all; the fellow who has too much self-assurance or the one who has too little—all have difficulty in getting by. Crude manners and crude dress are always bars to admission. Often it is the man's fault, and at other times the fraternity is finical and critical ​and hard to please. Often, too, since an election must be by unanimous vote it is the prejudice or the stubbornness of one man in the fraternity that prevents a man from being asked. It may seem to some that it is unfair for one man's vote to keep out an otherwise acceptable freshman, but that is generally the custom of the fraternity. I know men who have worked every possible device, who have pulled every available string, who have even had their relatives come to town in order that their influence might be added to that of the individual himself who wished very much to join. It has even gone so far at times as for interested outside friends to try to influence the college authorities in behalf of their friends who could not get in. The man who resorts to these devices, however, very seldom profits from them. Every year I see the disappointed faces of young fellows who have come to college with the highest hopes of making a fraternity only to find that they had built their hopes upon a wreak foundation.
Sometimes a freshman is asked by the wrong crowrd of fellows, and he has the good sense to recognize this fact and the courage to decline the invitation. Only this week a boy came to me to say that he had had an invitation to join a certain group of men and was not quite certain of their character. He asked me to tell him frankly just ​what they were like and what they stood for. After I had done so as fairly as I could," he said, "Thank you for telling me so straightforwardly. I don't believe from what you say that they are the sort of men that I should like to have for my intimate friends in college, and I shall decline their invitation." It took pretty staunch principles for him to reach this conclusion, for he is a boy who would very much enjoy the sort of life he would find in a good fraternity, and he knew very well what it means at the end of the freshman year to decline an invitation to join. Such instances are not at all rare of men who rather than join the wrong fraternity elect to join none at all but try to make for themselves a happy independent life.
Not infrequently the opportunity to join a fraternity comes to a man too late. He would have liked the opportunity earlier in his college course; but if it comes to him in his junior year, he often prefers to stay with the coterie of friends whom he has gathered about him than to adjust himself thus late to a new set. Only this year two juniors at the University of Illinois were invited to join two different fraternities. They were decidedly among the most influential independents in college. They were strong politically, they were respected socially, and they had a wide circle of warm friends. They did not feel that it would be quite ​loyal to these friends for them to break away so late in their college life. "If I had been asked in my freshman year," one of the boys said to me, "I should no doubt have been glad to accept. I have fought my way up alone, however, and have made for myself a satisfactory position in undergraduate affairs, and I feel without conceit that I should be doing the fraternity a greater honor in joining it now than it has done me by inviting me." I felt the same way as he did about the matter, and I have frequently felt so with reference to men who have been asked to join fraternities when they had gone beyond the sophomore year. A young friend of mine a few years ago was in about the same position, he said, as Thackeray was with the taffy. When as a child he very much wanted it, he did not have the shilling that it cost; later he had the shilling but he did not care for the taffy. When this boy friend of mine entered college, he very much wanted to join a fraternity but he did not have a chance; later in his college course he had the chance, but he had formed his friends and he did not have any desire to join.
It is interesting to see what becomes of these men who do not join. Those who do not wish to do so, of course, live their own lives, form their own small circle of intimate friends and have no quarrel with any one. They get out of college ​what they came for, and they seldom have any feeling of jealousy or envy for the man who gets something else. These men have the kindest feelings for the men in fraternities and see no reason why if these men have the time and the money and the desire for such things they should not go into them. The man who really has no interest in joining and who enjoys another sort of life is not mixed up in any fight against organizations. He likes his own life and is willing for the fraternity man to like his.
Some of the men who are disappointed in not being asked are too weak and too lacking in independence to adjust themselves to their surroundings and to form a group of friends of their own. A young boy came in to see me not long ago with some evident trouble weighing on his mind. I tried to get it out of him with little success for a time, but finally I asked, "What is worrying you, Fred?" "What I want to know," he burst out, "is how I can get a bid to join a fraternity." He was really pathetic, he would have taken anything offered him. All that he wanted was a pin. I tried to tell him frankly that his chances were not very great; he was not quite the sort of man to attract interest by fraternity men, he had no friends to push him. I tried to show him that happiness and success were very little, if at all, dependent upon his ​joining! a fraternity—that was only an incident in his life in college which could be omitted without seriously disturbing anything; but he could not see it that way. He had come to college apparently for the sole purpose of joining a fraternity; his friends at home expected it; his happiness demanded it. If he could not attain his purpose at once he would go home, and he did. His college life was closed in a month all because he was too weak to live his own life. He was the sort of man who had too little force to help an organization had he become a member of one, and there are not a few like him.
Most of the men who do not join adjust themselves at once to the situation. They find other activities and associations which present to them opportunities for friendship and social exercise. They go into athletics, they work in the churches, they find interest in the professional societies which are established in every college. They go into dramatics and debating and military and politics and competitions of all sorts, and so get satisfaction and compensation for the life they for one reason or another have missed. It is interesting in going through the senior section of our college annual to notice how few members of the class are unattached to some organization or activity. Even this list of activities and organiza​tions which every senior gives is inadequate, for it does not take into account the little house groups which are formed everywhere about the campus, and which in a large degree take the place of the real fraternity life which the Greek-letter man lives.
Most of the independent political leaders whom I now know in college are either men who have been asked to join a fraternity and chose for one reason or another not to do so, or they are men who would have liked to be asked, but for some reason missed the chance. They have had force and initiative enough to make their own plans, to gather about them their own supporters, and to conduct their own political and social campaigns. The enterprises they undertake are not nearly so easy of accomplishment as are those of the fraternity man, because the fraternity man has definite backing, a well-organized support. He is materially helped in the accomplishment of any undertaking which he begins, while the independent is not. The latter, therefore, if he wins in any undertaking must be the stronger, the more self-reliant, the shrewder of the two, and he frequently shows that he is. Two of the strongest men in the junior class at the University of Illinois this spring are independents, and I believe they are decidedly among the best men in college. They ​have made friends everywhere; they have been leaders in whatever they have undertaken, and no man in the junior class has undertaken more. They are good illustrations of the leader in college who is left out and yet who is in no way discouraged by that fact; neither one I am sure would be willing for a minute to admit that he had been left out.
It is usually the men who are not asked to join fraternities or who are not pleased with the invitation they receive who are responsible for the organization of the local clubs or of groups of men which eventually become Greek-letter fraternities. I have known a dozen such groups of men at my own institution which were organized as church clubs, or as purely local clubs, in most cases with the averred intention and determination never to become more, and yet I have never known one which did not eventually petition a national organization for a charter. This is quite the normal procedure really, for a national organization can make a more careful selection of its men and has a stronger form of government than has a local club, and the fellows soon come to appreciate this fact.
Occasionally there is jealousy and ill feeling among those who would have liked to join and who do not have the chance. Not finding it possible ​to get in themselves, they immediately conceive reasons why no one else should be allowed to do so. Their imaginations conjure up all sorts of evils and irregularities and undemocratic situations within the fraternity; and they are at once and for all time against the system. When I was a boy on the farm I was fortunate in owning a riding horse and saddle. The boy who lived across the road had neither, but he spent a considerable part of his time in showing up to the other boys the evils and dangers of horseback riding. His father would willingly get him a horse, he said, if he wanted one, but he did not want one; he thought it was a very bad thing and a very dangerous thing for a young boy to have a horse of his own. And so he salved his feelings and comforted himself by railing against me. He deceived no one but himself. It is somewhat the same sort of attitude that the man who does not join a fraternity occasionally takes by way of explaining why he never got in. It is a common method in society of explaining things, but it is usually an unfair and ineffective one.
If the men who are waging an active war against fraternities had usually been active members of these organizations and acquainted with the purposes and the real life of fraternity men, they could make a considerably stronger case. As it ​is, I do not know an agitator against fraternities who has spent the four years of his undergraduate life in such an organization, and further than this, I do not know one who had a chance to do so. Most of them know little or nothing first hand. Either they or their children were disappointed in gaining admission, and for this reason they virtuously take up the fight as George Ford in my boyhood was opposed on principle to riding horses. The only trouble is that they sometimes succeed in deceiving people into believing that they are promulgating truth.
The reason that there are not more strong leaders among the independents is explained by the fact that as soon as a man begins to show qualities of leadership in the sophomore class or in the junior class, he is immediately picked up by a fraternity. The strongest independent leader in our present sophomore class is not likely long to lack opportunity to join a fraternity. A half-dozen organizations have been inquiring about him within the last month, and before college closes he will be wearing some fraternity button unless he elects to live an independent life throughout his college course.
The main difference between those who join and those who do not is a temperamental one. I have no sympathy with those who preach that it is ​wholly a matter of money or pull. These things sometimes help, but there are in every organization with which I am familiar, men who have neither. It is largely a desire for comradeship, for association with his fellows, and adaptation to such a relationship that causes one man to join and another one to be left out. It is very often a genius for leadership; and if a man has this, if he fails with one sort of organization, he gets into another or makes one of his own.
The independent who pushes his way to the front and who attains leadership by his own efforts is more often than otherwise the strongest man in college, because he has fought and conquered against the greatest odds. There is more honor and training in winning alone but far less chance. The man who doesn't join usually does not care to do so, or is unsuited to fit into an organization life. It is the occasional exception, only, who overrides the handicap and proves himself the strongest man in college.