# The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (collection)/The Transfer

One of the most difficult problems for fraternities to solve, in large institutions at least, is how best to offset or utilize, as the case may be, the influence of the numerous transfers from other chapters which make up so large a percentage of undergraduate life. Whether they are formally affiliated and become active members of the chapter or not does not solve the problem entirely, for their mere presence in the college, so far as the college public is concerned, constitutes an affiliation and makes the local chapter responsible for their conduct and for their influence. I have sat at fraternity conferences and heard uttered the commonplaces and platitudes about "once a Phi Kap always a Phi Kap," just as I have been taught since my childhood the Presbyterian doctrine of the election of the saints—once in grace, always in grace—but there is in this case as in many others a vast difference between theory and practice. The doctrine that when a man is taken into a fraternity he is entitled to its privileges wherever he goes and with whatever chapter he may come into contact, sounds all right, and is quite easily defensible until one comes up against concrete examples, and then the theory goes to pieces.
​I have seen a chapter disrupted by transfers; I have seen its whole policy and character disorganized. I have seen it deteriorate into little more than a mere boarding house. I can at present think of but few cases in which the affiliate really proved a benefit to the chapter, got into its spirit, and became a strong unifier and leader. We have this year at the University of Illinois such an instance, but they are so rare as to attract unusual attention. This fact does not seem to me strange. The transfer, coming from a different chapter has learned its methods, its customs, its traditions, its spirit, and he can not lay these aside at once. In point of fact he seldom desires to do so; he wishes rather to transplant them into other soil. He comes from another college, also, and he finds it as difficult to relinquish its customs as he does those of his chapter.
There is a pretty general opinion prevailing among undergraduates that all the members of one fraternity, their own, perhaps, are in large degree alike—alike in ideals, in temperament, in personal appearance even. Only a few days ago I was speaking to a young sophomore in my office, and I happened in the course of the conversation to refer to his chapter. "How did you know what fraternity I belonged to?" he asked with much interest. "Oh, I usually know," I said, "I can't ​always tell how." "Do you know," he continued, "I believe I could tell a member of my fraternity anywhere I should meet him in this country. It seems to me that we look alike, that we are differ: ent from other fraternity men." I did not think it worth while to disagree with him, but, although I think I have met as many and as great a variety of fraternity men as anyone of my age, I am sure I should not be able to tell a Deke from a Lambda Chi Alpha, and after I have been to a fraternity congress I know that there is as much difference between an Alpha Tau from Michigan and one from Georgia as there is between friends any where. It is this great variety in ideals and tastes and training that makes the problem of the transfer so difficult a one to solve satisfactorily, and the wuder the range of territory from which the transfers come, and the greater the difference in the character and traditions of the institutions concerned, the more difficult it is to harmonize and unify the fraternity interests.
The character of the men who are likely to transfer from one college to another is often not such as to cause them to be helpful additions to a chapter roll. A good many of the fraternity men who come to us from other institutions come because they have been urged to do so or invited to do so by the faculties of the institutions where ​they have previously been registered. Their work or their conduct it is frequently thought would be improved by a change. Even when the man comes of his own desire and planning, he is not infrequently uncertain of himself, vacillating, not satisfied with his course or his surroundings, anxious to do something new or something different from what was offered in the college in which he had previously been registered. Such a malcontent is not likely to fit in harmoniously with the men of the new chapter, and not likely to be a help if he is affiliated. Of course there are men who change colleges as they change their minds, thoughtfully and carefully, because they feel that the change will help them better to accomplish the very definite purpose which they wish to accomplish. These men are likely to fit in when they come to a new chapter and likely to show interest and initiative; their number, however, is small as compared with the total number of those who transfer.
"But the whole purpose of the fraternity is changed and frustrated," a junior said to me today, "if a man loses his influence and his standing in a fraternity by going from one chapter to another. In my fraternity the doors are always open, and any brother who wishes may enter and receive a warm welcome." This doctrine is all very well both as to sound and sense, if the fraternity ​has few chapters and if these are located in small colleges. When the family increases and expansion is the watchword, and when the chapter is located in a big university, then most organizations find themselves forced to adhere to a different doctrine. The affiliation of a man from one chapter with the fellows of another is to me a good deal like a second marriage. I have seen many successful ones, a few really happy ones, but the tender sentimental feeling of youth is usually lacking. It is too often a practical, unemotional, business arrangement. A man usually has but one real college experience. After that, no matter where he goes or how many other chapters he may have affiliation with, when he drops into reminiscence it is always, "Our chapter at Albion," or "We had a pretty good system at De Pauw." He can never forget his first love.
The fraternity with few chapters is not likely to find great difficulty with its transfers, because there are few undergraduates to transfer. The total number of active men at any one time is small, and the likelihood of any considerable number of them leaving their own chapter and going to another one is extremely slight. It is perhaps for this reason that such fraternities have in most cases adopted the practice of affiliating all brothers who come to them and do not seem to be able ​to understand why another fraternity should do differently. I had a warm discussion only a few days ago with a man who felt that when a brother came from another chapter there was only one thing to do, and that was to rush out to meet him, fix him a place at the table, send his suitcase upstairs, and to take him in with open arms. This method is quite safe with his fraternity, for since its installation several years ago it has had but one affiliate, and though he did the chapter no good, he was not able unaided to do it much damage. He came and went without many people's guessing that he was a member.
Such a practice, however, in a large institution might wreck a fraternity like Beta Theta Pi, or Kappa Sigma, or Phi Delta Theta, each of which has a large number of chapters, and so is likely to have a good many transfers. In an institution like Cornell, or Michigan, or Illinois, there are scores of students every year transferring from the smaller colleges or even coming from the larger institutions. Many of these are fraternity men. One of our fraternities last year had thirteen transfers from nearly as many different institutions. I have heard of one fraternity in a large university which had a year or two ago twice this many. The effect of so many men coming with different ideals and experiences and different ​methods of fraternity management is seldom a good one. Factions are created almost at once, and unity of action is next to an impossibility. It is as nearly impossible for an affiliate to refrain from telling the fellows how much better things were done in his home chapter as it is for a man who has been married twice to keep from referring to the admirable qualities of his first wife, and the effect of such reference on the harmony of the home is not particularly different in either case.
As I have seen for the past fifteen years the effect of affiliation upon our local chapters I am convinced that on the whole it is not a good thing. There are a few instances in my mind which would prove the contrary, but these are overwhelmingly in the minority. I could cite many instances where it would have been far better for the chapter if the transfer could have been kept away from the house excepting upon special occasions when he was invited. I am sure that in most cases it is far better that the transfer be not invited to eat regularly at the house, though with us it is usually easy for the fraternities to take care of all their transfers in this regard if they wish to do so. There are few places about the fraternity house where the home life is more strongly emphasized than at table during meals, and no better chance to promote harmony or introduce discord than during the half ​hour when the men gather about the fireplace following dinner.
My objections to affiliating a transfer and thereby making him an active voting member of the chapter are that so far as his knowledge of the workings of the chapter into which he is going is concerned, he is a freshman who should do freshman duty and keep a freshman's place. This, however, is exactly what he has no intention of doing. If he comes from an eastern institution to one in the Middle West, for example, even though he may have been dismissed from college for inefficiency or irregularity, he begins at once to show how the chapter should be run, to point out how superior conditions are at Cornell or Dartmouth or Brown and to object to authority and regulation. I can not now recall one such man who was willing to be subordinate, to take dictation, or to admit that the chapter with which he had become affiliated was superior or even equal to the one which he had left. Even if he has had but one half year's experience in the chapter into which he was initiated, he usually considers that experience quite sufficient to enable him to assume direction of any new group to which he may join himself. I recall a case which occurred only a few weeks ago where a critical situation arose in one of our local chapters which concerned the pro​posed dismissal of one of the active members for moral irregularities. The problem required for its solution experience, judgment, and tact; all the alumni and every active member of the chapter were concerned. The most active man in the conduct of the prosecution was an affiliate who knew little of the chapter, who had been in it only a few weeks, and who was least capable of managing a difficult situation with diplomacy. I could not make him see that the modest thing for him to do was to sit back quietly, to express his opinion when he was asked, and to vote when the time came. He was determined to drive or he would not ride in the machine at all. He was like a new professor who came to us last year from the Empire state, who desired at once to reorganize the University, who objected to all of our regulations, and who condemned everything from our marking system to our thunder storms, because they are managed differently from what is done in New York. He wanted to run things, and he wanted to do it in exactly the way it is done in the community and in the institution of which he was first a member. The affiliate too often feels the same way.
One cannot quickly transplant the customs or the traditions of one institution or organization into another, and when as is the case of chapters having a number of transfers, the attempt is being ​made at one time to bring the tradition of a half dozen different institutions into one chapter, the thing is impossible. There is nothing truer than that an undergraduate learns the customs of a college quickly and that he accepts these as the customs of all colleges. The freshman is transformed between September and the Christmas vacation; he goes home a new man—not always intellectually new, so much more the pity, but he has learned the routine of college life—its customs, its traditions, its clothes, its limitations. If at the beginning of the next semester or the next year he enters another institution, his nerves receive a shock when he realizes that the fellows in this second institution may never have suspected the things that he has been led to believe are universal college customs. He is like a man who has all his life been brought up to feed himself with a fork and who, going to another part of the world, finds that quite refined people do the same thing with their fingers or with chop sticks. We might not object to have such a man as a visitor, but we should hesitate to put him into a position of authority where he would have charge of affairs.
Sometimes the affiliate does not care to assume control, he is satisfied to sit back and criticize—to tell how things are managed in his chapter, to suggest how a real fraternity is run, to be super​cilious and superior. Such a man does little harm excepting, perhaps, to become chummy with the malcontents, to help to develop factions. It is this sort that I should not have about the house excepting upon invitation, and I should make the invitations at long intervals.
The most difficult problem, with the college office at least, is with those transfers whose ideals of life are not all that they should be. Outside of the fraternity house they are bad enough, but when they become active members they are impossible. They feel less responsibility to the chapter with which they have affiliated than they did to their own, and the chapter has over them less power of control. They seem like ill-bred uncontrolled step children who do not wish to obey and who stir up the other children to all forms of disobedience and derelictions. I have never felt able to consider them as entirely divorced from the fraternity, nor yet have I felt like holding the fraternity responsible for their actions while all the time I knew that they were no help to the strong men and were a constant menace and evil influence as regards the weak ones. Whether they are affiliated or not, they visit the chapter, they become intimate with the weaker members, and they often waste a good deal of their own time ​and the time of anyone who will consort with them.
As I said at the outset, the problem of the transfer is not solved even if the man is not affiliated. If he is a good man, the chapter gets the benefit even if he has not been taken in; if he is a bad one, the fraternity must bear the disgrace without being in more than an advisory position with reference to his conduct. I have in mind now one of our fraternities whose transfers, even though they have not been affiliated, have been of service to the chapter both for the advice and help they have given regarding the conduct of affairs at the house, as well as in themselves raising the scholastic average; I recall an instance in another chapter where the transfer damaged the chapter irreparably by his bad conduct, and even after he was dismissed from college came back at intervals to commit improprieties which reflected immeasurably upon the good name of the chapter. The active men held, of course, that he had not been affiliated, that they were not responsible for his actions, and that they had no control of his habits; but these statements did not get them anywhere. The general public knew that he was a fraternity man, and the local chapter received the credit for whatever he did.
In view of all these facts I believe that it ​is ordinarily unwise for a fraternity to have a general regulation requiring a chapter to affiliate a transfer from another institution. I believe that the action taken should be determined by each chapter for itself. It is desirable that every chapter should have knowledge of the men who transfer from other institutions, and that they should be shown some courtesy and some attention. Whether they should be taken into the chapter, whether they should even eat at the chapter house table or visit the house often, should depend entirely upon the character of the men and the desire of the chapter. Usually I have found that the chapter has acted wisest that did not affiliate the men, and that had as little official connection with them as possible. When a chapter finds one man that will help and be of real service it will find a half dozen that will prove worthless or a real incubus. While I have been writing these paragraphs I have had a talk with a man whose fraternity requires that all transfers be affiliated, and I asked him to tell me frankly what the result in his fraternity had been.
"On the whole we have lost more by it than we have gained," was his reply, and that is the way I have come to feel about it. If a chapter establishes a custom of taking its transfers in, it will be impossible not to do so even when it is ​quite apparent that such an action will not be for the best; if it decides each case upon its own merits, and takes few or none, it will be in a much safer position. The fraternity which does not affiliate any of its transfers will be most likely to get on agreeably. It will avoid internal dissensions and factions, it will be more easily able to carry out a uniform policy of chapter management, it will miss the help of an occasional good man, but it will save itself from the annoyance of many a poor one.
If someone suggests that this method is not quite fair to the transfer, I will say in reply that the transfer has little ground for complaint. He has had his day; he chose his college and his college home, and if circumstances make it inadvisable or impossible for him to continue where he began, well, he simply is paying the penalty as we all must do in every walk or department of life for the errors we make or the misfortunes we encounter.