# The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (collection)/The House Party

There are some institutions, I know, which will not stand for the fraternity house party. Sometimes there is a rule against it; sometimes it is an unwritten unexpressed law; but whether the prohibition is down in the book of undergraduate rules or not, there is no getting by with this particular form of social function. The argument is that the house party overemphasizes social life, that there is moral danger in it, that it takes most of the undergraduate's time for an indefinite period prior to the function in making preparation for it, that it takes all of his time and more than all of his money during its progress, and that it leaves him an intellectual and financial wreck at its close. I could bring illustrations to prove that all of these alleged evils have more than a mere foundation of truth. I know one organization that had a house party some years ago, that was written up in all the city papers and that is still the talk of the simple country community in which our institution is situated; the chapter enjoyed the advertising that it got from this function, but it is still struggling to pay the bills, that were incurred in giving it.
Besides all this, there are delicate problems of ​social conventionalities that frequently arise, and that require skill in solution; there are the wounded feelings of the local girls, caused by the presence of too many "imports," to be considered. In fact there are a considerable number of dangerous rocks to be avoided, so that I think, very wisely at times, a good many colleges, as I have said, do not permit the fraternities to give house parties. We shall, possibly, ere long come to this decision ourselves, but at present we have not done so.
Every year in my own fraternity, when on occasion I drop in on the boys, I hear the rumbling of this discussion as to whether or not the annual formal dance shall this year be in connection with a house party. The older fellows whose incomes are not unlimited and whose memories of the last function of this sort given by the chapter are still fresh, recall the fact that we are as yet scarcely free from the incubus of debt which was left us as a heritage by those who staged the last show of this sort, and that it would be a matter of wisdom and sound judgment to move with a little social conservatism. "We simply can't afford it," they say and gloomingly recall the past and the weeks of "oleo" and beans that the commissary department forced upon them in order to cut down expenses and save something to meet the extra bills that seemed to rain in for months after the party was ​over. They allege that such a party always costs twice as much as, when it is being planned, any one imagines it will cost.
Then the mathematical geniuses who are quick at figures and able to prove anything when they get busy, take the floor and show that it is really economy to give the house party. They demonstrate the fact that with the girls in the house there is neither the opportunity nor the necessity for the fellows to spend money that there is when just a formal dance is held. The facts are presented so alluringly, and the details are shown so convincingly, that the freshmen, innocent of this sort of guile and eager for the excitement of things new, believe the sophistry and are ready at once to vote for the party. They need only the argument of the socially ambitious to the effect that this is the one and only way to put ourselves right before the girls and to give us a center position upon the local social map, to make them, as the girls say, really crazy for it. A vote of this sort is often very much like a Sunday school election—the children are sure to vote for anybody or any thing that is put up.
They had had some warm discussions this year, I am quite convinced, before I was called in to give my opinion and to make suggestions. The arguments pro and con were well presented, for there ​are few matters which give better training in extempore speaking and which more completely perfect the brothers in oral debate than the proposal to give a house party. The advocates of the scheme showed how simple it all was, how little it would cost, and how easily the expenses could be kept down if the fellows would do the work. They were willing for any personal sacrifice—to sleep in the hay loft or the bath tub or to camp out in tents on the front lawn.
I arrived on the scene not completely carried away with enthusiasm over the scheme, for I have been through a good many house parties, and I am, besides, the treasurer of the corporation, and I remember with what difficulty and reluctance the house rent comes in following these social debauches. I know, too, how the class attendance deteriorates and how the studies suffer. After I heard the discussion, however, I realized that all other plans were chimerical; this was the only simple one, the only sensible one, the only one that was really economical and that would win for us the social prestige to which we were entitled. They assured me that "Cap" had figured it all out, that "Cap" was a mathematician, and that he knew that one dollar would not pay a bill for five; so I was won over.
The time for the party was set and the prepara​tions began. They persuaded me at the outset as treasurer of the corporation to have the house painted—it would look so much better and besides it was needing a new coat of paint pretty badly. The painting of course necessitated the fixing of the gutters, the pointing of the walls, and the repairing of the roof, until I was somewhat in the position of the woman who, having yielded to the temptation of buying new curtains for the parlor ended up finally by being compelled, in order to make things harmonize, entirely to refurnish the house. I was not at all sorry, however, for I realize that it is poor business policy not to keep the house in excellent repair, and my painting the exterior of the house stimulated the fellows within. They organized a kalsomining corps and retinted all the rooms from the basement to the dormitory; those artistically inclined mixed the colors, and the skilled laborers applied them. All the wood work was varnished or rubbed with oil, the rugs were cleaned, new curtains were bought, and the beds were thoroughly overhauled and put into shape. The house had not had such a cleaning since the last house party. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment was the straightening up of the closets. The fellows found things crammed into the remotest corners of those closets that they could not remember that they had ever possessed. They ​unearthed personal effects that had been lost for years—textbooks, notebooks, sweaters, skates, ball bats, and other athletic supplies sufficient to stock a gym store. They even went so far in their reforms as to clean up the kitchen and the back yard. I am sure the cook had a shock when she saw the kitchen range shining and the kitchen utensils in mathematical order. But if nothing else had been accomplished, the cleaning of the closets would (as a sanitary measure) have been worth all the time and money that the house party cost.
The girls invited to the party were to arrive Thursday noon. Wednesday evening I called at the house to see how things were going and to offer a little encouragement. It was really a sad sight that met my gaze. The house was still in pretty dire confusion. They had torn everything out of its hiding place, had piled it in the middle of the floor, and, tired and cross, they were sitting around looking at the chaotic heap. If I had not seen house parties before, I should have been sure that no order would ever be evolved out of the mix-up, but I had faith that they would burn what they could not hide or get into some sort of respectable shape.
Before going home I visited the hall which was being decorated for the formal dance. The room ​was filled with tired or active or irritated brothers doing what they could to carry out the elaborate plan for internal decoration of the room (infernal decoration one of the fellows said it might more appropriately be called) which had been prepared by one of the artistically inclined brothers. The windows, some of which opened upon a blank dormitory wall, were to be filled with elaborately designed panels in black and white of tall cypress trees behind which a brilliant full moon was rising. There was a dado of black and white about the walls, there was a huge screen of black and white to conceal the gallery, and huge lanterns hung from the ceiling and great lamps stood on the floor all designed to represent the shadowy grove of cypress trees and the brilliant full moon rising behind them. Of course any one not a novice knows very well that to get these much desired effects requires a considerable amount of wielding of the hammer and the saw and the paint brush, and running of electric wires and chewing of the rag, and consequent weariness of the flesh. When I arrived they were just at the stage where everything is confusion and nothing seems to be coming out right. The whole lot seemed exhausted and disgusted, and I am sure if at that moment a vote could have been taken on the advisability of giving a house party, there would have been no voice to ​champion the enterprise. It all reminded me of the last rehearsal of an amateur play when every one loses his temper and forgets his lines. It is one of the sure indications of a successful outcome of the performance. I knew for certain when I saw how wretchedly things seemed to be going that the result would be perfect.
I did not get to the party for an unfortunate and an unexpected telegram took me out of town on Thursday morning, and I did not get back to the house until Sunday evening. The girls had come and gone again, and the fellows were sitting around the fireplace talking it over, physically wrung out, but girding up their mental loins for the repair of their disorganized and wrecked studies. Everything had turned out all right. There had been no social blunders, no hitches in anything, nothing to regret. The girls had been charming, all of them, and pleased and complimentary beyond expression. They had thought the house delightful and had left money enough to buy a new rug to replace the worn one in the library, which had really been the one thing that had kept the furnishings of the place from seeming perfect. There was much self-congratulation and self-satisfaction on the part of every one, and much joy over the fact that it was all over and every one was alive. They had had a little time to take account of expenses, ​and of course even under "Cap's" careful management, the party had cost about twice what they had planned. They were like the man, however, who said that he did not get off as cheaply as he had thought he would, and he did not think he would. It had cost more than they thought it would, and each one of them had always thought it would, so they had been prepared for the worst and were satisfied. They had established their social prestige for a year or two, they had proved their ability to put on a really high class social function, and they were ready to have a good sleep and get back to the real work of college.
Seriously, I have never known an organization to give a house party that did not ultimately cost nearly twice as much, when all the bills were paid and the actual overheard expenses added on, as it was scheduled to cost. It is difficult to use judgment and to practice economy when one is entertaining a pretty girl. When we plan we are conservative; when we are in the midst of expenditures and the actual money is not going out, we are far less likely to hold ourselves down. There are so many unexpected things to be done, so many desirable ones, so much acting upon the impulse that the bills rapidily mount up. My experience has been that it is much easier in theory to keep down the bills than it is in practice. Any frater​nity that is going to give a house party ought to be prepared to meet expenditures twice as great as the committee planning the party say will be necessary, and it is not a bad thing to have the money in the till before the party is given. Otherwise it is like paying a security debt or a bill for something that has been long ago worn out.
It is usually an extravagant form of entertainment. The man who argues that it is cheap and can be done for little more than the ordinary formal party is either ignorant or an intentional deceiver. It is a form of social entertainment that has got more fraternities hopelessly into debt than any other that I know. Any organization which goes into it should not do so without seriously counting the cost, and the cost is frequently more than young fellows of modest means can afford. One's social standing is not dependent upon such a function. In point of fact most of the young women invited to house parties come from out of town and their entertainment adds little or nothing to the social prestige of the fraternity. Local people get in very slightly on these things; the social reputation which the fraternity develops is usually one of extravagance. The cost of the party, high as it sometimes is, is exaggerated by the neighbors, deplored by the faculty, and protested against by the home folks many of whom are ​unused to such things. The house party is the most difficult form of fraternity social dissipation to explain to the outsider; from his point of view it is little less than an orgy. It is a form of pleasure that is undoubtedly hard on a man's studies. The theoretical time taken up by the party seldom exceeds three days, but no house party was ever given that did not consume two weeks of actual time in discussion and preparation and participation and at least a week after it was over in getting back to a normal state of mind and emotion. A boy called me up while I have been writing this paper to ask my advice concerning his work. "What is the trouble?" I asked. "I simply can't get down to work since the house party," he replied. "We had so much pleasure and excitement that I cannot get it out of my mind." To a middle-aged, stolid parent or professor this may all seem like foolishness, but it is quite a regular and normal viewpoint for the young undergraduate.
I have never seen such a function where the program was not too congested. At the outset the fellows mean to be conservative, to give themselves a little time to think, to give their guests a few minutes to rest; but by the time the preparations have been fully completed the different events have been planned so closely to follow one another that there is little opportunity to eat and none at all ​to sleep. The girls are rushed from one event to another until by the time things break up and they are ready to leave for home they look as jaded and haggard as a colony of convalescents. If I were giving advice to a committee planning the program for a house party, I should say plan to allow the girls twelve hours a day for sleeping and putting on their pretty clothes, and they will bless you for your thoughtfulness and not go home the physical wrecks that they usually are.
The house party has more possibilities for risqué situations than any other social function the fraternity can give. There is social danger in it, if it is not conventionally managed and carefully chaperoned, as many a fraternity has learned to its sorrow when it was too late.
The extravagance of the fraternity almost always leads to emulation on the part of another. "You should have seen the Delt house," one man whom I was advising to be conservative said to me. "They must have spent a heap of money. We are to have some of the same girls at our dance, and how do you suppose we should feel if our party seemed cheap?" There is no logic that can meet an argument of this sort. If you give a party, the undergraduate thinks, it must be a little better than the best, whether you have money to stand for it or not.
​There are some advantages. If it is done well, it requires generalship, organization, and thought. It gives social training and develops social experience as very few other functions can. It takes no little finesse for a group of young fellows successfully to carry through a one day party, but when the time grows into three or four the strain and obligation are more than proportionately increased. Sometimes I have felt that this effort was worth while, especially if the success of the undertaking were not made to depend wholly upon the expenditure of money, but rather upon a thoughtfully worked out plan, in the carrying out of which every man in the chapter did his part. If the fellows could only realize it, there is so much more to be gained in effect by using their heads than by spending money. Anyone can spend mohey if he has it or can get it, but it takes a good man to plan an original and effective function that can be carried out with the expenditure of a moderate amount of money. Some of the most delightful parties, however, that I have ever attended have cost the least in the expenditure of actual money. There are so many opportunities to show good taste, and refinement, and thoughtfulness and breeding that if the fellows get by with it, they have had an experience worth while. There are many dangers to avoid—dangers of overdoing ​the attentions paid to the guests, of wearing them out by long programs and all night performances, and by never giving them a chance to rest or to be alone or to think over what they are doing, of careless and unconventional manners that it gives one a chance at moderation and self-restraint. It is a severe test of a man's ability to do two things well at once—to keep up his college work and not neglect his guests.
Leaving out of account entirely what it may do to the undergraduate's studies or social standing or pocketbook, the house party is unquestionably a good thing for the house. I have thought sometimes that our corporation which rents the house to the active chapter might well afford for the good of the property to contribute something every three or four years toward defraying the expenses of a house party or might give a generous rebate on the rent every time one is given, for there is such a cleaning and scrubbing and polishing, such a painting and kalsomining and varnishing, such a repairing and furbishing, and beautifying within and without as gets the house in condition, and keeps it from running down at the heel, and as makes it perennially looking fresh and new. It is for this reason, perhaps, that when I am asked to give advice about a house party, I view the project with less serious objec​tion than I otherwise might, for though I know the dangers and the expense, I also appreciate the compensations. It may not bring us social prestige, and it may lower our scholastic average, but it is thoroughly good for the house.