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

A neighbor of mine is a man who has moved into town from a farm because, tired of certain deprivations of the country, he wishes to enjoy the conveniences of urban life. He is finically careful and thoughtful for the comfort of every member of his family. The smooth cement walk leading by his house to town, the paved street for his automobile, the city water system, and electric lights all contribute to his pleasure and the pleasure of his family. He does not object to paying for these because they touch his own life directly. General city improvements he opposes. He does not want a respectable city building, he voted against the new high school, he rails against improving the park system. He has family spirit but no city spirit.
When I first began teaching in the University I had an experience with a young fellow in one of my classes whom I detected helping another man short on facts through a final examination. When I demurred at the proceeding and asked for an explanation he informed me that the needy student was a fraternity brother of his in intellectual distress, and that loyalty to his fraternity required that he help out this mentally indigent man. I tried to explain to him that he owed certain obligations to the college to which he was ​disloyal by his dishonest acts, but I had a hard time to get him to see the point. He was impelled by misconceived fraternity spirit; he was lacking in college spirit.
Sometimes a man in his over-enthusiasm for an organization of which he may be a member forgets that the fraternity is only a minor part of the college, and that his obligation to the college should be first and foremost. It is this point that an organization does not grasp that is willing to run secretly in violation of a college regulation, and it is in this regard that a national organization finds its case indefensible when it permits a chapter to continue in opposition to the rules of the college. It is just the difference between loyalty to an organization and loyalty to the college.
The relative obligations which he is under as regards family and state and nation have confused many a man of mature years. It is not always easy to determine rightly which of a number of obligations should take precedence, which one has the most weight. Not an hour ago I received a letter from a man who had some years ago contracted a debt now long since due. Referring to this debt he said, "I can do nothing less than acknowledge that the debt to which you refer is a just one and one which I expect to meet, but only recently I have contracted other obligations which ​seem to me more binding—obligations which I feel must be discharged before I meet the previous one." I might perhaps be willing to argue the question with him, but his is a problem which every man sooner or later must meet.
What one owes to the college and what: one owes to his fraternity will continually come up for discussion. Many men feel that when they have met their obligations to their fraternity their duty is done. I have even had men go so far as to say that they cared very little for other fraternity men and they did not consider at all the men outside of fraternities. They can not see that it is the existence of the college that makes the fraternity possible and that far above fraternity spirit and loyalty to one's chapter is college spirit. The fraternity man helping his weak brother dishonestly through an examination may feel that he is imbued with fraternity spirit, but he has not yet had even a glimmering of what true college spirit means. Because the fraternity man is often so closely united to the members of his organization he more than other men sometimes needs to have his attention called to this general principle of loyalty to the college, for it will be strange if the time does not come to him when he will have to decide between showing fraternity spirit and college spirit. If the boy can see it rightly it is ​about the same as having to choose whether he will stand by his family or the golf club.
College spirit is a somewhat difficult term specifically to define. It is a commendable feeling or attitude of mind apparently, but I have never yet been able to get from any undergraduate student whem I have asked, an adequate definition of the term, though I have sought such information persistently. From the various scattered opinions which I have gathered, college spirit seems usually to be connected with an athletic contest, and is most violent in its manifestation at a class row. In the opinion of the average undergraduate, the man who makes the loudest noise, and who stirs up the greatest riot is indisputably showing the most intense college spirit.
The vast majority of mained and injured underclassmen whom I, as a disciplinary officer, have interviewed within the last ten years have excused their condition on the ground that it was induced by a feeling of college spirit. If Brown's lessons are unlearned it is because he had to go to the Chicago game with the team, for "It's a fellow's duty to stir up a little college spirit," you know. If Jones is caught hazing a freshman or pasting illiterate and vulgar proclamations on every residence in town, it is purely an unselfish recognition on his part of a sophomore's duty to keep college spirit alive. If Smith comes home half tipsy, it is ​still another case of spirit. If after an athletic victory a crowd of students smashes into an opera house, and leaves the properties in splinters, throws a street car off the track, after having knocked out the windows to improve the ventilation, or paints exaggerated class numerals in the most public and sacred places, these are simply quite innocent methods of showing college spirit. And the thing about it all hardest to understand is that the young fellows who offer this excuse as an explanation of their depredations do so with the utmost seriousness, and seemingly with perfect confidence that it will be taken by intelligent, sensible people as a legitimate reason for making night hideous and the day to be dreaded.
It is true that most of the people with whom I have discussed the subject of college spirit have been young people in college whose judgments have not been fully developed, and who have been filled with a youthful enthusiasm which may sometimes have overbalanced their more deliberate conclusions, but not all the people who seem to hold such opinions as I have suggested are young. Some of them are sedate heads of families, and otherwise sensible business men near whom I may have sat at an athletic game, or whose tales of college escapades I may have listened to at a class reunion. Most of the evidences of so-called college spirit which the young fellow not yet out of high ​school sees in his elders or hears discussed by them consist of just such manifestations as I have indicated. It is no wonder then that the freshmen just entering college should come with the impression that college spirit consists mostly of noise and not at all of duty.
I make no objection to these methods of showing a feeling of loyalty to one's alma mater. I remember, however, being told when I was a young boy that the child who cried the loudest forgot his pain the most quickly, so, though I know that analogy is often the weakest form of argument, it may be true that the fellow who yells the most boisterously at the game is the quickest to forget his allegiance to the college when the opera house is being stormed. The development of real and genuine feeling for one's alma mater must be gradual. The freshman who comes to college, in the Middle West at least, comes with very little idea of what it means. In many cases he is the first member of his family to have a college education, and his conception of what such a training implies is summed up in a practical estimate of how much it will in future years be worth to him in dollars and cents. There is to him at the outset at least very little suggestion of obligation or of sentiment. These feelings, if they come at all, come later.
​"I was a freshman and desperately homesick," an upperclassman confessed to me not long ago. "Everything was new and strange to me; the big buildings confused me; and the thuosands of students running here and there not one of whom I knew seemed to isolate me more than ever. I was a stranger, and the college meant no more to me than a great big factory might have done. I did my work because there was nothing else to do.
"There was a football game early in November, and I wandered out mechanically to the field. As the game progressed my interest was aroused. The team fought hard, but luck seemed going against us. Then suddenly Pogue broke away with the ball, dodged the man next to him, shook off a half dozen others, and made a run across the field for a touchdown. All my indifference was gone. Ten thousand people were on their feet and my hat was off, and I was yelling wildly as I alternately hugged and pounded the man next to me. I thrilled with a new feeling. It was my college and my team, and I had a part and a share in every building and every tree on the campus. It was the birth in me of college spirit."
Sometimes the feeling may lose the intensity which one has in youth. Time and distance and absorption in the strenuous duties of life which come to most of us separate us from the associations and the spirit of college life; new interests ​come into our lives and for the time being we forget the old. My classmates returned this year to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our graduation. One man said to me, "When I got into town the first thing I did was to take a walk about the campus. I did not see a familiar face; most of the buildings were new since I graduated; the town was metamorphosed, and all the old familiar scenes were gone. What a fool I was, I thought, for coming back. I sat down gloomy and disappointed. A man walked by me looking about apparently as I had done. His figure was aldermanic but some way familiar. 'Why, it's Fred Waterman,' I said to myself, and I rushed up to him and introduced myself and shook him by the hand, and gradually it all came back to me. On Commencement day when the long procession passed by me and I heard the band playing and took in the beauty and the meaning of it all, I thrilled again as when I was an undergraduate. It was mine, this college, with all its wealth of associations and aspirations and ideals, and it had helped more than I could realize to make me what I am. It was mine and I loved it all, and no one could take it away from me." The feeling may wane, but it comes back again.
Sometimes, perhaps, the undergraduate fails to grasp all that the sentiment may signify. Two or three years ago, following a somewhat hilarious ​and widely advertised onslaught upon the theatrical business in the down-town district, the faculty, or the Young Men's Christian Association, or the Students' Union, or some well-intentioned organization at the University planned on the back campus a seemly well-ordered celebration and exhibition of approval by the undergraduates, following a baseball victory, with the idea of bringing about reform. Boxes and other inflammable débris were hauled to a proper place, the celebration was put in charge of a number of upperclassmen, and after dinner the student body gathered in a quiet and sober way to look on at the conflagration, and to listen to the yelling. Everything was orderly, and the enthusiasm was well under control. Standing near me was a young freshman who watched the flames of the bonfire unemotionally, and joined mechanically in the cheering. The performance was to him evidently dull. As the flames died down, the cheering ceased, and the crowd began to disintegrate, he turned to a companion, his face for the first time lighting with interest. "Now this thing's over," he said, "let's go down town and raise hell." He had caught, he imagined, an idea of real college spirit. College loyalty to him was best expressed through destruction and upheaval, a point of view, unfortunately, in no sense unique; he had missed the respect for ​the reputation and good name of the institution which comes from real love of the college.
The freshman perhaps may be excused for taking this attitude. At first he can be expected to have little real feeling; he can hardly feel himself a part of it; it has not taken hold of him. Whatever sentiment he may feel is a superficial one which is best expressed by noise. Certain college traditions and customs are most likely to impress on him more strongly than facts warrant the importance of noise as an expression of feeling. The freshman-sophomore contest or "scrap" is usually boisterous and rough; class contests in general are noisy and loud. More than anything else I believe that the modern custom of "rooting" under the direction and inspiration of a cheer leader is responsible for the over-estimate that is put upon noise as an indication of loyalty to the team or of college spirit in general. And this same cheer leading is with us in the Middle West becoming more and more freakish and bizarre. The man who can make a spectacular exhibition before the crowd is coming to feel himself a part of the show, and as a worthy stirrer up of college spirit he desires his expenses paid as is done with the regular members of the team. Omitting the fact that much of such cheering is discourteous to the members of the opposing team, and often intended solely to confuse or disconcert them, its ​advantages to the players it is supposed to encourage are usually negligible. The modern cheer leader can scarcely any longer be looked upon as an interpreter and a director of the real feeling of the crowd on the bleachers; he is in small if in any degree an inspirer of college spirit; he is the clown at the athletic circus who too often attracts to himself the attention which should be given to the main show. Such demonstrations have little to do with real college spirit. Nor can many of the things to which I have so far referred be seriously considered as either encouraging or revealing a love for the college or a respect for its good name; they provide means for the expression of youthful enthusiasm; they are an outlet—and sometimes a quite harmless one—for exuberant animal spirits, but they show, if at all, certainly in a very small degree, and in an extremely crude way, a real love and appreciation of the student's alma mater. There are other ways of revealing college spirit.
The man with real regard for the college will have respect for her good name; he will come in time to recognize the fact that wherever he goes he carries with him the reputation of the institution of which he is or has been a member, and that people who meet him judge of its character by his own, just as one reflects credit or discredit upon one's father and mother and all the members of ​one's family by one's conduct and character when away from them. A few years ago I rode on a street car from Cambridge to Boston with a young fellow, crude and half intoxicated, who was proclaiming loudly and persistently the merits of the west and the western university from which he had come. Even the placid New Englander looked up from the volume of Emerson in which he was absorbed and showed his disgust of the bad taste of this western rustic. I sank unobtrusively into a corner not wanting to speak lest I reveal by my dialect the locality of my birth, and thankful that my educational ancestry was not the same is his; and yet he thought he was showing strong college spirit.
College spirit gives one pride in the institution of which he is or has been a member. I knew a man once who came from a small country town in central Illinois. Nothing could have persuaded him that the churches, and the high school, and the water works, and the lighting system, and the city hall, and the skating rink in his town were not the most perfectly planned and magnificently executed of any in the country. In his mind the city library was the equal of the congressional library of Washington, and the First Presbyterian Church was the rival of St. Peter's. He had loyalty to his native village; he knew what it means to have spirit. In a similar though perhaps ​in a less blind way the college man should look upon his alma mater. He may see her faults, but he may not publish them. He respects her character and he is willing to protect it. He feels an interest and an ownership in everything that is connected with her. He ought not to be able to hear her name without a feeling of pride. If he feels otherwise something is wrong with him.
College spirit may sometimes even require that a man seem to sacrifice his own personal interests or the interests of his fraternity for the good of the college. I am at present together with other faculty men and students a member of a board that chooses the managers each year of certain of our college publications. The positions are much sought after, they carry with them considerable honor and a good financial remuneration. One of the candidates not long ago was a fraternity brother of a student member of the board making the appointment. When it came to the discussion of this candidate everyone thought that his fraternity brother would champion his cause and ultimately vote for him. On the contrary he said, naming the man. "I, of course, have a high regard for him, since he is one of the best friends I have ever had. He is, I think, however, not so well qualified to fill the position as either of the other men, and I can not advocate his candidacy and I can not vote for him." Here was a case ​where the good of the college was made to outweigh, as it should have done, the interests of the fraternity. The man's actions were an illustration of real college spirit.
College spirit of the right sort should induce a man to do his college work. We call the athlete "yellow" who shirks, who does not do his best in the game. We think him without spirit and without loyalty if, having the ability, he refuses to come out and help win a victory for the college. How much more then does the man lack spirit who having plenty of time and a good mind neglects his studies—the main part of college life—and loses the intellectual game which he could easily have won. The flunker and the man who does his work indifferently or in a slovenly way has no real college spirit—the feeling that permeates his system is simply an imitation of the real thing. College spirit should keep a man from doing the things which would bring discredit on the college. It should hold him to the high ideals for which the college stands; it should keep him from vulgarity and dishonesty, and if he is an athlete from discourtesy to members of other college teams with whom he plays. Wherever a college man goes he communicates an impression of the college from which he comes; if he has the right spirit he will want that impression to be a good one. The members of athletic teams, or of other ​college organizations, or the crowds of students who sometimes go with these teams, do not always realize that by their conduct quite as much as by their performance on a team, or a club, they may show themselves "yellow" and lacking the true spirit. A crowd of students wandering about the city of Chicago, or coming home on a late train, are given a more severe test as to their possession of college spirit than are these same students shouting on Marshall Field for the encouragement of a losing football team.
Real college spirit will induce one to make sacrifices for the college. There comes to my mind now a picture of an old man isolated by the distance of half a continent from the institution which he had loved, and to which he had given the best years of his life. His health had failed; he could work no more, but his last thought concerned the college and how he could best help those who, lacking means, yet still wanted the benefits of an education; and it was this thought of Edward Snyder that made possible the loan fund which has helped so many scores of students who could not otherwise have had the opportunity to claim Illinois as their alma mater. He had real college spirit. The football captain who keeps his life clean and his body in training in order that he may play a better game and be a more effective leader; the fraternity man who stays in at night in order ​that he may set a good example to the freshmen trying hard to learn how to study; the sophomore who keeps out of the escapade in which he would naturally take delight, but which would bring discredit and dishonor to the college; the graduate who is honest and straight for the sake of his college ideals; the student who by his life, and accomplishments in and out of college reflects credit on his institution—all these show college spirit. It is very little a matter of yelling, or of spectacular demonstration, it is a matter of standing by the college, and of living up to the ideals of scholarship and character which the college sets.
"It is a small college," Daniel Webster said of his own alma mater, "but there are those who have learned to love it." Sometimes, on a bright morning in September, riding in on the "Central," the undergraduate returning from his summer vacation looks out of the car window as he sees the town of his destination approaching, and in the distance he catches a glimpse of the familiar sturdy towers of University Hall. He is getting back to college, and the sight of the old building gives him a thrill of joy; stirs in him an added desire—to be and to do something worth while; purges him for the moment of all that is low and sordid, and makes him want to do his best, to be and to accomplish something worthy of the college. That is college spirit.