The Fraternity and the College (collection)/Concerning the Brothers in Town
The institution with which I am connected is located in a rural community between two cities, including those persons connected with the college itself, aggregating perhaps 25,000 inhabitants. The cities support two high grade high schools with excellent equipment. There are a good many well-to-do people in the community, and there is no lack of educated, intelligent fathers and mothers, regular citizens of the place, who have high intellectual ideals for themselves and for their children. It is a community for which I have the highest respect, and one in which for more than half of my life I have found it very pleasant to live.
Because of the excellent educational facilities, secondary and collegiate, which are furnished, there are a considerable number of transient dwellers in the two towns, who come from the remotest parts of the state and sometimes from the remotest parts of the world for the purpose of educating their children. Among this number are farmers, tired and retired, widows with only sons, prosperous merchants who have grown weary of the busy and exacting life they have been living and are seeking relaxation; anxious parents who have but one child to look after, or tender ones who have married off or otherwise settled the older members of the family, and who have moved into the college community to look after the youngest son. There are retired ministers and well-to-do widows, and business men with families who make an attempt to break into the active business affairs of one or the other of the two cities. It is on the whole an unusual and an intelligent community, with a large per cent of young people.
The two high schools are, therefore, well attended, and an unusually large percentage of those who graduate from these schools each June present themselves the next September for matriculation in one college or another of the University. Since there has always been the most intimate and cordial relations between the "Town and Gown," many of these students have been well known during their high school course by the members of the various Greek-letter fraternities, and upon their entrance into the University come up for discussion and consideration as prospective members of these organizations.
If these conditions were unique, it might be unnecessary to discuss them here, but this is, however, not the case. Many of the larger institutions of the country are similarly situated, and so very likely must meet problems similar to those which we encounter at the University of Illinois. Indiana, Purdue, Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, California, Washington, Missouri, and even Ohio and Cornell, with a score of smaller institutions, are situated as regards the local environment much the same as we are, and no doubt each furnishes countless illustrations of the situations which I am going to present.
The peculiar environment of students who get their training in the high schools of a college town, in an unusual degree affects their fitness for consideration for membership in a college fraternity, and their influence and usefulness in such a fraternity, should they ultimately gain admission to one. As to whether or not I consider students better or worse material for fraternity membership than are those students who enter college from without the college community, will appear later in this discussion. Since my experience and my official relations in the University have been for fifteen years almost entirely with men, I shall confine my remarks and my illustrations in this paper to them, rather than to both men and women.
No one, who is observing, and who has lived long in a college community can fail to be impressed with the large extent to which the moral and social habits, the dress, and in fact, the whole life of the college student are reflected in the life of the high school student. The high school student and his parents would, perhaps, be loath to admit it, but the fact remains, nevertheless. This tendency may be seen in all high schools, but to nothing like the extent that is apparent in the college town. In our town the development of high school athletics, the formation of high school fraternities and fraternities masquerading under the name of clubs, the giving of class functions, and the general imitation of all the social and physical diversions of the college man are annually seen in the life of the high school student. Sophomore parties, junior promenades, and senior balls are not at all uncommon in the high schools of a college town. In many cases the graduate of such a school when he comes to college has little to learn of social diversion if not of social dissipation. He has learned most of the social tricks usually attributed to the college man. Too often the habits of life for the acquiring of which he has used the college student as a model are not the habits which will help him most, nor are they the ones which are most common among the better class of students; they are on the contrary those practices which are often most hurtful, which stand out most boldly, and for which college students are most commonly criticized because of their effect upon the pursuit of their college work. A college town because of the multiplicity of its social and athletic attractions has in many instances shown itself a poor place to train a high school student for fraternity membership. The high school sport in a college town is the last word in sartorial and social finesse, and the last man to settle down when he goes to college in his own town.
Because they have lived in an atmosphere of college customs, have mingled with college students and fluttered about the outskirts of college functions, these high school students often find little that is new or interesting when they change their base of operations from the high school to the college. They are blase to the excitements and interests of college. They form a large percentage of those nomads in college who are always wandering about looking for something they can never find. They soon tire of college work; they get a job; or the college authorities tire of them. A young fellow came into my office only a few days ago to go through the process of formally withdrawing from college. "Why are you going, Fred?" I asked. "Oh, I can't find what I want," was the reply. It wasn't, of course, complimentary to our curriculum, but I knew that the real reason was that he had been sated with a certain pseudo college atmosphere before he entered. There was nothing new to him, nothing interesting, nothing to arouse his curiosity; he had seen it all years before he became a real part of it. He did not know it, but what he was really wanting was to get away from home, and to see college customs different from those upon which he had been brought up.
The college boy who lives in town occupies a peculiar social position. He can not break away from his old friends—in fact he often ought not to do so—and he has little desire to do so. He is still a member of his old local social clans, and he is usually eager to break into those of the col—lege. Not all of his old friends are in college, and, having little to do in the evenings, they offer him the allurements of the old pleasures which he enjoyed with them when in the high school. All this time, too, the organizations of the college are calling for him and it is no wonder that he is confused. Too frequently he tries to be loyal to the old ties and to take on the new—a task quite as difficult, as satisfactorily at the same time to serve God and Mammon—and naturally he succeeds badly at both. Sometimes he clings tenaciously to the old life—which ordinarily means the old girl—and so misses one of the most helpful experiences of college life. Over and over again I have seen the college boy who lives in town sticking so closely to his high school associates, absorbed so completely in the interests of the town, that he knew as little of the college life as if he were living a hundred miles away from it. The hour in the classroom and the chance acquaintance which he might pick up in the street car on the way home were in the main the opportunities which he had for acquainting himself with college life. He left college a veritable stranger to its real home life and with only a few facts as the result of his four years of college training. Occasionally a boy living in the college town sees the wonderful opportunity which college life offers for the de—velopment of a new life, and makes the struggle which is required to break away from the old environment, and to establish himself in the new. He becomes a real part of the college life, and lives in it as other students do.
The boy who lives at home while he is going to college has another and quite as serious a difficulty with which to contend, and that is the influence of home. Most parents are so gratified at having their sons at home that they entirely overlook the tendency of such a condition to rob the boy of initiative and independence. I am sure I do not underestimate the protective value of the home influence at the period of a young fellow's life when he is in the high school. I think on the whole, however, that the average boy who lives at home while he is going to college loses in independence and self-reliance and initiative by so doing. I have no recollection of any young fellow who was strengthened, or stimulated in college or saved from loafing, or from other bad habits by having either or both of his parents with him. The mother who moves to a college town simply to look after her son is usually not doing him a real service. She may give herself satisfaction and him pleasure, but the result is usually of no real advantage to either. It is often a matter of convenience or necessity or economy that a son lives at home while going to college, and when this condition exists, it should be accepted and made the best of; but my experience has been that it is more often a handicap than otherwise to the boy in that it prevents him from looking after himself, from making his own decisions, from solving his own problems, from correcting his own mistakes. When he is at home he learns to depend on mother to call him up in the morning, and father to call him down at night, and he knows as he did in the high school that if he is going wrong some one will detect it, and call his attention to the fact. If any trouble arises in the college, father or mother—usually mother—is right on the job to probe into the difficulty, and to correct it before son has had a chance to know that he is in trouble or has had an opportunity to grow stronger by getting himself out.
All these things that I have discussed are of importance to the fraternity which is considering for membership the young fellow who lives at home. At first thought many of them may seem trifling, but they influence the character of these young men and connect themselves strongly with their influence and effectiveness when they become active members of the fraternity. On the whole, I believe the records of the university will show that a pretty large percentage of the young men living at home who have joined a fraternity have been poor students, and that relatively few of them have graduated. Of those men who have graduated there have been a few who have had conspicuously high grades, but of these I can count on the fingers of one hand all that have been of any material help or advantage to their chapters. The reason is not difficult to find.
The organization of the modern fraternity as I have before said, is the organization of a home, with all the obligations upon each member that such an organization implies. It is an organization which demands allegiance and regular help from every one in it, and this allegiance is not one that can profitably be divided. The married man, the man who lives at home, the member of the faculty who may still keep his active membership in the fraternity, are in a class by themselves and can scarcely hold quite the same relationship to the fraternity that the other members do. It may be asked what the fraternity has to offer to these other men and to the man who lives in town. In reply I should say that it furnishes him a circle of friends, it helps to connect him more closely with the college and college interests, and it frequently gives him social prestige and political prominence which he could not otherwise easily secure. In short is brings to him all the advantages of an organization as opposed to single-handed and unaided effort. It is therefore likely to be of more advantage to such a man to join a fraternity than it is to be to the fraternity which he joins.
The fraternity man who lives at home is likely to be constantly between the Scylla of home and the Charybdis of the fraternity—and between these two he will have a hard time not to go upon the rocks. If he is honest and sincerely desires to do his duty to each, he will often find himself between two conflicting duties—his mother will demand that he mow the front lawn while the president of the fraternity will as vigorously insist that he help wax the floor for the house party; his parents will complain that he is never at home, and the fraternity officers will regularly criticize him for never being at the chapter house. Unless he has unusual strength of character he is likely to be thought a poor son and an unreliable brother. A sensitive conscientious boy often sees the difficulty of successfully serving the home and the fraternity, and either gives up the struggle or gradually draws away from the fraternity, excepting when forced by necessity to visit it. Such a student generally helps to bring up the fraternity scholarship average, but he ordinarily does little or nothing in helping to exercise moral control or to further a strong internal management. "How is Gray getting on?" I asked a fraterntiy man only a few days ago with reference to a freshman pledge. "We don't know much about Gray," was the reply. "We see very little of him at the house, and we don't seem to be able to get him interested in fraternity matters." Gray was a man who wanted to be a student, and when I talked with him I found that he had decided that he could not at the same time successfully keep up his obligations to the home and to the fraternity, so he had followed the lines of least resistance and had cut the fraternity.
If on the other hand the town member is a little tricky he soon learns to play the home against the fraternity—or vice versa. When his grades are reported low, or his attendance is lax his fraternity president explains that they see very little of him at the fraternity house for he does most of his studying at home. When in a casual conversation with father I suggest a little more assiduous attention to the books, I am told the boy does most of his studying at the fraternity and that he is seldom in evidence at home. The fraternity blames the home folks, and the home folks blame the fraternity, and between the two the freshman evades responsibility, and soon flunks out of college. It is largely the divided interest which brings about the result. He has two places to study, two sets of social interests, two homes, and he is loyal to neither.
"How are your town boys coming on?" I asked, a few days ago, an officer of one of our fraternities which has made a practice of pledging a rather large number of the local high school boys. "Wretchedly," he answered pessimistically. "We've never had one that was worth the struggle we made to get him." I could pick out a few illustrious exceptions during the last ten years, but as I went over in my mind the men coming from the local high schools who had been connected with his fraternity, I was forced to agree that in his statements he was on the whole pretty safely within the limits of truth. The too frequent result is that the active brothers who live in town either loaf between home and the fraternity, and so develop into lazy indifferent students who soon withdraw on their own initiative or at the suggestion of the college authorities, or they develop into serious students who stay close at home and do their work, neglecting pretty completely their obligations to the chapter. In neither case are they of much real advantage to the growth and development: of the fraternity excepting in so far as the organization is able to shine from the reflected glory of the good student's scholastic and political attainments. I have in mind now one of our most active students in scholarship and student activities who has in reality done little or nothing toward the development of his fraternity. He could not; for he lives at home and every minute of his time is taken up with his various student activities, his studies, or his home duties which are numerous. The fraternity has helped his social standing and furthered his political ambitions, while he has in return raised the scholastic average of the fraternity. In actual fact, however, neither has in any vital way influenced or helped to develop the other.
To refuse to consider these local candidates for fraternity membership is of course not likely to be thought of. Their social standing and the inter-relationships which exist between them and the present or former members of the various fraternities as well as their own personal attractiveness would preclude such an action even though the general thesis be granted that such men have in the past been of little real use to the fraternity. Their families often have high social standing and do much for the social interests of the fraternities. There is a remedy, however, which a few of our fraternities have been trying and which I think is in most cases a possible and a feasible solution of the difficulty; this is that the local man be required to live in the fraternity house as are the other men. The fraternities that have tried this method have found it satisfactory. The objection to the added expense which may be urged by some parents is in few cases a tenable one, since few parents of the young men who become fraternity members would be in any degree embarrassed by the relatively small added expense of such a requirement. Such a student could be given a regular allowance and be made to live upon it. He would be near home, and since he would be free from its duties he yet would have a chance to develop all the initiative and self-reliance of a fellow away from hime. He would be a real part of the fraternity, and would soon assume the responsibilities which devolve upon the other men. As the situation now is, in a majority of cases the young fellow who lives in town takes little more active interest in the real running of his fraternity than he would in the operation of any other boarding house in which he might be taking an occasional meal. He comes around at intervals, learns to call the brothers by their nick names, takes an active part in the dances, but so far as bearing his share of the real burdens is concerned, he very seldom does.
Of the two classes of members who live in town which I have mentioned the shifty lethargic brother and the hard-working student who stays at home and sidesteps the regular visit to the chapter house, the former is of course much the less desirable, for though the stay-at-home may be of little or no service in helping along the business of managing and directing the internal affairs of the chapter, such influence and attainments as he has count toward the betterment of the organization and add to its prestige. The other type of man is a distinct injury; he is a good fellow who never gets the fraternity anywhere.
If the taking of town men into the house does not in all cases seem feasible or possible an alternative suggests itself. The man who can not come into the house and so assume his share of the fraternity's responsibilities, should be required positively to demonstrate his scholastic ability before he is initiated even if his initiation has to be deferred to the sophomore year. The boy who lives at home is, because of this fact, not likely to serve the fraternity or be influenced by it in anything like the same degree as does the boy who lives in the chapter house. For that very reason he should be made to demonstrate his claim to some superior ability before he is taken into the chapter, and the easiest way for him to do this is by getting at least an average if not a high scholastic standing.
The brother who lives in town is not infrequently, because of the very reason which brings his parent or his parents to town with him, a petted indulged son. The plan of making such a boy move into the chapter house, in the few instances in which it has been tried with us, has worked admirably and has developed in these young fellows more self-reliance, and has encouraged them to more systematic and regular habits of study. I believe that if fraternities would insist either that these local pledges should become at once a part of the chapter house family or if this is not feasible, before initiation they should demonstrate their ability to do first rate college work in all the subjects for which they are registered, most of the difficulties which fraternities are constantly encountering with the brother who lives in town would be solved, and the body of fratres in urbe might become as strong as we all wish it were.