The Fraternity and the College (collection)/The High School Fraternity
My first hand knowledge of high school fraternities has been gained entirely through a rather remote acquaintance with these organizations as they are seen in the local high schools in the two towns between which the University is situated. In one town there are no fraternities; they have clubs, however, which are more democratic I am told than fraternities, and do not sound so pretentious. The other town is somewhat more ambitious, and so has a number of fraternities for both boys and girls. Their social endeavors are numerous and interesting I judge from the accounts I see in the local papers, and the social standards which they maintain are high. The members come from the most prosperous—and so of course the best—families in town. Occasionally I hear rumors of the heartaches of those who did not get in or of the undue dissipations of those who did; but I know little, and I have had experience enough to be sure that much that I read is, perhaps, touched up by an enthusiastic and imaginative reporter.
Some of my more mature friends who have had the experience of belonging to one of these organizations during their preparatory or high school life have given me their view points with regard to the influence of high school fraternities upon young boys, but these views are so varied and connected with so much that is in each case personal that I have never felt that they were broad and unprejudiced enough to influence me materially in forming a tenable opinion of my own. So far as I remember the opinions which I have received have come from fellows who have lived away from home while attending academies or from others in small cities where conditions were somewhat easily controlled. I have talked to but few men from a city like Chicago who have been members of such an organization and who are far enough away from the experience to have a reasonable perspective.
Only a few weeks ago an old class mate of mine was recounting to me his preparatory school experiences. He had been a member of a small fraternity, and he counted it as one of the most delightful and most helpful influences of his life. The friends whom he made during the years of his secondary school training were friends whom he had kept into middle life and were the ones whose friendship he valued most highly. It is true that he was not at home while he was attending this academy and so had the greater need of close associations and the relationships and affiliations which a fraternity might give.
Another friend on the contrary said to me but recently that he considered his high school fraternity experience detrimental to his scholastic and moral development. It took him away from home, it required time which should have been given to his studies, it set for him false and artificial standards of living, and caused him when really only a boy to attempt to imitate the social habits and practices of mature men some of which were distinctly bad. It drew too distinct a line of demarcation between boys and too formally separated him, he said, from his companions who did not belong to the organization. He did not think it was worth anything like what it cost him. I have, therefore, had little help from my friends in attempting to form my conclusions as to the merits of these organizations.
As I have said elswhere, the tendency to form into groups and to organize clubs is entirely normal both for young and old people. Whatever we may say or whatever legislation we may enact we shall have little success in preventing organizations of young people and of old for social purposes.
As I see the high school fraternity from a distance, however, and as I see the members of this fraternity after they have come to college, it seems to me that the organization may justly be criticized in various ways. Before mentioning these points of criticism, however, I may say in passing that in the minds of outsiders who know nothing first hand of fraternities and who are opposed to them purely on account of what they have heard or of what they have read in the newspapers, there is no difference between fraternities whether they are professional or social, whether they are organized in a high school or are conducted in a university. The college fraternity has been blamed in the past and will be blamed in the future for any and all derelictions of the members of high school fraternities so long as these are in existence. I have no doubt but that it could be shown, if one cared to make the investigation, that most of the sins that have been laid at the doors of college fraternities, had their origin in what some outsider has seen in the conduct of some members of high school fraternities or in what he has read with reference to them. To the layman "pigs is pigs" and a fraternity is a fraternity and as such to be condemned wherever it may be found. Much of the legislation in the various states against Greek letter fraternities is said on very good authority to have had its inspiration in some such episode as I have referred to.
The first criticism which I should make upon the high school fraternity as I have received an impression from a distance, is that the organization subserves little good purpose. One of the main purposes of the college fraternity, as I have said elsewhere, is to develop relationships and associations which form a substitute for home life in the case of young fellows in college who are away from home and home influences. The ordinary high school fraternity can not do this. On the contrary instead of emphasizing the discipline and influences of home, it tends very often to take a boy away from home and in extreme cases to break down the influence of home. It is too artificial for children in their first or second year in the high school to become members of so formal an organization as are most of the organizations I have known or have been told about. It is an oldfashioned view, I am aware, but, when I hear of the gallivanting around of these children or see the account of their social escapades in the paper, I always feel that they should be sent to bed sanely at nine rather than allowed to give house parties and formal dances and dinners as they now do. Their organization seems to me too rigid, too set, too inflexible, and too much like the cut and dried organizations of grown-ups. There is nothing of 'the healthy simple life of children in it.
The expense, also, even for people of means is by no means inconsiderable. Cabs and candy, flowers and party clothes all count up pretty rapidly, and nothing is too good for these young sports. I looked over one of these fourteen-year-olds not long ago starting out in his tuxedo to an all night fraternity show at about the time some one should have been tucking him into bed and kissing him good night, and I could not help but ask myself what he would be doing when he really reached manhood. Besides the extravagance, the struggle to emulate all the social gyrations of adult life which these youngsters engage in, there is often I have no doubt real dissipation, for the step from extravagance to dissipation is only a short one. I have more than enough examples of the high school fraternity man who has brought with him to college all the evil results of drinking, gambling, and disease acquired through his relationship in his high school fraternity. But even if this story of dissipation were not true, beginning so early to run the social gamut robs the child of many of the real social pleasures to which he is later entitled, and for which his taste has been sated by his too easy and too intemperate indulgence. If the fraternity in the high school were an organization for children, I should not so much complain; it is, however, an organization as I have seen it in which children imitate all the social indiscretions of adults.
In college I have had considerable opportunity to observe the young man after he has graduated from the high school fraternity and has begun his college career, and my criticism of the high school fraternity man is based for the most part upon the fact that his life in the high school fraternity seems not to have fitted him to get the most out of his life in college. Fraternity officers all over the country would not have taken the action they have done ultimately barring him from membership in the Greek-letter fraternity if they had not felt that he was a poor candidate for admission to that organization. The opposition to high school fraternities on the part of the Interfraternity Conference is the result of a considerable experience with high school fraternity men and a study of their fitness for activity in real fraternity life.
The high school fraternity is apparently in little or no sense a real brotherhood. Its purposes are not to bring men closer together, to inculcate in them high ideals of morality and scholarship, or to throw around them the protection and the influences of home. Membership does not demand the sacrifice of each for the good of the whole; there is little thought of the development of the individual through his assuming responsibility for the management and the control of the others. All this responsibility, if it is assumed by any one, is taken by the parents or the guardians of these boys who for the most part at least are living at home and who are supposedly subject to the government of home. The main purpose of the organization seems to be to furnish an opportunity to its members to exercise their social proclivities, to have a good time, and to shirk rather than to develop responsibility. The furnishing of a home and the development of the restraints and the influences of home life, the formation of definite habits and principles of character which seem to me the main object and purpose of the Greek-letter fraternity in college and of other societies organized upon the same general basis is, in the high school fraternity, entirely lacking. This is in my mind the circumstance and the condition which discredits the high school fraternity man and makes him undesirable for consideration for fraternity membership when he comes to college.
My observation of the high school fraternity man after he comes to college is that as a rule he is an indifferent student. At home he has been a somewhat indulged boy, and in the high school he has devoted himself to social activities and to outside things rather than to the development of even good not to say excellent scholarship. He usually comes to college with little scholastic ambition and little respect for the man who wants to be something more than commonplace in his studies. He is often one of those who advocate "getting something more out of college than grades" though what that mythical something is it is frequently difficult to determine. He very frequently is the fellow who because of his indifference and his inability to "get down to work" succeeds in keeping down the scholastic average of the organization to which he may become allied, and he manages frequently to finish up his work in college by the end of the first year.
He is not infrequently an athlete, and if he keeps himself morally clean and physically free from disease—which he does not always do—he may achieve some athletic success when he gets to college and may derive considerable newspaper notoriety and advertising as a result. The college athlete, however, is in many cases a poor fraternity man in so far as his influence within the chapter, and his control of chapter difficulties is concerned. It is true he is frequently sought for because of the prestige which it is thought his achievements will give to the chapter, but his time is usually so taken up with his athletic training and his athletic practice that he has little or no time to devote to really helping run the fraternity. Since the high school fraternity does not demand much control and initiative on the part of its members and officers excepting such as have to do with social matters, when the high school man arrives at college he feels himself familiar with fraternity matters but he has had so little practice in fraternity management that he seldom takes this part of fraternity life with any seriousness.
Society is usually his strong lead. He has some social finesse, he is socially wise and experienced, and he drops easily into the rôle of the fusser. He is regularly on hand at the open house; he develops unusual skill and effectiveness in polishing up the furniture at sorority functions; he is a ladies' man from the outset, but he often lacks seriousness of purpose. The fraternity to him is too often only an opportunity to get into society and to wear another pin.
As I look over the list of the real leaders in our college community—the upperclassmen who have counted or who are counting for someting—I see that few of them are high school fraternity men. One must have staying qualities to get much of anywhere in college or in life. One must have, too, a serious purpose and push enough to carry it through. The high school fraternity man makes a good showing when he first appears in college; he has social talents, he talks well, he gives the hand gracefully, he makes a hit with the girls. But his enthusiasm wanes, he is frequently not a sticker, he falls behind, and he drops out or is dropped out to take a job or a position with father.
The reason is that his high school experience has not prepared him for real fraternity life or real college life; it has not set for him ideals of scholarship, ideals of home life; it has not trained him seriously to accept responsibility. The ideas of fraternity life which he brings with him to college are that the fraternity is simply a social club where boys may have a good time, when in fact, if it is to get any where, the fraternity is an organization of men in which character and scholarship and a healthy home life are to be fostered and in which social activities are only incidental. Coming as he does with his harmful experience and his erroneous ideas, it is difficult and in many cases impossible to change his viewpoint and to enlist his coöperation. It is for these reasons that it has seemed to me that on the whole the high school fraternity man is likely to be a second class investment for a college fraternity.