C. U. C. p. ALUMNI JOURNAL 



239 



Fraternities Criticized. 



New York City. 

 November 20th, igi6. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE C. U. C. P. 

 ALUMNI JOURNAL : 



Some time ago I applied for a position 

 with College privileges, when there was a 

 vacancy. I was told by a friend not to 

 waste any time chasing after the job, as the 

 proprietor, an ex-Greek letter fraternity 

 man, only hired members of his frat. 



From that time on I have given the mat- 

 ter of fraternities some serious thought. I 

 have come to the conclusion that the idea, 

 in any walk of life, is detestable. I know 

 exactly what you are going to say when 

 you get this. This fellow is a sore-head, no- 

 body asked him to join a fraternity. 



Be that as it may, I am looking at it 

 purely from the standpoint of its social 

 value. 



The Greek letter fraternity is unique among 

 secret societies, inasmuch as it is the only or- 

 ganization of its kind founded on an aristoc- 

 racy of social advantage and educational 

 opportunity-. 



Young men join fraternities at the most 

 impressionable time of their lives. Does the 

 artificial stimulation of a set of exclusive 

 loyalties, no matter how charming from 

 within, tend to the finest broadening of the 

 fair minded instincts with which every 

 young man is somewhat equipped? 



The main object of such parochial organ- 

 ization will be found to be the sense of 

 antagonism and superiority to the large un- 

 affiliated group, which must ultimately re- 

 sult in that most unjustified procedure 

 which plain men not blinded by fine phrases 

 commonly call discrimination. If the impelling 

 motive be intellectual superiority, why need it 

 express itself in so exclusive a forum? 



It seems passing strange that the older 

 men of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science seem not to 

 hunger for this strange form of manifest- 

 ing their mental gymnastics. How ridicu- 

 lous that they should love light rather than 

 darkness! But no doubt we must allow 

 for the decreptitude of age, for producing 



the peculiar phenomenon of equality of op- 

 portunity. 



Greek letter fraternities are peculiar to the 

 United States and Canada. These countries 

 are afflicted with two elements. First, the 

 element of chronological superiority, by 

 which we mean the excessive intelligences 

 which made an ancestor prefer 1630 to 1830 

 as a convenient date for crossing the At- 

 lantic. Second, the 1830 class, who by form 

 of organization hope to be mistaken for the 

 1630 class. 



In European countries, not remarkable 

 for their democracy, such organizations 

 have not been added to their sorrows. As 

 a matter of fact, student bodies in those 

 countries are centres of radical thinking. 



• 



It may seem amazing, yet it has some- 

 times been averred, that European educa- 

 tion has an heightening effect upon the 

 mentality of its recipients. 



In the choice of Greek nomenclature, 

 they have unconsciously forgotten that the 

 Greek genius was not a matter of letters 

 (which any chyrographer will assure us is 

 merely a matter of convenience), but was 

 also characterized by so peculiar a situation 

 as the existence of a Pericles. 



Now, he who copies forms without under- 

 standing substance is either snob or pedant. 



If you wish to deny democracy we have 

 no case against you. Gentlemen of the Fra- 

 ternities. But you dare not do so. Fear is 

 the mother of hollowness and that accounts 

 for the factitious appearance of the argu- 

 ments commonly adduced for fraternities. 

 It requires a wealth of rhetoric and the full 

 panoply of dialectics to disguise so patent 

 a contradiction. 



Criticism of exclusiveness is usually a 

 product of "thwarted" pschychology. For 

 example, our Jewish compatriots did wail 

 most loudly at the injustice of the denial 

 of their basking in the company of the 

 retiring and somewhat annoyed Gentiles. 

 From which they deduced the indubitably 

 true conclusion that exclusiveness was an 

 evil. In order to enforce their opinions 

 they have organized an exclusiveness pe- 

 culiar to the sons of the covenant. 



