FRATERNITY 



2319 



FRATERNITY 



Order of Owls 346,754 



The Maccabees 331,756 



Ancient Order of Hibernians 250,000 



Royal Arcanum 244,722 



Knights Templar 237,368 



Foresters of America 205,756 



Independent Order of Foresters 218,074 



FRATERNITY, frater'niti, from the Latin 

 word for brother, is the name of a society of 

 college or university men for social or literary 

 purposes. A similar organization for women 

 students is known as a sorority, from the Greek 

 word for sister (see SORORITY). Both are com- 

 monly called "Greek-letter Societies," because 

 each organization takes its name from the ini- 

 tials of the two or three Greek words forming 

 its secret motto. 



Origin. The parent of the fraternities is 

 Phi Beta Kappa. It was founded by five 

 young men, students in the College of William 

 and Mary, of Virginia, as long ago as the 

 stirring days of 1776. They took as their 

 motto, "A happy spirit and resolution of at- 

 taining the important ends of society." 

 Branches were soon established at Yale and 

 Harvard, called respectively the Alpha of Con- 

 necticut and the Alpha of Massachusetts, 

 Alpha conveying the idea of first. In 1780, 

 however, the parent society discontinued its 

 meetings, for the Revolutionary War was at 

 the very doors of the college. In the con- 

 fusion of the times its secrets came to outside 

 ears, and little by little its character changed, 

 until to-day it is a purely honorary fraternity 

 and not a. secret society. Membership in Phi 

 Beta Kappa is considered one of the greatest 

 distinctions that can be conferred on the col- 

 lege student, since only those are admitted 

 who achieve high standards of scholarship and 

 are known to possess excellent character. 



Organization. Some fraternities are merely 

 local in character, while others are national, 

 with many affiliated branches called chapters. 

 Some of the older fraternities have as many 

 as seventy-five or more chapters, and the tend- 

 ency is for the newer organizations to combine 

 with those that are firmly established. A chap- 

 ter of a general or national fraternity may be 

 formed in any college or university, but there 

 can be only one chapter of the same fraternity 

 there, and a student may belong to only one 

 fraternity. Each year, as a rule, the frater- 

 nity holds a general convention to which the 

 various chapters send delegates. At these con- 

 ventions elections are held and all laws for the 

 government of the fraternity are passed. The 

 affairs of the fraternity are in charge of an 



executive council, which is usually incorporated 

 and in whose name all property is held. Many 

 of the larger fraternities maintain chapter 

 houses at the chief universities. While some 

 of these are merely for holding business and 

 social meetings, others are conducted on the 

 same lines as any of the large clubs for men, 

 and provide living accommodations for mem- 

 bers. 



Views Regarding Fraternities. There has 

 been considerable difference of opinion regard- 

 ing the fraternity feature of college life. In 

 the past many universities even had anti- 

 fraternity laws, but in nearly all cases these 

 have now been repealed. Those who oppose 

 the fraternities do so on the ground that they 

 lead to snobbishness, tend to create class dis- 

 tinctions, and therefore are out of harmony 

 with the democratic spirit that should rule 

 the American or Canadian university. They 

 maintain also that fraternities constitute cliques 

 which try to -run college politics for the bene- 

 fit of their members, that their very secrecy 

 is harmful,' and that they are crowding out 

 the fine old literary societies that were once 

 the distinction of the individual colleges. 



Those favoring the fraternities point to the 

 fine spirit of fellowship and sympathetic inter- 

 est that compensate the student, in a measure, 

 for the absence of home life. By bringing 

 together those who have interests in common, 

 the fraternities are helping to lay the foun- 

 dations of many a friendship that will enrich 

 life long after college days are over. It is 

 argued, too, that the fraternities are a real aid 

 to, good college government, since each mem- 

 ber feels a personal responsibility for the good 

 name of his chapter and is anxious that 

 it should stand well with the faculty. It is 

 also true that the fraternities do much to 

 keep alive the traditions of a college or uni- 

 versity and to create loyal alumni. It is 

 the general belief that dissipation is declin- 

 ing and scholarship improving in the frater- 

 nities in all strong colleges and universities. 



Whatever may be the objections to the fra- 

 ternities, it is certain that they are growing 

 in strength year by year and are fast becom- 

 ing the most important factor in American 

 college life, so far as the social side is con- 

 cerned. At the present time Yale is the only 

 great university that excludes them. 



High School Fraternities. In recent years 

 there has been a marked tendency among 

 high school students to form secret societies 

 modeled on those of the college. The high 



