1870] The College Fraternity 



Privacy may easily tend to careless living. As a Downward 

 matter of fact, some time since, many fraternities tendencies 

 throughout the country bade fair to degenerate into 

 drinking clubs. Within the last ten years this 

 condition has been remedied by the attitude of self- 

 respecting university faculties on the one hand and 

 the action of the central committees of the various 

 national fraternities on the other. I need not insist 

 that a competent university management must and 

 will find ways to suppress student drinking wherever 

 or in whatever form it may appear. Dissipated men 

 are centers of corrosion, and it is not worth while to 

 waste educational energies on those who make bad 

 use of them. This the German universities also 

 have found out. Professor Eucken once spoke to 

 me bitterly of the mischief done by "the beer phi- 

 listine" and by returning alumni who claim that 

 Jena has lost its "spirit*' because the students are 

 turning sober! 



In general, moreover, scholarship standards are Fraternity 

 lower in the fraternities than among "barbarian" standards 

 students. For this there are several causes. Greek 

 Letter groups often choose their initiates before 

 they really know them, and freshmen with apparent 

 social availability often run the shortest course; 

 strong men, on the contrary, usually ripen late 

 and are seldom early picked as "winners." Fra- 

 ternity men on the whole, also, are specially occupied 

 with "student activities," which of course afford 

 good drill in executive work, but should not replace 

 mental training. The man who leaves college with 

 the most exact knowledge and the widest horizon 

 of understanding will keep ahead through life. 



Finally, the occupants of a Chapter House fre- 



C 63 3 



