Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/112

 and when he does appear at the deliberation, he is an irritation and a nuisance because someone must explain to him what happened while he was absent. This might not be so bad if the absent member brought back the fraternity something gained from his outside alliance, but this is seldom true. One of the most popular men I know in college has this year ruined his scholarship and been worse than useless in helping to run the affairs of his fraternity because he has belonged to so many things that his outside interests have taken all his time. He has been unable to do any work himself, and he has been supercritical of those who have had to bear the burden of running the fraternity.

Most of these extra-fraternities are secret; their activities and their legislation touch only the individual and seldom react to the benefit of the various fraternities from which the members come. We have at the University of Illinois, for example, a sophomore and a junior intra-fraternity organization. The members are not selected by the fraternities from which they are recruited, but by the members of these class organizations themselves. That is, most of the extra-fraternity organizations are self-supporting. It is not the purpose of a sophomore fraternity to help all the other sophomores in the various fraternities from which they come, but simply to have a selfishly good or helpful time among themselves.