Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/115

 and so most likely of election. It is the good fellows they all want.

The election of such men is an evil in two ways. It tends usually still further to weaken their scholarship and their influence in their own chapter, and it tends, as I have said, to arouse ill feeling and jealousy among the other men who recognize the injustice of such an election and are annoyed at their own failure to attain the so-called honor. The weak man who should have been strengthened by being given responsibility in his own chapter is able to dodge it often by pleading as an excuse the duty and obligation he owes to his extra-fraternity organization. He can find time to go to a meeting of the "Lambs," but he is too busy to study English or to look after the particular fraternity duty for which he is responsible.

It is argued by a good many men that these extra-fraternity organizations bring into prominence the fraternity from which members are chosen, and since those members come pretty generally from all fraternities, help to break down the fraternity lines, to reduce friction, and to harmonize intra-fraternity disputes and differences. I am not at all convinced that this is true. At the University of Illinois intra-fraternity organizations and organizations which are composed largely of fraternity men have multiplied materially within the last few years, and yet I can not find