Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/124

 Three." Having nothing definitely written to constitute a dignified and effective initiation ceremony these initiations are likely to be vulgar and brutal, undignified and bibulous. No organization with a serious or worthy purpose is likely to send its men, dressed like court fools, to trundle doll baby carriages about the campus as a part of their initiation ceremonies or to hunt for a dead rat lying in a fence corner five miles in the country. Such proceedings are discreditable to all fraternities, and fraternity men ought not to allow their brothers to submit to such tomfoolery. The man who has himself never belonged to a fraternity and who is fighting such organizations will be made with difficulty to understand and to approve of such idiocies.

At the University of Illinois no organizations have offended more in the direction of rough house and horse play than the so-called honorary fraternities in engineering and agriculture. The strongest advocates of the practice of beating up the initiate and wearing him out physically and mentally before initiating him are for the most part those men who are least acquainted with any beautiful ritualistic ceremony, and who think the only real way to make an impression upon a man is to beat him to a pulp with a ball bat. They labor under the misconception that the only way to make the initiate love and respect you is to inflict upon