Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/137

 scholarship average, but he ordinarily does little or nothing in helping to exercise moral control or to further a strong internal management. "How is Gray getting on?" I asked a fraterntiy man only a few days ago with reference to a freshman pledge. "We don't know much about Gray," was the reply. "We see very little of him at the house, and we don't seem to be able to get him interested in fraternity matters." Gray was a man who wanted to be a student, and when I talked with him I found that he had decided that he could not at the same time successfully keep up his obligations to the home and to the fraternity, so he had followed the lines of least resistance and had cut the fraternity.

If on the other hand the town member is a little tricky he soon learns to play the home against the fraternity—or vice versa. When his grades are reported low, or his attendance is lax his fraternity president explains that they see very little of him at the fraternity house for he does most of his studying at home. When in a casual conversation with father I suggest a little more assiduous attention to the books, I am told the boy does most of his studying at the fraternity and that he is seldom in evidence at home. The fraternity blames the home folks, and the home folks blame the fraternity, and between the two the freshman evades responsibility, and soon flunks out of col-