Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/159

 developed concentration, if he has liked books, if he has really studied seriously before coming to college, he is not likely to be different in college. There is a distinct difference between the man who has obtained high grades through serious study and the one who has reached the same result through cleverness or quickness of wit without application. The young fellow who depends upon quickness of wit alone to get him through college will ordinarily not get far without disaster, and too frequently when such a man joins a fraternity the failures in scholarship which he may make are laid at the door of the fraternity. The hope of the fraternity lies in the character of the man it chooses, and in the ideals of scholarship which it requires of the men whom it pledges. Unless they have high ideals of scholarship as pledges, they are little likely to acquire them after they enter the fraternity. If the fraternity is to improve its scholastic average it must look to the scholastic character of its freshmen before they are pledged. A freshman's scholastic standing should be as closely scrutinized as his social and moral and athletic standing.

If I have read the early history of fraternities rightly they were organized for bringing kindred spirits together, for strengthening bonds of ship, but most of all for the development of the best things for which college stands and among