Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/16

 and there is excellent evidence to show that a considerable portion of this was caused by the rabble which is unconnected with the institution but which follows in the wake of these celebrations. So I believe it could be shown if some one would take the pains to investigate that many of the delinquencies which are laid at the doors of fraternities are placed there unjustly and might better be distributed evenly throughout the student body.

Having said so much, however, I am willing to grant that many of the charges which have been urged against fraternities are not without some foundation. Fraternities and fraternity men can easily be found that illustrate the charges of extravagance and dissipation, and snobbishness, and loafing: But the age at which young men go to college is an age when they most easily fall a prey to the temptations to these habits and illustrations are not confined to fraternity men. I could name on any day of the week during the college year men in organizations and out of them and men even in the church of which I am a member who are snobs wasting both their time and their money; but the Presbyterian Church is still a pretty respectable organization. The charges which, a few years ago, were made by Mr. R. T. Crane of Chicago against college men were in no small degree true. Mr. Crane's error was not so much