Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/164

 to do is to face the facts and make the best of them. If they suffer this time, they are likely to be more careful next. It was, moreover, quite easy to point out that no one should complain if the facts are honestly given.

The president of one organization which for years had been fighting for bottom place and which is now struggling with equal vigor to stand at the top, said to me that following the first publication of these relative standings, the members of his fraternity were actually ridiculed into an effort to raise their scholarship. An alumnus never came to town without calling their attention to the disgrace of being at the bottom; a member could scarcely board the street car without being pointed out as belonging to the fraternity with the notorious scholastic standing; even the girls "kidded" them, and the humorous column of the college daily made them the subject of metrical innuendo. It was more than they could stand, and so they began to pull themselves together. To a greater or less extent this same result has been true of the other organizations whose standing was poor.

The second thing which helped the fraternities to raise their scholastic standing with us was a regulation proposed by the local Interfraternity association and approved by the University, forbidding the initiation of any student into a frater-