Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/168

 and they say it with certain pride and self congratulation, as if there were virtue in being commonplace. A lawyer, or a doctor, or a merchant who had no more ambition than this to excel in his special line of work would be looked upon as a joke or regarded as unbalanced. Every one ought to have an ambition to be at the top or at least some place near the top in any line of business which he takes up. The student, however, too often feels indifference toward excellence in scholarship or actual humiliation at the thought of doing well. It is the wrong view point, and it is one which fraternities are coming rapidly to see they can not accept.

The reason offered most often by fraternity men for their low scholarship: is that students in a fraternity have more outside interests, more things which must be done, and so less time for their studies than have other students. They, point to the fact that it is the fraternity men who are in athletics, and dramatics, and student journalism, and in student activities generally, and on this score justify their low standing. An examination of the records of the men at the University of Illinois, however, will show as I have said elsewhere, that the students who are engaged in university activities, whether they be fraternity men or not maintain a scholastic standing considerably higher than the average. The young man who was this