Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/171



There has been for some time, perhaps, a pretty general feeling that Greek-letter fraternities are more or less on trial to prove their worth and their efficiency. The general public has heard much in the last few years concerning high school fraternities and college fraternities, and much that it has heard is discreditable to them. There have been heated discussions in home circles and school boards, in school faculties and state legislatures, and the public, knowing little, has believed the worst, and has put all fraternities into the same disreputable class. The fraternities have been judged by the worst and the most foolish things that have been published about them. It has seemed to me that the alumni of college fraternities, scattered as they are throughout the whole country, may do more than any one else by sane influence, and sane advice, and sane conduct, to lift fraternities to a high plane, to correct the faults which even their warmest friends are willing to admit still exist, and to present to those who are outside of these organizations a fair exposition of what the college fraternity really stands for, and what it is doing.

The experience in college of these men who have gone out from the fraternity should give them an intimate knowledge of undergraduate life, and it