Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/18

 ber the event still, and I think honestly believe that the same sort of orgies yet go on regularly in this house, though it is in fact one of the best conducted at the institution where it is established, and the charges made against it are entirely false. One spendthrift, one gambler, one unclean or intemperate member in a group is likely to give his reputation to the whole fraternity, and the organization and fraternities in general suffer as a result. At a large fraternity gathering which I attended not long ago one representative of a western chapter became intoxicated and made a public fool of himself. The chapter of which he was a member and all the representatives of it suffered in reputation and in influence through the exhibition of the weak character of this one man. On the other hand, one such man unconnected with an organization passes practically without comment and has little effect upon the general reputation of the student body. My experience has been that the faults and dissipations attributed to fraternities exist in much smaller degree than is generally supposed, and not proportionately in any materially greater degree than would on investigation be discovered in the general student body. As a disciplinary officer in an institution which numbers approximately five thousand young men, most of whom I know personally, I have had ample opportunity during the last dozen years to