Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/219

 attributed to youth and thoughtlessness, and inexperience. It is the commonest experience of my every day work when I am struggling seriously to get at the reason why a young fellow has failed to respond to a call, or cribbed in an examination, or come home drunk, or taken a joy ride in somebody else's car, to get the reply, "I didn't think much about it." Fraternity principles and ideals are all right, but the initiates two often think too little about them. They are too often like the man who, when he was asked if he belonged to church, replied that he did, but that he did not usually work very hard at it.

There are a number of reasons why fraternity men do not always take as seriously as they should the ideals of the fraternity. First of all there is the condition of youth. The average young man who goes into a fraternity has had little experience either in governing himself or in directing others. He may even be a petted only child or a coddled youngest son who is having his first experience in self-direction. He will learn in time to take responsibility, but he may do so slowly. He may not take the principles of the organization seriously at first, but a very small percentage of those men who remain actively in a fraternity for four years fail to be impressed with the dignity and seriousness of the principles and ideals of the fraternity and with their own obligation to make's