Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/223

 flowers and cabs and candy and rather than practice economy or make a clean breast of it to father they have allowed the bills to go unpaid and probably intend to do so. If I should call them they would probably fall back upon the time-worn excuse that they hadn't thought much about it. The fraternity man who does not pay his debts, who borrows and forgets to return, who cribs on an examination or who even helps a needy brother to do so, who copies his themes from a book or who hands in another man's work as his own, has an erroneous conception of his obligations and is not living up to the ideals of his fraternity. If there is any undergraduate who should be depended upon to be honest and careful about keeping his word and meeting his obligations it is a fraternity man. The fact that in some institutions proportionately more fraternity men than other men are caught in dishonest acts and in financial irregularities, is not because fraternity men are less clever or more carefully watched than other men, but because they have been careless in living up to their ideals.

All over the country the cry is going up with reference to fraternity scholarship. Fraternities get the pick of graduates of the best high schools and preparatory schools, or at least claim to do so, and yet in many of the best institutions of the country we find that fraternity scholarship is distinctly inferior to that of the rank and file of