Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/227

 No fraternity man who reads his ritual thoughtfully will find in it any justification of the life that is not morally clean. No man who lives up to the ideals of his fraternity will find any place for irregular sexual relations or for low vulgar profane talk. It is not true that "We must expect these things" and that "Everybody does them, so why expect the fraternity man to be better than other men." The facts are that not everybody does do them, and besides the fraternity man has set for himself ideals supposedly higher than those which are held by "everybody," and he has obligations resting upon him to live a clean moral life which many other men have not assumed for themselves.

Here again in the choosing of men there is sometimes, I am afraid, too little thought given to the moral ideals of the men under consideration. The fact that a man is a "good fellow" with personal charm and attractiveness should not over balance the fact that he is a vulgar profane talker or that he has unclean habits. I have in mind now a much advertised high school graduate of low moral ideals. He was rushed by several organizations but bid by only one. The others dropped him, not because his character was bad, they said, they could have overlooked that, but because he had talked about his escapades and made them known to other people. If he had kept quiet concerning