Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/68

 "I'm only a sophomore, and I have not yet had a chance to do anything in the control and management of my fraternity." I think it will not be hard to see that the system is wrong which allows a student to be two years a member of an organization without making him feel that he has any voice of responsibility in controlling or in making it what it should be.

The system goes even farther than this. If perchance a sophomore or a junior is initiated into a fraternity, even though he be a man of judgment and experience, he is often made to submit to freshmen rules, and to come and go as he is directed by those who in many cases are far less fit to direct and give orders than is he himself. I have in mind now the case of a young fellow, sensitive, refined, and socially experienced, whose feelings were tortured, and whose college work was ruined by the corrections and criticisms of his manners and social conduct by a senior whose social experience has been very limited, and whose standards of social etiquette were at best crude. It might not be so bad, perhaps, if these infantile methods were practiced in private, but, on the contrary, upperclassmen too often seem to feel that the greatest benefit will come to the freshman from correcting him, as an irritable parent might correct a naughty child, without reserve, before his friends and the whole chapter. This sort of