Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/69

 public "bawling out" may silence the freshman, but it seldom appeals to his sense of justice, and it seldom permanently reforms him. It often rather confirms him in his errors and drives him secretly to practice the habit for which he has been openly corrected and humiliated. I have never really seen a freshman thus reformed by force who did not come back as a sophomore more boisterous and incorrigible than ever and ready to get even with the first freshman who should dare to call his soul his own. A private, quiet, brotherly talk as one man to another would usually result in a very different attitude. If the system is any good for the freshman it ought at least to be tried upon the sophomores who usually need it more.

My whole observation of the system which I have here been attempting to illustrate, is that its effect upon underclassmen is bad, and since underclassmen often finally develop into upperclassmen, the effect upon the whole fraternity is bad. If responsibility is not given to the man when he first enters the chapter, if his thinking is done for him, if he is treated as an inferior and a child, if he is not taught at first to think for himself and to develop his own principles, it will often later be difficult to put responsibility upon him and have him assume it. It will in many cases be impossible to do so. In the business of undergraduate college life more than in any other business that I am