Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/99

 fact that they were taken into the fraternity late in their college course, were in college only a year or so, never assumed, or possibly never were allowed to assume, any responsibility for its control and management, and so left college without much to tie them closely to the fellows left behind. The fraternity to them, seen in the widening perspective of the years that have intervened, seems little more than a boarding or lodging house in which they may have spent a few transient weeks. To send money to keep up such an institution seems to them a good deal like dropping it into a friendly rat hole.

The solution of the first of these difficulties lies with the man himself who should take his obligation to the fraternity seriously and who should meet it honestly and promptly as he would meet any other business or social obligation which he has assumed. He tries to excuse himself on the ground that such obligations are in a different class from ordinary promises to pay. If it were a laundry bill, or a bill to his tailor or his grocer, it would be different. The facts are, however, that such men will frequently dodge a laundry bill quite as readily as a house note. If they argue that the obligation to the fraternity is a minor one and that later obligations should take precedence, they will say that the laundress lost their hose and burned their best silk shirts in the ironing. There