Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/14

 man when he gets to college," the father of a high school senior remarked to me recently, when I was calling at his house.

"Why not?" I asked.

"It's an undemocratic life," he said, "and one very different from what he lives at home or from what he will live after he gets out of college. Besides, there are a good many new dangers likely to be encountered."

"Well, is it," I replied, "and are there? What is he doing now?" He was, as I supposed, out with his chums, the regular group of boys with whom he associated and who formed a regular part of his daily life. He was following the same sort of procedure as he would follow if after he got to college he should join a fraternity, excepting that in the organized one. It need not be less normal and it usually is not less so than the life he lived at home in association with his friends and his home folks.

Fathers write me every fall in an endeavor to find out what fraternities are like, what they stand for, how the men live, what influence the organizations are likely to have on their sons should they join. They drop into the office with their freshman sons to discuss the relative merits of various organizations, and the relative advantage of going in or staying out. The amount of parental ignor-