Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/167

 haps, having in most cases been in but one class of institution, has taken for granted that matters are run in every institution as they are run in his own, and has not given the time or the thought necessary to make these differences clear. He does not realize how interesting and illuminating his letters would be if he would take such trouble. I have looked, for example, through many fraternity quarterlies in an attempt to get an adequate idea of the specific class scraps held in various institutions throughout this country, but though I find constant references to them, so little detail has been given that I have never been able to understand in what way one contest differs from another. The correspondent has simply taken for granted that we know all about it and lets the matter go at that. We read about the abolishment of the "tank scrap" at Purdue, or the "sack rush" at Illinois, but we get no idea as to what these contests were. The same thing is true of a thousand other details of undergraduate life.

I was very much interested, I can not say surprised, at a recent interfraternity conference when in conversation with a prominent fraternity man of New York, to find how little he knew of the University of Illinois. He was wholly unfamiliar with its history, its equipment, its endowment, its curriculum, and its attendance. He did not know