Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/194

 unless one belongs to a college fraternity he is hopelessly lost in a social way.

As I said at the outset, very few colleges have organizations enough to take in all the new men who arrive at each fall opening. In point of fact there are not enough Greek-letter fraternities in existence to supply such a demand. In theory, perhaps, it might be a good thing if there were; but in practice I am afraid that difficulties would frequently arise. I have known undergraduates in college who would disorganize heaven if they ever got in—or hades, and who, like some of our recent political candidates, would never be happy or contented in any organization unless they were themselves the whole of it. I have never investigated the results in those colleges where an attempt has been made to break up all the student body into groups, but I have little faith in it as a successful unifying and harmonizing process. Some men do not want to belong to anything; they wish most of all to be let alone, to form no associations with either students or faculty. They come to college to get an education, they say, and that means to study books and to acquire facts.

Such men have little that is gregarious in their make up. They like to work by themselves, they are restless and unhappy if they have a companion, and they would not join anything, not