Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/199

 express a willingness or a desire to join a fraternity as it would for a young girl to propose marriage to a male friend, perhaps in these days more so. The outsider from an unknown town has too little show. I know a young fellow coming to college next fall who will be scrambled for by a half-dozen fraternities while his intimate friend who is coming with him will be scarcely likely to get a look in unless through the necessity of asking him in order to get his friend. When, as in large institutions, there are so many eligible fellows who are personally known by the members of chapters or who are introduced to them, there will always be a great many excellent boys who are overlooked because there is more good material than can be utilized.

Undoubtedly the fact that a man comes to college unknown is not the only barrier to his being asked to join a fraternity. Personal traits of character and personal appearance influence the matter materially—the latter considerably more than it should I often think. The man who talks too much or who refuses to talk at all; the fellow who has too much self-assurance or the one who has too little—all have difficulty in getting by. Crude manners and crude dress are always bars to admission. Often it is the man's fault, and at other times the fraternity is finical and critical