Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/217

 hour when the men gather about the fireplace following dinner.

My objections to affiliating a transfer and thereby making him an active voting member of the chapter are that so far as his knowledge of the workings of the chapter into which he is going is concerned, he is a freshman who should do freshman duty and keep a freshman's place. This, however, is exactly what he has no intention of doing. If he comes from an eastern institution to one in the Middle West, for example, even though he may have been dismissed from college for inefficiency or irregularity, he begins at once to show how the chapter should be run, to point out how superior conditions are at Cornell or Dartmouth or Brown and to object to authority and regulation. I can not now recall one such man who was willing to be subordinate, to take dictation, or to admit that the chapter with which he had become affiliated was superior or even equal to the one which he had left. Even if he has had but one half year's experience in the chapter into which he was initiated, he usually considers that experience quite sufficient to enable him to assume direction of any new group to which he may join himself. I recall a case which occurred only a few weeks ago where a critical situation arose in one of our local chapters which concerned the pro-