Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/23

 seemed not likely to be congenial or helpful to the best development of character. A man's fraternity life is lived largely while he is in college, and he should go with the group that will give him the best chance to live a healthy, happy, effective, undergraduate life.

"Why should a boy entering college join a fraternity?" I am asked again and again. "What does he get out of it, and what does it do for him?" As the system is now in most of our colleges, only a limited number of entering students can join such an organization, because the number of such organizations is small and the membership of each must be kept within reasonable limits. The president of a large institution said to me not long ago, "When are you going to stop increasing the number of fraternities? Do you think it is a good thing to have more and more fraternities in college?" My answer then was in the affirmative, and as I have since then given the matter more serious thought, I have not felt like changing my mind. I wish that every boy who comes to college might find an organization suited to his particular needs, and might have done to him and for him the service which a well-organized and well-managed fraternity does for its members.

First of all the fraternity gives the undergraduate friends just as he is needing the most. The