Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/246

 in college. They must carry the gospel of brotherhood and good fellowship to the whole college world. They have no more right to be exclusive then has the Christian church. The undergraduate members must recognize this fact, as the alumni members and grand officers of most fraternities have done for some time. It is a choice between expansion or a more determined and general opposition than we have previously met.

Expansion is often hindered, where the consent of the chapter nearest the petitioning group is required, by jealousy, by rivalry, or by petty prejudices. I could give numerous instances which come to my mind where a chapter in a large institution will not give the slightest consideration to a petitioning group in a neighboring smaller college purely from prejudice or from a misconception of the ideals and accomplishments of the smaller college. And the same thing is true of the smaller college with reference to the larger institution. Petitioning groups have been held up for years at the University of Illinois, because chapters already established in smaller institutions near by imagined that the character of the students at the larger institution was inferior to the character of those in the smaller one. "I didn't know how to milk a cow and so I couldn't get into the state University," one of these intelligent young city dwellers ex-