Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/254

 ject of scholarship is not discussed, there is not a fraternity official who visits an active chapter who does not dwell upon the subject of scholarship with feeling, and there is scarcely an active chapter which does not have its committee or its organization whose duty it is to encourage and to develop better scholarship. Such an active campaign can in the future result only in one thing, and that is in bringing the scholarship of fraternity men to a higher and more satisfactory standard—a standard that is above that of the average man.

The fraternity of the future is going to give more definite and practical attention to its moral ideals than it has done in the past. The ideals of the Greek-letter fraternity have always been high, but they have not always been taken seriously by the undergraduate. He has too frequently looked upon them as theoretical rather than practical. They were, he thought, perhaps, good for initiation night, but not to be followed and exemplified in his everyday life. There is less and less everywhere the feeling that initiation into a fraternity is with propriety followed by dissipation or an orgy. The initiation service is rather made so serious and so real that the initiate is given an impulse to self-control and an inspiration to a higher life. In evidence of this fact one need only compare the character of the dinner and all that