Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/33

 any student may go and the amount of time which he may spend upon such work should be limited by the college, but I believe that most students who stay entirely out of extra-curriculum activities make a mistake, and I think that the fraternity in urging the undergraduate to spend a reasonable amount of time in such work is doing him a service.

The effect of the fraternity upon the studies of the undergraduate has not been until within recent years all that it should be. Interest in scholarship, however, is increasing everywhere among the faternities, and fraternity averages all over the country are coming up. One of the difficulties to be met, and one which has not previously been given the consideration it deserves, lies in the fact that it is not an easy matter to have a high scholastic average among groups of men exceeding twelve in number. Even men of the highest scholastic standing seem to lower their average when they get into groups exceeding a dozen. It has been remarked at the University of Illinois that the members of Tau Beta Pi, one of the best known of the honorary engineering fraternities, very often have a drop in their scholastic standing when they move into the Tau Beta Pi house. Whether this drop in their scholarship may be attributed to the fact that,