Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/47

 fully out of the holes into which he seemed to be slipping. It is the same sort of help that the fraternity man has behind him that many men count an unfair advantage.

There are few communities in which the intellectual differences, great as they sometimes seem to be, are so slight as they are in a college community, and especially as they are in a college community in the Middle West. The young men who enter such an institution are, for the most part, from middle class homes. Their fathers and mothers have usually attained some business or community distinction in the neighborhood in which they live, but they very seldom have as broad an education as they hope to secure for their children. These young people themselves have been quite similarly educated. The preparation which one receives in a good country high school is not materially different from that which he would get in a good city high school; at least it can be shown that the young fellows who attain intellectual distinction after coming to college are quite as likely to have had their preparation in a small high school as in a larger one. There is little difference, therefore, intellectually, between these boys who come to college, some of whom may join a fraternity, and a larger number of whom will not.

Socially, also, the difference is not so great