Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/48

 as one might suppose. It is true there are some pretty wide extremes and some rather striking contrasts, but as I have seen through many years the procession of fathers and mothers that come each autumn with the opening of college and each spring at commencement time, I am convinced that the great mass of our students, in the Middle West at least, come from a quite similar social environment. I have been given a jolt often at commencement week when meeting for the first time the parents of some well-known fraternity hero, as I have been delighted when I have been introduced to the friends of some modest independent. The Greek, as I have known him, has very little on the independent so far as social prestige is concerned.

Nor is the distinction between these two classes of students in any large degree based upon the relative amounts of money which they or their parents have. It is true that ordinarily it requires somewhat more money to live in a fraternity house than to live outside, but the mere fact that a man has money seldom decides whether or not he will become a fraternity man when he enters college. As I write these sentences the names of a score of wealthy boys who were in college this year come to my mind, not one of whom belonged to a fraternity. Some of them did not care to do so, and some of them could not have got in had they