Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/60

 that flows through the campus. I was out one night about nine o'clock walking through the student district when I came unexpectedly upon a group of sophomores putting three freshmen through this ceremony. One husky second-year man was standing on the bank of the stream, and as he pushed each freshman into the slimy depths, he called out lustily, "What's the Boneyard for? What in the hell's it for?" As I have sat by each year for the past thirty years and watched the processes of rushing, I have asked myself more than once, with reference to rushing, the same general question that the sophomore asked about the Boneyard, "What is rushing for?"

Perhaps one of the first things which a fraternity should attempt to discover when rushing a man is how long he expects to remain in college. The purposeless man, the man who has not decided what he is coming to college for, who expects to stay for a year or so and then get into some real work, is useless to a fraternity. It is time wasted taking him in. It is that sort that brings down the scholarship average, that fails to pay his house bills, and that gets fraternities generally into disrepute. Many a good man may have to leave college before graduation, but the fellow who comes with the avowed intention of hanging around only for a year or two ought not to be considered.