Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/88

 of lifting pledges—a practice which is still not uncommon and which is not confined to any college or to any educational community. It is a possible temptation at the outset for a man to feel that having made a choice he might possibly have made a better one if he had waited, or that even now, if he had the courage to do so, he might give up one and take another. Such a feeling though common and human, perhaps, is weak. It shows indecision; it breeds unhappiness and discontent.

In the early history of the fraternity the lifting of pledges was not an uncommon nor an unpopular practice. Chapters went even further than that and lifted whole groups of men. It was not unheard of for a man to join one fraternity without going through the ceremony of being released from another. It was a sort of fraternity mormonism or bigamy which was extant at the time. It was a practice which was not conducive to general good feeling among Greeks, and one which has come to be looked upon with pretty general disfavor. He is a pretty brave man if not a nervy one who can bring himself today to defend the practice even in the most seemingly justifiable cases.

The cause of lifting may be laid in the main, perhaps, to the rapidity with which rushing is done in many institutions and to the fear of the rushee