Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/90

 other two developed a frenzy of interest and the man was ultimately persuaded to break his first, pledge and assume a second. No self-respecting fraternity will tamper with a man who is already pledged. The excuses for doing so which are sometimes offered by men who otherwise seem reasonable and sane are on the whole flimsy. The strongest of these is, perhaps, based upon the argument of "national standing," and practically every fraternity which I have known has been able by one specious argument or another to establish the fact that its national standing was quite superior to the standing of every other similar organization with which it was associated. I was speaking just the other day to a fraternity man with reference to a freshman who had just been pledged to an organization whose standing so far as I can judge is as good as that of the one I belong to or the one he belongs to.

"What a darned shame," he exclaimed, "I'm sorry he couldn't have got into a good fraternity," which in his mind meant his own. This idea in a man's mind that his own fraternity is superior to any other and that his own fraternity is superior to any other and that the fellow who does not join it makes a grave mistake,—is about the only reason which justifies him in his own mind in lifting a pledge to another fraternity. His assumption is