A NARROWING INFLUENCE
IN this connection I cannot forbear pointing out another fallacy in the fraternity theory. As most fraternity girls are naturally of the clubable type, it is undoubtedly true that the four years of close association lead them to permanent ties of friendship as no other system could do; but, on the other hand, as these girls in their teens must grow at different rates of development, the fraternity becomes an actual clog on those who might otherwise develop more rapidly and more freely; it tends to keep them all back to the pace of those who remain most nearly what they were in college years.
It must be admitted, however, that the cottage system does not do much to foster the kind of growth that comes, not from the clash of different types of personality, but from congenial associations. But is there not in every college adequate machinery for such expression of tastes? With the students’ associations, the women’s leagues, the Young Women’s Christian Association, literary associations, tennis clubs, golf clubs, garden clubs, walking clubs, journal clubs,—the multifarious club activities of almost any college, to which ability, or at least interest, is the test for admission, there should be no lack of opportunity for any student to encourage to the utmost any taste whatsoever. Nor should there be any limitation as to the number of clubs to which any student belongs, apart from the question of her interests and the amount of energy that she diverts from her main business as a student.
Because of the diversity of their activities and the overlapping of their memberships, with such clubs as these there could be no question of rivalry. Rivalries and jealousies between the different cottages might spring up, but with a strong students’ association and with partizanship weakened by the inevitable scattering of friends, this could not grow into anything like the hostility between fraternities and non-fraternities, between Greeks and Greeks, that exists in many institutions to-day.