EXCLUSIVENESS AMONG COLLEGE WOMEN
WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT IT?
BY EDITH RICKERT
MISS RICKERT’S article, “The Fraternity Idea among College Women,” in the November number, developed the argument that women’s fraternities like men’s are aristocratic, in that they are self-perpetuating and destructive to freedom of intercourse; that they stand for the privilege of one as against the common rights of all; that the benefits that they claim to bestow upon members are exaggerated, even in the case of individuals, and do not counterbalance the two evils which are inherent in the system and cannot be done away with by regulation from without or reform from within; and that these evils are, as regards members, that the fraternities educate to type, and, as regards outsiders, that they harden social differences into caste.—THE EDITOR.
CAN we do anything? Should we try? Some of the women’s colleges are taking action. Fraternities have recently been abolished at Rockford as contrary to the democratic spirit of that institution; also at Pembroke, on the ground that they had come to absorb too much of the interest that should go into general college activities. At Elmira, where they have been since 1856, they have recently disbanded of their own accord, and they are to be discontinued at Mount Holyoke after 1913.
Among coëducational institutions, however, the fraternal spirit is certainly growing. Although the entire number of fraternity women is less than one fifth that of fraternity men, the active members—that is, the undergraduates—are almost half as numerous as the men, and the rate of initiation is nearly the same. Unless some check is put upon them, the women will soon outnumber the men, as they are said to surpass them in efficiency of organization.