SOME GOOD AGAINST MUCH EVIL
IT is difficult to balance the good and the bad points of the local and national organizations. The former are more democratic in that they are usually larger, being less strictly limited. They are without the element of permanent regulation that comes from the national union. They lack the exchange of ideas which comes from the association of a group of organizations, and their activities are entirely confined to the undergraduate years. In that they are always subject to faculty regulation, it is probable that loyalty to the society or club does not, as is too often the case among the fraternities, usurp the place of loyalty to alma mater.
As for the alleged democracy of the women’s colleges, it is, in many cases, largely theoretical. These colleges provide for their students both housing and social life. The latter is somewhat cloistral, to be sure, but it is open to all. By the very conditions of their life, they do not need the help of the fraternities for disciplinary or legislative measures. Does this mean that the colleges are without cliques, that every student is a sister to every other? Who that has lived in a woman’s college does not know that every class is run usually by one group of friends, with occasional more or less successful attempts by other rival groups to grasp the power? The “fraternity spirit” comes into play all over the world as soon as three people meet, because one combination of two will always be more congenial than the other, and one is always left out. The fraternity spirit is simply the aristocratic impulse, the social instinct that is ever working toward the formation of class. Then, as it cannot be torn out of human nature, is it to be recognized and allowed to develop freely as in the case of the national organizations, or is it to be checked and controlled from without as in the case of the local organizations, or is it to be ignored, hidden under a cloak of theoretical democracy, as in the women’s colleges?