WIDENING SCOPE OF COLLEGE FRATERNITIES.
C. F. Birdseye Believes They Bring Undergraduates More Under Influence of Alumni.
The American college fraternity has become a farce, educational and social, intellectual and moral, so great that even but few fraternity leaders appreciate it. At more than one college, chapter-houses have done away with the need of dormitories. As colleges have grown larger and more unwieldy, and the members of the faculties have been less frequently in personal touch with their students, the fraternities have in no slight degree taken the place of the old small-college units, alumni now influencing the undergraduates through their fraternities, much as the professors used to.
Writing in the Outlook, Clarence F. Birdseye points out that our college fraternities are to-day great educational influences:
The pick of our alumni in wealth and influence are fraternity men. If a tithe of this power can be turned back into the lives of the undergraduates to supplement the efforts of the faculties, we can do much to restore individualism.
Neither college nor fraternity conditions are at present ideal. They are often bad, and there is real foundation for all complaints. Unless promptly checked, the evils will grow far worse and more difficult to root out. This question must be studied by its friends, and the reform must come from the fraternity alumni; for the fraternities can be awakened and developed, but not driven, nor driven out.
Like every other historical, educational, or social question, this must be studied carefully and with open minds by many alumni and from different standpoints, so as to cover widely divergent conditions in institutions that may be universities or colleges, rich or poor, large or small, old and conservative or recent and radical, public or private, at the North, South, East, or West, and therefore governed by widely different religious, social, educational, and political influences.
Wide Distribution of Chapters.
The wide distribution of its various chapters adds greatly to the perspective and corrective power of every fraternity, and makes it an ideal instrument for wisely investigating and righting undergraduate conditions at the same time in widely scattered institutions.
The true fraternity alumnus can mold the lives and motives of his younger brothers. In most colleges the fraternities are so strong that if we can change the atmosphere of the fraternity houses, which for four years are the undergraduates’ homes, we can change the whole undergraduate situation.
The fraternity alumni have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars for housing and otherwise helping the undergraduates. Every fraternity has many loyal and devoted graduates who willingly give time or money or both to the true interests of their younger brothers, and whose word is law to them.
The character of the influence of each chapter depends largely on the local alumni, strengthened, guided, and impelled by a strong central organization. Why not apply modern business principles and systematic organization to this all-important problem?
Atmosphere of Chapter-House.
We have one thousand seven hundred fraternity chapters in three hundred and sixty-three of our institutions of higher learning as foci from which the good influences might constantly and powerfully radiate. There has been too much tendency to make the fraternity the end and not the means.
The alumni have not realized that the atmosphere of the chapter-house determines the character of the chapter’s influence on its individual members, and that the ultimate responsibility for this atmosphere is on the alumni. If we would make this atmosphere permanently good, we must appreciate that the alumni are the permanent and the undergraduates the transient body—completely changing every three years; and the seniors, the governing body, every year.
We, as the permanent body, have no right to furnish our undergraduates with fine and exclusive homes, and then shirk responsibility for the future conduct and influence of those homes.
The proper government of a chapter is a strict one, with the power in the hands of the upper classmen, especially the seniors, who are in turn held strictly accountable to alumni who are in constant touch with the situation and personally acquainted with every undergraduate and his work and needs.
Where such conditions are continuous, the chapter’s success is assured, and the effect on the undergraduates is highly beneficial. The fraternities, through strong central organizations, must make these conditions prevalent and continuous in every chapter. This has long been the theory, but the practise has been poor.
Correction of Waste.
The fraternities, with their numerous chapters in different institutions, have the best possible opportunities for the investigation and correction of the wastes and for the enforcement of economies in college life.
No one can measure the waste and lack of economy, to the college, the fraternity, the community, the family, or the individual, of a failure in college life, from whatever cause it comes.
It is criminal that we have not studied these wastes in our colleges as we have in our factories, railroads, and other great industries, and that we have allowed the pendulum to swing so far to the other side, and have not long ago returned it to its mean, and found educational influences to replace the small units of the earlier colleges.
Mr. Birdseye maintains, in conclusion, that it is for the fraternities to devote their wealth and influence to improve undergraduate conditions, incite their men to the best work, and prevent the wastes which result from a failure in college lives.