The Cap and Gown

by Charles Reynolds Brown

It is good for us to know and to love those with whom the question of sex, with its mysterious attractions and repulsions, does not enter in. The woman who cares little for other women, who is only happy when she is talking with men, or the man who is so much of a “ladies’ man” as to be ill at ease when thrown for an hour exclusively with men, is mentally, if not morally, diseased. It is good for the souls of men to be knit with the souls of their fellows; it is fitting that women should know and enjoy other women.

It is the need for that association which lies at the root of the almost countless fraternities found in all our cities. In searching out names and mysterious forms for them all, men have gone clear over the border into what is both fantastic and foolish. The secrecy of these societies is not to be taken too seriously—as a rule it is mere dust thrown in the eyes of the uninitiated. The members laugh in their sleeves knowing how little the “secrets” amount to, but the organizations offer opportunity for social fellowship in a way to satisfy a wide-spread desire.

The same tendency, with some additional leaning to clannishness and to the love of mystery found in most young people, is evidenced by the Greek letter fraternities in the colleges and in many of the high schools. These have been in operation for more than a quarter of a century and they have not yet by any means so justified their existence as to win the cordial support of the best educational authorities. There is still “the fraternity question,” with a big interrogation point after it, put there by parents, teachers, and citizens, and by many of the young people themselves as they grow wiser.

I speak of this matter as a fraternity man. I have been initiated; I have worn a “pin,” at such odd times as my “best girl” did not happen to be wearing it. I know the mysterious significance attaching to the “grip” when one student meets another and taking him by the little finger pulls it surreptitiously nine times to the left. I have been through all this, for I am a member of Alpha Eta of Sigma Chi. What I say, therefore, is not spoken in that prejudice which sometimes attaches to the utterances of the “anti-frat” man who sees it all from the outside and comes up hot, perhaps, from some hard-fought campaign where the line was closely drawn between “frats” and “anti-frats.”

I speak also with a deep sense of the importance of the question. The principal of the high school in my own city, which has an enrolment of twelve hundred pupils, said to me recently when I had been asked to speak on fraternities, “You have a big subject on your hands.” He spoke as an educator watching the lives of that large company of young people five days in the week. I speak as a pastor and a teacher of spiritual values and I agree with him that it is “a big subject.”

The power of intimate association for good or ill—no nation under heaven, Christian or pagan, has failed to condense its observation and experience on that point into some terse proverb. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed,” said the old Hebrew. “Evil company doth corrupt good manners,” said the Greek, and Paul quoted it in his letter to the Greek Christians at Corinth. “Talent is perfected in solitude, but character is formed in the stream of the world,” is the German of it. “Live with wolves and you will learn to howl,” the Spanish proverb has it; and in homely Holland fashion, the Dutch proverb is, “Lie down with dogs and you will get up with fleas.” In these terse sayings, elegant and inelegant, the race has recorded its judgment as to the power of association. The fraternity promotes certain forms of most intimate association at a crucial period and thus enters powerfully for good or ill into the lives of young people.

There are certain credits to be entered in making up a trial balance for the fraternity. It marks out a definite group of special friends for closer association. One cannot become intimately acquainted with the whole human race or even with as much of it as happens to be present in a large high school or college. Whether it is done in organized or in unorganized ways, there must come a process of selection by which one’s social interests are kept to a manageable size.

The fraternity gives opportunity for learning to subordinate the purely personal and selfish interests to the larger good. The fraternity man has in view something beyond his own individual pleasure or success. He is taught to aid some fraternity brother who has good prospects, in athletics, in a race for some class honor, or in debate. Mutual admiration, a common enthusiasm, a corporate ambition and the spirit of cooperation, are thus developed in the whole group by a feeling of common interest.

The fraternity brings the lower class man into closer touch with upper class men. The first year man is not a mere unbaked freshman to the juniors and seniors in his fraternity. They have an interest in him, a responsibility for him, because of his fraternity connection. These organizations thus cause the line of social cleavage to run perpendicularly as well as horizontally. My own life will be forever different by reason of the friendship of two upper class men in my university days. Such friendships are wholesome for both the younger and the older men.

The fraternity serves as a convenient basis for fellowship when a man visits another college or when alumni return to their alma mater. The house of one’s own fraternity is open to him, and affords opportunity for him to come into touch with the eager, throbbing life about him. The alumni of a chapter may also exert a real influence for good upon the resident members of the fraternity, because of this continued association.