“Rich?” Not necessarily; yet would not the girl who drives her own automobile have some advantage over the one who works her way through college, and the girl whose parents have a delightful home most suitable for “rushing” purposes near the campus be preferred to any sweet madonna-of-the-boarding-house? I heard only the other day how an initiation fee was raised to five times its original amount on the plea, “The girls will appreciate it so much more if they have to pay a lot!”
“Family?” Not at all, yet I know of a girl who was rushed hard and as suddenly dropped because it was discovered that her father had been a butcher; of another, who was regarded as eligible until it was found out, what neither her name nor her features suggested, that her really distinguished family was of Jewish strain.
These instances must be set over against the ideal picture of the governor’s daughter and the milliner’s child, the mother’s helper and the patrician of the South, scrubbing floors together.
Family jars, I am told, are beneath the dignity of the fraternities. It is difficult not to be skeptical as to the power of the ritual or of the pin to keep twenty healthy girls from splitting into factions over nothing at all; but even if outer harmony is maintained, is it conceivable that there should not very often be discomfort and even actual suffering among the minority? Suppose a chapter one year includes twelve students and eight butterflies, and the next year changes to three students and seventeen butterflies? What of the occasional “mistake”? I know a Theta girl whose mother was a Beta, but this fact was not discovered by the Betas until she was pledged. “What a pity!” they lamented; but “What an escape!” said she. As it happened, she felt entirely at home with the Thetas and could not bear the Betas; but suppose the situation had been reversed! She would have had no remedy except to withdraw, which would have made her painfully conspicuous and set everybody to wondering about the reason, or to change her college. But a girl out of harmony with a crowd and obliged to live with them in intimate association, is greatly to be pitied, whether she conforms or holds her own. What is to be said of the ethics of forcing an Episcopalian to dance in Lent against her strong religious scruples? Can it be doubted that such a minority often yields its own convictions to keep pace with the others, or, not yielding, is painfully out of step?
As to the wonderful ritual devised by “clear-eyed womanhood,” I have heard it also described as “childish,” “poppycock,” “bunk.” The ideals are necessarily those of immaturity, and have all the vagueness and some of the wrong-headedness of youth. “They are not harmful,” writes a dean, a fraternity woman who is familiar also with a college where no fraternities exist, “except that they are sentimental.” I take this to mean that they are more suited to discourses at fraternity banquets, as a kind of leaven to reminiscences of good old times, than to practical application outside the fraternity world.[3] That they may “have a dynamic force upon character” is doubtless true of the persons who do not develop beyond the stage at which they are propounded; that they lead to much real kindness among fraternity sisters in time of illness and trouble need not be doubted. But a loyalty which hides a thief and turns her loose in the world without warning may be a dangerous thing, and when it expels a girl for “loose morals,” and gives no further explanation, it is cruel, if the term means cigarettes or slight indiscretions with men, and dangerous if her character is such that she ought not to be allowed to remain on the campus.
“Manage their own households and business affairs?” Yes, but a peep behind the scenes reveals a case of cutting out breakfast to save up for a tea, of giving a formal dinner and living on bread and potatoes for a week to make up the expense. An inspector’s story hints that this business management is not unlike the average amateur performance. A dean, herself a fraternity woman of many years’ experience, writes: “Usually ... the accounts of such an organization are not so well looked after as those of the more general women’s organizations in which less of the ‘family’ idea prevails,” and “the business training of these undergraduates” ... is “probably inferior to that gained by officers in such bodies as the Women’s League, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Student Government Association, or the boards of college publications.”
Then are the conclusions quoted by the handbook as to the influence of the fraternities on their members warranted by the facts? Do they cultivate individuality? How is it possible? In the first place, the fraternity girl is essentially “clubable”; and by the statute of limitations in personality she is bound to be more conventional, yes, even more superficial in her attractions, than the girl who is strongly individual. The fraternities are admitted to be groups in which like seeks like, and the whole flock aims to induce still greater likeness to the pattern of the group. The girl with a streak of genius cannot easily find her like, so she flocks not at all; the poor, proud girl fears patronage, and will not; the awkward, ill-bred country girl can’t; the dig dare not for fear of missing some intellectual good thing. All these must develop more or less as individuals; but the fraternity girl, unless she enters as an individual strong enough to dominate her companions, must herself be dominated by them.
“Cultivate leadership?” Probably, in that they give to all their members in some measure the poise that comes only from an assured social position; and poise is the first requisite for leadership. Again, the fraternity girl who takes a leading part in outside college activities has always an advantage in that she does this with the backing of her group, who are all prepared to do team-work when occasion demands.
In the same way, it is only the few that from the first show executive and business ability who get much training in these directions through fraternity membership.
As to the wide outlook over the field of collegiate education, it is limited in two ways: first, in that the fraternity women are more or less segregated from the other students, and second, in that they do not come into contact at all with the great women’s colleges, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, and Bryn Mawr.[4]