A GROUP OF WOMEN’S FRATERNITY HOUSES (UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN)
Then is the fraternity woman bound to be a success? Few of them, even while they claim inestimable benefits inexplicable to the outsider, say this. Some of them think that when the admitted defects in the system are removed, when rushing is prohibited, when pledge-day is postponed until the new students have had time to find themselves intellectually and socially and to make their friends, when a uniform scholarship standard and uniform house-rules are enforced, it will make for the finest type of womanhood.
Drawn by J. Norman Lynd
“ONE METHOD OF CHOOSING LIKELY MEMBERS IS TO SEND DELEGATES TO THE STATION TO OBSERVE THE NEW GIRLS AS THEY ARRIVE”
Doubtless there is need of these things. When rushing reaches the point of tying a girl in the rooms of a fraternity house until she puts on the fraternity-badge, it is time to take measures. When of two girls who are intimate friends, one is pledged because she knows better how to make use of her good points, while, with the breaking up of their friendship, the other, made of equally fine stuff, is left forlorn because she lacks an intangible something that attracts all the girls in a chapter, or has an intangible something that repels one member of it, a remedy should be found. When a popular girl has an engagement for five nights in a single week, or averages from sixty to eighty “dates” in a year, it almost looks as though scholarship needs attention. When the chaperon exerts her influence from the kitchen, and social events are untrammeled as to numbers and hours and expense, it is almost time for a reform. In other words, while there are chapters that are almost wholly admirable in their constituency and conduct, there are also others that reflect in the miniature college world the pace of the civilization about them.
But if all these reforms were accomplished,—and it is difficult to see how enough pressure can be brought by the National Pan-Hellenic to do this except sporadically,—the evils of the system remain as before, inherent and ineradicable. As regards those within, the fraternity idea means type; as regards those outside, it means caste.
“You’d never think Caroline was a Chi Chi, would you? She ought to have been a Tau Tau!” is overheard on the campus. What does this mean but type?
“The girl who sits next to me is an Alpha; I knew it before I saw her pin.” What does this mean but type?