“THE UNFORTUNATE ‘BARB’ WHO IS LEFT TO THE PROMISCUOUS FRIENDSHIPS OF THE CHEAP BOARDING-HOUSE”
So far I have said little about the girl who is left out. To many of the fraternity women she seems the most deplorable feature of the system. Except in the college where the societies contain all but a very few of the students, her case does not seem to me serious. To be sure, she misses a great deal of fun and social training; but if she is worth saving, she saves herself in the end; and if she gives up in despair and goes home because she does not “make a frat,” she is not of the stuff that the college needs. Probably some sensitive girls are embittered for a long time by the slight, but the finer ones conquer, even though the sting lingers throughout their course. A large number in the great mass of the students are unaffected by the fraternity problems. They do not expect or wish to get in, and they have virtually very little to do with the fraternity girls except as they work in the same student organizations. They have their own sets, their own social life, averaging more good times, perhaps, than they are credited with by their pitying superior sisters. What the university fails to do to counteract the effects of poverty, ill breeding, bad preparation, and inexperience is another thing altogether. Individual tragedies settle themselves, and those who win come out stronger, finer women for their victory over adverse conditions than any fraternity girl for whom the way has been made smooth.
But the fraternity idea must be judged not so much by those whom it shuts out from special privilege as by the results that it produces in those whom it fosters.
The Pan Hellenic Society believes itself specially chosen and trained for service. And what has it done? Aside from a vague and general interest in alumnæ activities, this service is reduced to scholarships, some isolated attempts in education and philanthropy, a certain “dynamic force” upon the character of its members, scarcely apparent to outsiders, and continued perfection of organization, thus far for no more evident purpose than the reform of its own body.
“‘WORSHIPING AT THEIR OWN LITTLE SHRINE’”
In other words, the fraternity system seems grotesquely out of proportion in the general scheme of things. Why should this one feature of undergraduate life be magnified by means of publications, council meetings, and conventions, if it is to fulfil no other purpose than the perpetuation of itself? How does it stand in relation to the many needs of the world? Is it not rather like a crystallization of an immature stage of development? Why should a fraternity woman go about the world seeking only her own kind, like the missionary to China who wrote to her fraternity paper of the various social advantages that came to her through her encounters there with Greek sisters? It looks to me very much like an actual limitation of growth. Take the case of the country girl whom college has unfitted for her home environment. It was cited as one of the inestimable blessings of the system that her sole interest now lies in her fraternity literature and friends. To my mind this relationship is rather a handicap that retards the shifting of focus that must take place in her before she can make her life a success.
For these reasons I believe that the fraternities, notwithstanding individual benefits, are hastening on our “French Revolution”; they are creating a type that rules by habit rather than by individual power and wisdom; and by their inflexible system of caste they are emphasizing the gap, already more than sufficient for women as for men, between privilege and the working world.
A college president recently said to me in substance: “I always think of the fraternity men as in a circle, hand in hand, facing outward; but of the women as turned the other way, worshiping at their own little shrine, with their backs to the winds of the world.”
