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.