1905-06 Volume 30 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

.THE SCROLL. 133abolishment of fraternities as desirable and possible, theyhave not believed it is likely to happen at many colleges. Discussionsof the virtues and vices of these organizations havebecome little more than exercises in dialectics, seldom ofpractical intent in any more important contingency than theattempt to influence some freshman and his parents debatingover proffered membership. Within the year, however, amovement has begun which will at least bring the fraternityquestion into active discussion and force the fraternities todefend their reputation, if not their right to exist. .Inhibited by faculties, opposed by fellow-students even tothe point of personal violence, included in the anathema pronouncedby the general public in the anti-Masonic daysagainst all oath-bound societies, the pioneer fraternities inthe twenties and thirties led a precarious existence. Withoutmuch more of a definite purpose than the fun of beingmysterious, so delightful to a generation which enjoyed AnnRadcliffe, these societies speedily had imitators, which, extendingthe number of fraternity men, weakened oppositionof the students, and fraternity alumni becoming members ofthe faculties, opposition declined there, all while the fraternitieswere changing from hidden cliques to actual brotherhoods.The anti-Masonic agitation dying away, the oppositionof the public ceased.Spreading during the forties from the original seat in NewYork and New England into the south and then the west andgiving rise to yet other orders there, the fraternities in thosesections encountered the charge that they were undemocratic.They were. In the forties and fifties they had to exist subrosa, if they were to exist at all, in most of the western collegesand many of the southern. That the charge of aristocracyand narrowness was not made against them in theeast at this time may be seized upon by some as an indicationof a lack of the democratic spirit. The truth is that in generalthey were not undemocratic in the east, nor are the contemporarychapters of the region open to the charge in thedegree that western and southern chapters are. At Bowdoinand Colby, often the whole student body is enrolled in thefraternities. At Wesleyan and Trinity, nearly all belong, andat some of the other New England and New York collegesthe percentage of fraternity men runs as high as eighty-five.At Harvard the four or five fraternities are completely overshadowedby local clubs, and at Yale the idiosyncratic systemdoes away with many of the objective disadvantages and