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

136 THE SCROLL.they hog all of the offices and portion them out among thevarious chapters, leaving the independent students very little.But this is rather looked down upon in most colleges, and thefraternity men enter politics entirely as individuals. Thereis much training in diplomacy in the smaller and mediumsizedinstitutions. In the very large institutions the fraternitiesare somewhat lost. Each lives to itself a great deal, anisolated monastic community. But in the institutions smallenough for the students to know each other there is the samecontest among fraternities that there is among the Europeanpowers. The balance of power must be maintained. Thestrong must not get too strong and the weak must be bolsteredup.In general, the life in the chapter houses is morally good.Few chapters permit drinking and gambling on the chapterpremises. Some whole fraternities are fast and brag of it astheir proudest glory. Andrew D. White, a strong defender offraternities, alwaj'S made an exception of one, which he mentionedby name. It is true that some fraternities never try tomake their chapters behave, that some try all the time andothers attempt it sporadically. My own is one of the sporades.Under some presidents, a close watch is kept upon all chaptersand the "sporty" ones are called to time; threatened,sometimes. We have more lively chapters than the average,and yet, thanks to a pretty close supervision by the fraternitycouncil, the society is far from being the worst behaved.Without exception, every society has some disorderly chapters.Some chapters are disorderly year after year, choosetheir members from the sporting element; others pass intotemporary occultation and out again. Frequently a chapterwhich could hardly be called a circumspect organization iscollectively better than the average of its component individuals.Even a lot of pretty bad fellows can often be keptwithin some sort of bounds through fear of injuring the reputationof the society. Fraternities are really quite strong onprudential morality. However, the very great insistence uponprudential morality may make the member fall into the badhabit of looking at every moral problem from no other sidethan that of expediency. Taken by and large, the fraternitydoes not corrupt the conduct of its members. If it is at allopen to the charge of disorderly behavior, that is because itis composed of men who would incline to frivolity even if nosuch thing as a fraternity existed.In the colleges where the percentage of fraternity men is