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

I40 THE SCROLL.has drawn them together into a closer union than exists in anyother group. I have personally found this fortunate, since ithas enabled me to know many people from many parts ofAmerica whom I never otherwise could have known. It istrue that outside my group I have sometimes found that achill reception met me from a member of another, but as thisfrigidity is found in but a small section and my life has notbeen parochial, I am quite satisfied to belong to a societywhich believes that men from Maine and Texas, Minnesotaand Louisiana are equally worthj' of enrollment in its ranks.I said I thought the fraternity system was about to enter aperiod of criticism and perhaps attack, that it would have todefend its reputation, if not its life.A movement has been gaining force for over a year nowagainst the amazing raft of pestiferous little high-school andeven grammar-school fraternities, presenting as they do nearlyall of the evils and very few of the virtues of the collegesocieties. The daily press of the country has made onslaught,in city after city the boards of education have forbidden them,and woman's clubs of every degree have passed adverse resolutionsupon them. It has been so easy to sweep them away;so surprisingly easy, that the opponents of the college societywill take courage. When the public has heard all the allegationsagainst them, it seems impossible that the question willnot be asked if the college societies are not guilty of some ofthe things which have caused the abolishment of their highschoolimitators. The inquiry will surely extend to the collegesociety, whose membership cheapened, whose badge discreditedby these insane organizations, will shortly find itsrepose if not existence threatened by these societies whichhave already taken away the chief value of the visible tokenof membership, its indication of the college man. I take thisto be the reason why you so seldom see the college fraternitybadge now in the north. The high-school fraternity has notyet invaded the south.The nation is beginning a war upon privilege. We were almoston the verge of vehmgerichte, of carbo'narii. New Harmodiusesand Aristogeitons would soon have been killing ournew Pisistratidse. But we have begun the movement throughforms of law. The privileged organizations in college mustanswer the questions that privilege will be asked everywhere.In the attempt to restore democracy the Greek letter fraternity,in the form in which it exists at present, will have somethingto reckon with. If the malignant growth of narrowness