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

THE SCROLL. 149this action was repealed, and a resolution was adopted prohibitingthe initiation of students within eight weeks of theirinitiation. The trustees, in 1904, further amended theiraction by a resolution providing that students shall not besolicited to join or not to join a fraternity until they havebeen at the university one year and passed all examinationsunconditioned, except that law students, having passed theirexaminations, may be pledged within three months. In 1904an effort was made to influence members of the Mississippilegislature to enact a law to suppress fraternities, but it failed,as did an effort, in 1905, to secure the passage by the legislatureof Arkansas of a really effective anti-fraternity law.This statement we believe covers all the movements to crushfraternities by legislative enactments.As the writer in the Independent says, the only importantinstitutions where fraternities are now inhibited are Oberlinand Princeton, and the clubs at the latter are essentially thesame as chapters of fraternities, except that they are local.Something in the nature of fraternities is needed in every college.It is true that fraternities are inclined to be clannish,that often they attempt to control college politics, but if therewere no fraternities there would be local circles and cliques,and they would engage in political maneuvering to as greatan extent as fraternities do now. Light upon this subject maybe gained by reading the histories of various colleges, showingthat before the advent of fraternities the students practisedwire pulling and log rolling to an extent almost unknown atthe present time. Most fraternities now discourage theirmembers from engaging in political combinations, and inculcatethe sound doctrine that in contests for positions in collegeorganizations the men who really deserve the distinctionsshould be chosen. It can be set down to the credit of thefraternity system that in most institutions where fraternitiesare strong there is far less cliquing and politics than there isat Harvard and Yale, where local clubs dominate the general