1903-04 Volume 28 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

THE SCROLL. 323ions of fraternities. Forty-eight replies were received andprinted, 1903, in a pamphlet of 33 pages, entitled "TheAmerican College Fraternity." Nearly all of the replies werefavorable to fraternities, the most marked exception beingthat of President R. H. Jesse, of Missouri, as follows:Greek-letter fraternities in my opinion are worthless institutions. Sometimesthey are even harmful. The effort, however, to break them up generallydoes more harm than the fraternities do. In fact, in my opinion, thisis true of ninety-nine hundredths of the efforts to abolish them. It is impossiblefor the college authorities to abolish them if the students make up theirminds to maintain them. It is perhaps best to persuade the students to abandonthem. If this fails, the next best thing is to try to make them a meansof grace. If the efforts which are expended in abolishing them were expendedin leading them into the right way they would become, I think, a means ofgrace.The AKE Quarterly for February contains a short accountof the annual convention of that fraternity at Syracuse,November 11-14. The only illustration is the frontispiece,a half-tone of the convention, showing about 175 men—anunusually large number." Of the 40 active chapters, 4 wereunrepresented. Applications for charters from the Universitiesof Illinois and Texas were rejected, but a speaker at thebanquet expressed the hope that they would finally be grantedand said: "if we, as a fraternity, wish to keep abreast of thetimes, we must not be too conservative in the establishmentof new chapters." Another speaker at the banquet spoke asfollows:AKE has always been in favor of an intelligent form of expansion; shehas always stood for growth and has never stood still. AKE was founded inthe New England States, and from there soon spread to the South. AKEhas always realized that, to maintain the position which her founders intendedher to maintain, she must keep her eye on the whole country; she must realizethat changes are taking place, that the center of population is at one time inone place and then at another, that the big institutions are in the West, andthat the character of these institutions is changing. The new state universitiesare perhaps our field.AKE is no insular, provincial fraternity. We stand for more than thesmaller fraternities. This has always been a great safeguard, and has keptus from falling into a self satisfied rut. Since the inception of AKE, ourpolicy has been to look far into the future, with a view to maintain our attitudeas a large, catholic, national fraternity. AKE has alwas stood forexpansion. She has added laurel after laurel to her Treasures, but hasnever rested on her laurels. The fraternity as a whole does not need a morenumerous chapter roll, but we do need to take advantage of every chance ofincreasing the prestige of A X E.