The wide attention that lately has been attracted to the influence of the fraternities in men's colleges and universities, from the social and democratic points of view, has suggested the treatment of the somewhat similar societies in colleges for women. At our request, Miss Rickert has made a comprehensive and impartial investigation, the results of which are embodied in the present paper and in one to follow, entitled, "What Can We Do About It?" Parents, college authorities, fraternity members, and other students will be interested in the facts and conclusions here presented. - The Editor.
A Trifling device of Greek letters in gold and enamel is a potent badge of social distinction in our democratic country, a hallmark of a certain sort of aristocracy.
The college fraternities are aristocratic in that they are self-perpetuating. Their privileges are not to be won through the conquest of adverse conditions and opposing forces; they are handed down by the older generations. Theoretically, admittance depends upon congeniality of spirit; virtually, clanship of race is coming to count more than kinship of soul. The chapters to-day show an increasing proportion of brothers, daughters, cousins and friends. "If we build a chapter-house, Mrs. Vangoelet will allow her two sisters to come in with us; otherwise not," expresses this attitude.
The Pan Hellenic Society is an organization of nearly fifty thousand college women, which is spreading enormously. Sixty chapters were established between 1890 and 1900, and two hundred between 1900 and 1910. It has a foothold in seventy-five of our leading coeducational institutions (that is, in all but about three), and several of the large women's colleges. It is elaborately inspected and regulated by Pan-Hellenics, national and local.
The fraternities are aristocratic in that they are destructive to freedom of intercourse. The fraternal spirit is the great modern separator. It builds first a high wall between the Greeks and the barbarians, and then a maze of social distinctions between fraternity and fraternity. Are there not Attic Greeks and Doric, and Greeks from the far Ionian Isles?
The women's fraternities began as sororities, and the change of name is significant. It means, they claim, that women as human beings have as much right to be included in the word "fraternity" as in the phrase "the brotherhood of man." It means more than that. Consciously or unconsciously they have been moved by the aristocratic impulse to attach the early traditions, to create the social atmosphere, of the men's fraternities; in other words, to lengthen the pedigree of their organization.
Is this unjust? The fraternity women have responded most generously to my inquiries; they have heaped upon me a small mountain of manuscript in explanation and defense of their theories and their practice. How shall I get at the truth? It is almost impossible to say anything that is not true of one fraternity or one chapter and at the same time untrue of others; but I have tried to understand their ideals and to follow up and judge the tendencies of their practice.
With college men the fraternity is frankly a social privilege which may become an invaluable business asset in after life. With women it is theoretically a means of completing individual development: "The university endeavors to graduate a student; the fraternity a significant, unselfish, gracious woman."
The fraternity idea, however, reaches about one student in ten!
But forget for a time the nine tenths, the heterogeneous mass of the "barbarians," and look at the system as it develops the elect few; and, to be just, consider it in its ideal form, toward which all the chapters are striving. Here is a group of between fifteen and thirty girls living in a dignified, well-appointed chapter-house near the campus, with a "house mother," or chaperon. They are good-looking, well-dressed, all-round girls; athletic, dramatic, social-minded, rarely given to overstudy, almost always popular with men. They are not all rich, and not all of patrician family. One is a governor's daughter, one a milliner's; one spends all her summers abroad, one earns next year's fees by teaching in a vacation school; one has always helped with the housework at home, another has never touched a duster or a broom until she takes her turn in polishing the chapter-house floors. If they have one common quality, it is this, as an observant college officer says, that they "do not have to be explained; they are so instantaneously attractive as to make the reason for their selection immediately evident."
These girls make a happy family of elder and younger sisters, the elder feeling strongly responsible for the physical, intellectual, and spiritual welfare of the younger, the younger bound to heed the precepts and to follow the examples of the elder. They are closely linked by observance of a ritual which is said to be beautiful and uplifting. One enthusiast writes me: "That mere girls could have written our rituals, given expression and symbol to our creeds and initiation ceremonies, seems almost impossible, yet a proof of the divinity of clear-eyed womanhood."
They are said to be outspoken in criticizing one another in the light of their ideals, meek in accepting criticism. One chapter event went to the length of establishing after its service a special meeting in which members were subjected to the fire of anonymous criticisms from their fellows, and so set to cure dominant faults. They manage their own household and business affairs with a precision and technic alarming to read about. They learn independence and self-reliance, on the one hand; self-control and a graceful yielding to the will of the majority on the other.
Their friendships are more loyal than the outsider can well imagine. Pushed to extremes, this loyalty even led, in one instance, to a concealment of theft and a levying of contributions to make up the loss; in two other cases cited, to expulsion from a chapter for "loose morals," with, however, a rigid silence in the presence of outsiders as to the cause.
Indeed, life in the chapter-house seems to call out most of the virtues - unselfishness, neatness, tidiness, promptness, and general efficiency. In this college home, which to the fraternity girls is far more the vital center of their college experience than the classroom or the laboratory, there is much exchange of hospitality between chapters and individuals. Members of the faculty and distinguished gusts are entertained. The girls are at the opposite pole from the poor student who cooks her own breakfast in her room, from the unfortunate "barb" who is left to the promiscuous friendships of the cheap boarding-house. They learn to plan a successful dinner, to pacify an enraged cook, to distinguish between porterhouse and sirloin, to lay out money to the best advantage in entertainment, to undertake without a quiver a reception for a thousand guests with only an afternoon of actual preparation. They learn to preside and to receive with grace and charm, to deal tactfully with many temperaments, to shuffle guests. Briefly, they become skilled in the complete art of the social game.
To sum up, according to the claims made for the fraternity girl in the handbook of her organization, she develops individuality and the power to lead; she acquires invaluable business training and womanly charm. She is given a wider outlook over the field of collegiate education than her less fortunate sisters; she is blessed with congenial friendships that amount almost to a continuance of family relationships, and "whatever the line of service to which she may consecrate herself," she "will always be a success."
This is a composite picture, made up from scores of glowing accounts of the benefits of the system. Is it true?
Certainly the shield has a reverse side. Over against the select fraternity of the pillared porch, let us place that which, during a severe winter, had to go outside the pale and take in new members in order to pay the coal bill. Let us also remember the chaperon who is also the cook, and does not appear at functions.
"Good-looking?" Yes, I have heard of a would-be chapter that was almost excluded from the national organization because the photograph send on showed that they did not do their hair becomingly; and they were solemnly admonished to this effect in a type-written letter!
"Well-dressed?" One would scarcely believe the difference it makes to a "rushee" whether she is wearing a smart fall hat or a summer left-over; and if her belt pin should one day fail to do its duty, her cause might as well be lost. One method of choosing likely members is to send delegates to the station to observe the new girls as they arrive. there is witnessed the triumph of the tailored suit over the dowdy frills of the country dressmaker, of the suitcase that has lived abroad over the bulging valise that is packed with home-grown apples and home-made cookies.
"All-round?" Yes, with possibly a slight depression on the side of scholarship. I have heard of a good many cases in which girls were dragged out of the mire of conditions and hauled through their college course by the zeal of fraternity sisters pulling all together for the glory of the chapter. They have ideals of scholarship, indeed they are trying to establish a standard for admission, and they even carry off a share of the honors; but, on the whole, their social mind interferes with the scholastic attitude, and prevents over-application to mental effort.
"Rich?" Not necessarily; yet would not the girl who drives her own automobile have some advantage over the one who works her way through college, and the girl whose parents have a delightful home most suitable for "rushing" purposes near the campus be preferred to any sweet madonna-of-the-boarding -house? I heard only the other day how an initiation fee was raised to five times its original amount on the plea. "The girls will appreciate it so much more if they have to pay a lot!"
"Family?" Not at all, yet I know of a girl who was rushed hard and as suddenly dropped because it was discovered that her father had been a butcher; of another, who was regarded as eligible until it was found out, what neither her name nor her features suggested, that her really distinguished family was of Jewish strain.
These instances must be set over against the ideal picture of the governor's daughter and the milliner's child, the mother's helper and the patrician of the South, scrubbing floors together.
Family jars, I am told, are beneath the dignity of the fraternities. It is difficult not to be skeptical as to the power of the ritual or of the pin to keep twenty healthy girls from splitting into factions over nothing at all; but even if outer harmony is maintained, is it conceivable that there should not very often be discomfort and even actual suffering among the minority? Suppose a chapter one year includes twelve students and eight butterflies, and the next year changes to three students and seventeen butterflies? What of the occasional "mistake"? I know a Theta girl whose mother was a Beta, but this fact was not discovered by the Betas until she was pledged. "What a pity!" they lamented; but "What an escape!" said she. As it happened, she felt entirely at home with the Thetas and could not bear the Betas; but suppose the situation had been reversed! She would have had no remedy except to withdraw, which would have made her painfully conspicuous and set everybody to wondering about the reason, or to change her college. But a girl out of harmony with a crowd and obliged to live with them in intimate association, is greatly to be pitied, whether she conforms or holds her own. What is to be said of the ethics of forcing an Episcopalian to dance in Lent against her strong religious scruples? Can it be doubted that such a minority often yields its own convictions to keep pace with the others, or, not yielding, is painfully out of step?
As to the wonderful ritual devised by "clear-eyed womanhood," I have heard it also described as "childish," "poppycock," bunk." The ideals are necessarily those of immaturity, and have all the vagueness and some of the wrong-headedness of youth. "They are not harmful," writes a dean, a fraternity woman who is familiar also with a college where no fraternities exist, "except that they are sentimental." I take this to mean that they are more suited to discourses at fraternity banquets, as a kind of leaven to reminiscences of good old times, than to practical application outside the fraternity world.(1) That they may "have a dynamic force upon character" is doubtless true of the persons who do not develop beyond the stage at which they are propounded; that they lead to much real kindness among fraternity sisters in time of illness and trouble need not be doubted. But a loyalty which hides a thief and turns her loose in the world without warning may be a dangerous thing, and when it expels a girl for "loose morals," and gives no further explanation, it is cruel, if the term means cigarettes or slight indiscretions with men, and dangerous if her character is such that she ought not to be allowed to remain on the campus.
"Manage their own households and business affairs?" Yes, but a peep behind the scenes reveals a case of cutting out breakfast to save up for a tea, of giving a formal dinner and living on bread and potatoes for a week to make up the expense. An inspector's story hints that this business management is not unlike the average amateur performance. A dean, herself a fraternity woman of many years' experience, writes: "Usually ... the accounts of such an organization are not so well looked after as those of the more general women's organizations in which less of the 'family' idea prevails," and "the business training of these undergraduates" ... is "probably inferior to that gained by officers in such bodies as the Women's League, the Young Women's Christian Association, the Student Government Association, or the boards of college publications."
Then are the conclusions quoted by the handbook as to the influence of the fraternities on their members warranted by the facts? Do they cultivate individuality? How is it possible? In the first place, the fraternity girl is essentially "clubable"; and by the statute of limitations in personality she is bound to be more conventional, yes, even more superficial in her attractions, than the girl who is strongly individual. The fraternities are admitted to be groups in which like seeks like, and the whole flock aims to induce still greater likeness to the pattern of the group. The girl with a streak of genius cannot easily find her like, so she flocks not at all; the poor, proud girl fears patronage, and will not; the awkward, ill-bred country girl can't; the dig dare not for fear of missing some intellectual good thing. All these must develop more or less as individuals; but the fraternity girl, unless she enters as an individual strong enough to dominate her companions, must herself be dominated by them.
"Cultivate leadership?" Probably, in that they give to all their members in some measure the poise that comes only from an assured social position; and poise is the first requisite for leadership. Again, the fraternity girl who takes a leading part in outside college activities has always an advantage in that she does this with the backing of her group, who are all prepared to do team-work when occasion demands.
In the same way, it is only the few that from the first show executive and business ability who get much training in these directions through fraternity membership.
As to the wide outlook over the field of collegiate education, it is limited in two ways: first, in that the fraternity women are more or less segregated from the other students, and second, in that they do not come into contact at all with the great women's colleges, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, and Bryn Mawr.(2)
Then is the fraternity woman bound to be a success? Few of them, even while they claim inestimable benefits inexplicable to the outsider, say this. Some of them thing that when the admitted defects in the system are removed, when rushing is prohibited, when pledge-day is postponed until the new students have had time to find themselves intellectually and socially and to make their friends, when a uniform scholarship standard and uniform house-rules are enforced, it will make for the finest type of womanhood.
Doubtless there is need of these things. When rushing reaches the point of tying a girl in the rooms of a fraternity house until she puts on the fraternity-badge, it is time to take measures. When of two girls who are intimate friends, one is pledged because she knows better how to make use of her good points, while, with the breaking up of their friendship, the other, made of equally fine stuff, is left forlorn because she lacks an intangible something that attracts all the girls in a chapter, or has an intangible something that repels one member of it, a remedy should be found. When a popular girl has an engagement for five nights in a single week, or averages from sixty to eighty "dates" in a year, it almost looks as though scholarship needs attention. When the chaperon exerts her influence from the kitchen, and social events are untrammeled as to numbers and hours and expense, it is almost time for a reform. In other words, while there are chapters that are almost wholly admirable in their constituency and conduct, there are also others that reflect in the miniature college world the pace of the civilization about them.
But if all these reforms were accomplished, - and it is difficult to see how enough pressure can be brought by the National Pan-Hellenic to do this except sporadically, - the evils of the system remain as before, inherent and ineradicable. As regards those within, the fraternity idea means type; as regards those outside, it means caste.
"You'd never think Caroline was a Chi Chi, would you? She ought to have been a Tau Tau!" is overheard on the campus. What does this mean but type?
"The girl who sits next to me is an Alpha; I knew it before I saw her pin." What does this mean but type?
"I knew a chapter that was made up of three distinct types, digs, butterflies, and Y. W. C. A.'s ... To be sure, it rather slumped for a time." Why?
When a shrewd member of the faculty can forecast that certain freshmen will make Gamma Gamma, and certain others Omicron Omega, it must be admitted that not only is there a general fraternity type, but there is a tendency to type for each combination of Greek letters that is worn on a pin.
No doubt in the leveling up to type, many individual faults, such as selfishness, self-distrust, laziness, frivolity, lack of initiative, lack of self-control, bad temper, bad manners, and so on, are corrected; but in so far as the system is artificial, it is bound to develop conventionality. It is artificial because it chooses and restricts friendships. Close intimacy with outsiders is almost always made impracticable by circumstances and the mutual attitude of the elect and the non-elect; and in some cases it is held to be disloyal to the chapter. It is artificial because it strives to eliminate from a girl's experience all incongruous and hostile elements, and these are often conducive to growth. The fraternity girl's position is comparable to that of the child who is fed on soft foods.
That is, the trouble is that she is cultivated instead of being allowed to grow freely. She is rushed, pledged, initiated; she is studied, counseled, criticized, disciplined, drawn out, molded. Her power of initiative is developed only in that she "is made to go out and do things." Even as an upper classman, when it is her turn to uphold the fraternity ideals and to mold her younger sisters, she still lives in the rarefied atmosphere of an artificially selected community, where there is no chance for the free play of the individual. The fraternity girl, with all her initiative, her poise, her charm, her efficiency, is crippled by the fact that she is not allowed to come to grips with all sort of conditions and people, by which alone is gained the personal, as opposed to the group, attitude toward life.
Does the fraternity idea mean caste? Are fraternity girls snobbish? This question brought an emphatic denial from fraternity women on all sides. The existence of snobbery here and there, in chapters and in individuals, is admitted; but the attitude of the organization, I am told, is to root it out, and by all means to encourage democracy. The only difficulty here is that snobbery is the foundation-stone of the system, and when it goes, the system topples. This is the way of it. If you and I have a secret, and we talk together in the presence of a third person who does not know it, by no means in our human power can we avoid a snobbish attitude toward that third person. We ourselves may forget the secret; but the person outside, by the very fact that he is shut out from it, magnifies its importance, and no equality of dealing is possible between him and ourselves. Extend the picture to a houseful of girls, linked together by a common knowledge, a common family, and a common social life, and give these girls the right to say who shall be privileged to join them, what chance for equal dealing as the outsider, or even a less closely organized group of outsiders, against their united social attitude? The fraternity girl may not feel snobbish, but if the barbarian is snubbed, the result is much the same. What though the "frat" girl claims that the "barb" will not meet her half-way? As long as there is consciousness of effort to bridge the gap, the gap is plainly there.
Where there is a gap, there is caste, and where caste is recognized, snobbery is inevitable. When the fraternity woman disclaims snobbery, she means that she is careful not to emphasize the distinctions between herself and others. She is like the teacher who, in order to preserve strict impartiality, takes off her fraternity-pin when she goes to class. No, the fraternity woman, aware as she is of the "greater blessings of her lot," does not snub those less fortunate than herself; she either ignores them or is kind to them. Sometimes she manages both attitudes at the same time, as in the case of a party given to all the students, in which the programs of the fraternity members are filled weeks ahead. And if the outsiders who go feel like parasites, it is surely their own fault. Admit, on the one hand, a fund of common knowledge and common acquaintance, extensive social experience, and the assurance of social standing, and, on the other, instead of these things, the ever-present sense of having been passed over as negligible, or, what is yet worse, of having been tried and found wanting. Can the gap be bridged?
Nor do the attempts of the fraternities to bridge the gap bear out their claims of democracy. In a recent report on social customs made by a committee of the Pan-Hellenic, only three chapters mentioned any effort to be "nice" to the whole student body. One spoke of a spring picnic; two, of attempts at occasional "open houses," in one case dubbed a failure by some members; and the third, "prospects of a party for all college women and a freshman scholarship"! I am afraid it is impossible to deny that the fraternities live in a world by themselves, shut off by an insuperable barrier from those who are not "their sort." And if this is not caste, what is?
The system, however, does create a sort of noblesse oblige, which in some cases makes the fraternity girls leaders in the class and student organizations, Young Women's Christian Association, and various other college activities, although in this they are sometimes thwarted by inter-fraternal rivalries and jealousies, and by the combined hostilities of the barbarians. Further, they are said to cooperate earnestly and efficiently with deans and presidents in coercing refractory members of their own body, and in helping put through reforms and other measures for the good of the whole student body. They are the most loyal part of the alumnae, and through their permanent connection with their chapters, continue to come back and show interest in their alma mater long after other students have broken the tie.
So far I have said little about the girl who is left out. To many of the fraternity women she seems the most deplorable feature of the system. Except in the college where the societies contain all but a very few of the students, her case does not seem to me serious. To be sure, she misses a great deal of fun and social training; but if she is worth saving, she saves herself in the end; and if she gives up in despair and goes home because she does not "make a frat," she is not of the stuff that the college needs. Probably some sensitive girls are embittered for a long time by the slight, but the finer ones conquer, even though the sting lingers throughout their course. A large number in the great mass of the students are unaffected by the fraternity problems. They do not expect or wish to get in, and they have virtually very little to do with the fraternity girls except as they work in the same student organizations. They have their own sets, their own social life, averaging more good times, perhaps, than they are credited with by their pitying superior sisters. What the university fails to do to counteract the effects of poverty, ill breeding, bad preparation, and inexperience is another thing altogether. Individual tragedies settle themselves, and those who win come out strong, finer women for their victory over adverse conditions than any fraternity girl for whom the way has been made smooth.
But the fraternity idea must be judged not so much by those whom it shuts out from special privilege as by the results that it produces in those whom it fosters.
The Pan Hellenic Society believes itself specially chosen and trained for service. And what has it done? Aside from a vague and general interest in alumnae activities, this service is reduced to scholarships, some isolated attempts in education and philanthropy, a certain "dynamic force" upon the character of its members, scarcely apparent to outsiders, and continued perfection of organization, thus far for no more evident purpose than the reform of its own body.
In other words, the fraternity system seems grotesquely out of proportion in the general scheme of things. Why should this one feature of undergraduate life be magnified by means of publications, council meetings, and conventions, if it is to fulfil no other purpose than the perpetuation of itself? How does it stand in relation to the many needs of the world? Is it not rather like a crystallization of an immature stage of development? Why should a fraternity woman go about the world seeking only her own kind, like the missionary to China who wrote to her fraternity paper of the various social advantages that came to her through her encounters there with Greek sisters? It looks to me very much like an actual limitation of growth. Take the case of the country girl whom college has unfitted for her home environment. It was cited as one of the inestimable blessings of the system that her sole interest now lies in her fraternity literature and friends. To my mind this relationship is rather a handicap that retards the shifting of focus that must take place in her before she can make her life a success.
For these reasons I believe that the fraternities, notwithstanding individual benefits, are hastening on our "French Revolution"; they are creating a type that rules by habit rather than by individual power and wisdom; and by their inflexible system of caste they are emphasizing the gap, already more than sufficient for women as for men, between privilege and the working world.
A college president recently said to me in substance: "I always think of the fraternity men as in a circle, hand in hand, facing outward; but of the women as turned the other way, worshiping at their own little shrine, with their backs to the winds of the world."
(1) And yet I read in a belated answer from a broadminded fraternity woman: "The vows of these childish secret societies are regarded as just as binding as marriage-vows."
(2) In Wellesley the societies are local, and in Smith they are not properly fraternities at all.