Miss Rickert's article, "The Fraternity Idea among College Women," in the November number, developed the argument that women's fraternities like men's are aristocratic, in that they are self-perpetuating and destructive to freedom of intercourse; that they stand for the privilege of one as against the common rights of all; that the benefits that they claim to bestow upon members are exaggerated, even in the case of individuals, and do not counterbalance the two evils which are inherent in the system and cannot be done away with by regulation from without or reform from within; and that these evils are, as regards members, that the fraternities educate to type, and, as regards outsiders, that they harden social differences into caste. - The Editor.
Can we do anything? Should we try? Some of the women's colleges are taking action. Fraternities have recently been abolished at Rockford as contrary to the democratic spirit of that institution; also at Pembroke, on the ground that they had come to absorb too much of the interest that should go into general college activities. At Elmira, where they have been since 1856, they have recently disbanded of their own accord, and they are to be discontinued at Mount Holyoke after 1913.
Among coeducational institutions, however, the fraternal spirit is certainly growing. Although the entire number of fraternity women is less than one fifth that of fraternity men, the active members - that is, the undergraduates - are almost half as numerous as the men, and the rate of initiation is nearly the same. Unless some check is put upon them, the women will soon outnumber the men, as they are said to surpass them in efficiency of organization.
Faculties and the Fraternities
Presidents and deans of colleges in which the Greek-letter societies exist show little inclination to abolish them, but rather a distinct recognition of the value of their cooperation in manipulating the student body. On the other hand, officers of institutions where only the local organizations are admitted, with no uncertain voice, declare that they mean to keep the control in their own hands, while the authorities of colleges where no fraternities have ever been admitted (1) are equally emphatic in stating that, as a force hostile to democracy, they shall never be allowed to enter.
There are the three faces of the problem. Which attitude is right?
The women's fraternities, which first arose in small colleges that were scarcely more than boarding-schools, were purely in imitation of men's organizations. But when women students were admitted to the state universities and other big endowed institutions, which were without provision for their students beyond lecture halls, laboratories, and libraries, the situation changed. In so far as the universities were concerned merely with intellectual training and made no attempt to reach the social side, the women's fraternities took on a certain defensive quality - the banding together of the minority, whose presence was more or less resented by the men. Their practical value in providing safe and comfortable homes for students was quickly recognized both by parents and by deans, upon whom came the responsibility for student welfare. But now this question of housing is a very minor aspect of the case, as even in institutions where chapter houses exist, these provide for less than one third of the women, usually much less; and in the majority of institutions the fraternities have no chapter houses at all.
On the other hand, the immediate practical use of the fraternities to-day is that by their organization and their training in organizing power they can be trusted to put things through. One dean writes, "Unconsciously one often chooses a fraternity girl to do a necessary thing, knowing that she will see it through." Several others, deans and presidents, say that the fraternities do valuable service in two ways: first, by making themselves responsible for the conduct of individual members of their societies who give trouble to the faculty; and, second, by taking the initiative, and standing solid in passing measures for the welfare of the whole student body.
These two virtues seem to me to be on very different levels. In regard to the first, I doubt whether any other agency could easily be found to deal as successfully with a recalcitrant student as a self-appointed committee of her intimate associates. It does not follow, however, that this committee need have the social characteristics of the fraternity. As for the second, it would seem that larger and more weighty organizations, such as the Young Women's Christian Association and the Women's League, not subject to the jealousies and rivalries of the fraternities, could be of much greater service.
Some Good Against Much Evil
It is difficult to balance the good and the bad points of the local and national organizations. The former are more democratic in that they are usually larger, being less strictly limited. They are without the element of permanent regulation that comes from the national union. They lack the exchange of ideas which comes from the association of a group of organizations, and their activities are entirely confined to the undergraduate years. In that they are always subject to faculty regulation, it is probable that loyalty to the society or club does not, as is too often the case among the fraternities, usurp the place of loyalty to alma mater.
As for the alleged democracy of the women's colleges, it is, in many cases, largely theoretical. These colleges provide for their students both housing and social life. The latter is somewhat cloistral, to be sure, but it is open to all. By the very conditions of heir life, they do not need the help of the fraternities for disciplinary or legislative measures. Does this mean that the colleges are without cliques, that every student is a sister to every other? Who that has lived in a woman's college does not know that every class is run usually by one group of friends, with occasional more or less successful attempts by other rival groups to grasp the power? The "fraternity spirit" comes into play all over the world as soon as three people meet, because one combination of two will always be more congenial than the other, and one is always left out. The fraternity spirit is simply the aristocratic impulse, the social instinct that is ever working toward the formation of class. Then, as it cannot be torn out of human nature, is it to be recognized and allowed to develop freely as in the case of the national organizations, or is it to be checked and controlled from without as in the case of the local organizations, or is it to be ignored, hidden under a cloak of theoretical democracy, as in the women's colleges?
Reforming The System
The furthest limit to which the national organizations will go in the way of outside regulation is to allow a representation of non-fraternity members of the faculty on their boards - a minority, I judge. On the other hand, they freely admit the more obvious faults of their system, and declare their earnest purpose of self-regulation. They even admit that these measures are defensive; they feel that their system is threatened. Let us look at the reforms they propose, and see how far they will go to change its fundamental nature.
They propose to do away, first, with the practice of "rushing" and the hysteria, expense, bitterness, and heartburn that accompany it, and to insure a thorough acquaintance on both sides by postponing pledge-day to the sophomore year. At the same time they mean to raise the scholarship standard for admission, and to regulate the social life of the chapter houses by insisting upon the observance of uniform and reasonable house rules.
The first trouble is that their chance of success in these reforms is very small. They may keep rushing, to all appearances, within bounds, but the feelings that it engenders must arise wherever a few persons are singled out by the arbitrary choice of several rival organizations.
When they postpone pledge-day, they cease to house the very students - the beginners - who in our big, promiscuous universities chiefly need care. Even if they provide for the freshmen by themselves building dormitories, they have to face the problems how the wide acquaintance of the first year is to pass into the segregation of the later years without breaking up friendships formed at that time, and whether, to avoid this thing, there will not be formed among the freshmen defensive cliques which will be taken in as wholes when the time comes. Under these conditions, which actually prevail in at least one university where sophomore pledging has been adopted, the system will remain unchanged.
The scholarship standard for admission, while it will improve the tone and efficiency of the fraternities by keeping out the thoroughly frivolous and incapable element, might conceivably, must inevitably render them still more exclusive by adding pride of intellect to pride of social standing. Even where a most beneficent result is confidently urged, that is, when the fraternity acts as a stimulus to drag the poor student up to the required grade, I am still in doubt. Is it worth while to force scholarship by means of social reward? Would it not be better to let these girls drop and find their place in another level in which they are moved by real interest in the thing they are doing, instead of by the goad of social ambition? This is at least a question to be considered.
As for the uniform house rules, where is the machinery that can enforce them in an aggregation of societies widely scattered and independent?
But suppose these reforms are carried to the last degree, how will they affect the system? Will they break down the barriers between Greek and barbarian? Will they make the selection of the college aristocracy any less artificial? Will they not, by still further elimination of "mistakes," - the incongruous element, - tend to make the fraternity woman still more conventional? Will they not ingrow more and more in their limitation of types? Will they not be still more the circle of girls looking inward and blowing up the little flame of their own ideals and aspirations, instead of individual women mingling with the great crowd of human beings, and turning their faces this way and that according to the needs of the time?
But if outside regulation is impracticable where the national organizations are already in control, and the proposed regulation from within only intensifies the abnormal conditions of the system, what can be done?
The fundamental problem for both the fraternities and the officers of colleges where they exist, is, whether or not the number of societies is to be restricted.
One dean says: "If I could, I would keep them out. As I cannot, I say let us have as many as possible."
Another dean stands for, "The rendering of fraternities inconspicuous and unimportant as an element in college life." She adds: "Often this end may be in a measure accomplished by strengthening the organizations to which all women students are eligible."
A Pomenter Of Caste Feeling
There is the difference of theory. One view looks toward enough fraternities to take in all the students who have any inclination to be "clubable"; the other, toward preserving what is sometimes called "the balance" between fraternity and non-fraternity women. The first tendency is democratic by bringing the majority into the position held by the minority to-day; the second is democratic by limiting the powers of the present minority. The regulation from within, being urged by the National Pan-Hellenic, is aristocratic in that it aims to increase the efficiency and power of this minority.
Where the fraternities contain nearly the whole body of women students, as happens in some small institutions, the few who are left out suffer proportionately. Again, as the "barbs" need not be reckoned with, jealousies between chapters are almost sure to rise.
On the other hand, in regard to the balance, one of the fraternity journals says in effect: Why should there be this balance between the fraternity and the non-fraternity element? If the system is ideal for one girl, is it not for all? What ground can a college stand on in putting a premium on the fraternity girls? Why increase the difference which we would all gladly lose sight of? Our ideals are the same as those of every true college woman, and the banding together into a fraternity is a help toward these ideals. Why refuse any college woman this help?
It is not merely a question of ideals and of the help of friends, but of definite social values, such as, for example, more intimate association with members of the faculty, more opportunities for meeting distinguished guests, and so on. Why should the fraternities have the monopoly of these social pleasures and assets?
The usual answer of the fraternity woman would be, I think: "Shall we do away with colleges because fewer than two persons out of a thousand go to college? Opportunities must necessarily be limited to the few.
"Limited to the few?" Yes, necessarily to a few at a time; but not always to the same few.
No, the fraternity woman does not wish to open up her fraternity to the general public. She may go outside her walls and speak with the barbs on terms of what she calls perfect equality and friendliness; but she wishes to keep to herself the fastness of her fraternity, with its idealistic ritual, its trivial secret, as a sanctuary secure from the miscellaneous hordes of the world.
There is no getting over or around or away from this attitude of mind. The insidiousness of it is that no amount of theory will save from it the average human being who gets the chance. One may have heard of the college professor who objected strongly when his sister was "bid" because he did not wish her to become a snob. Later, as fate would have it, he himself was called upon to organize a fraternity. Where was the snob then? On the other side of the wall, to be sure! And that is just where the difference comes in.
The College Authorities Face Their Duty?
One conclusion which would be generally admitted is, that the colleges and universities where the fraternities thrive have not done their whole duty by their students. Suppose, then, that they realize this, and wish to use the fraternal spirit to forward the welfare of the general body of students, what can they do? As a result of many suggestions, I seem to see that a somewhat definite line of action is possible.
In the first place, they are even now facing the problem of housing their students, and there arises the question of choice between the dormitory and the cottage. The large dormitory is more economical, and it was more manageable than a group of cottages in the old days before student government; but from every other point of view it fails. The small dormitory and the large cottage are rapidly approaching each other in size, and the approximation is due to a compromise between the desire of each college to put first the welfare of its students and the money available to carry out its plans.
But suppose - a somewhat visionary hypothesis, I am afraid - that an institution is free to build as many cottages as it needs, of the size that should bring the best possible results of group development, so that every girl student may be assured of a comfortable home with, for example, nineteen or twenty-nine others. She would then be on the proper basis for extending and receiving hospitality, and social training would follow as a matter of course.
The Grouping of Students for Development
The fraternity girls put great stress on their power of developing one another, the "house mother," or chaperon, even when she is not the cook, seeming to be usually more or less a figurehead. In this cottage system, what would happen if the group were left to itself in the same way? Naturally this would depend entirely upon the constitution of the group. If all birds of a feather flocked together, no sparrows would learn the song of the canary. If they were housed haphazard, in the order, for example, of registration, there would be at first anarchy, with the speedy assertion of the clique and government by the strongest spirits who were attracted to one another by congeniality, much as happens in the chapter houses now, while the weak and isolated spirits would have much the position of extension members of fraternities, taken in to help pay the coal bills. Clearly some sort of regulation from without would be not only desirable, but essential, unless the development of the individual girl is to be as much a matter of chance as with the fraternities. The line of remedy would seem to be by a proper distribution of upper-class girls and new students - poor dean! - and by the appointment of some responsible older woman as "house mother."
A great deal would depend upon the type of woman in charge. As one of the fraternity members said, she ought to be an alumna. But however important it is that a woman of fine ability, tact, social distinction, and loving-kindness should be paid an excellent salary for developing this side of life in every cottage or dormitory on the campus, there is probably not an institution in the country that can afford to pay for such service exclusively. A middle way, perhaps not so impracticable, would be to choose from the graduating class of each year girls for whom college has been rather a general training for life than a specialized preparation for some one profession - girls who could afford to give a year's time and who would gladly do so in return for board and lodging, special college privileges, such as graduate courses, and so on, and the not invaluable experience that they would gain by acting as these house mothers. They would be near enough in age to sympathize with the undergraduate point of view, far enough away to counsel, direct, and influence; and they, acting with house committees chosen by the household of each cottage, could guide each little group in such a way as to insure a flexible system which would permit both the individual and the social virtues to flourish. One might even foresee that a conference of these house mothers with the officers of the large students' organizations and a committee of the faculty might form a board comparable to the local Pan-Hellenics of the fraternities for the general guidance of student affairs. (2)
This might allow for social training and group development; but, the objection may be urged, how would it react upon student friendships? What assurance is there that in any cottage home there might not be as many "mistakes" as occur in fraternity choosing? Deans are proverbially not infallible, and the burden put upon them by such a plan would be heavy.
The answer is that congenial friendships are no more a matter of accidental living together than of arbitrary imposition by upper classmen, but of a free choice that in undergraduate years should range over the campus and as far as possible out into the world. With these the cottage system has little to do, except that by its flexibility it saves a girl from being unhappy more than one ear or perhaps even a semester. Whether her most intimate friends are all in her own house or scattered over the campus and through the town is a matter of special temperament. No two - poor dean again! - should be treated alike. The intense girl who tends to abnormality of the affections should have scattered friends. The solitary, self-sufficient girl should have her friends about her. With the eminently conventional, clubable girl it will make little difference with whom she lives; those about her will always be her friends, and by continued intimate association with them, she will develop a certain attitude of permanence in her ties which probably makes for character development.
A Narrowing Influence
In this connection I cannot forbear pointing out another fallacy in the fraternity theory. As most fraternity girls are naturally of the clubable type, it is undoubtedly true that the four years of close association lead them to permanent ties of friendship as no other system could do; but, on the other hand, as these girls in their teens must grow at different rates of development, the fraternity becomes an actual clog on those who might otherwise develop more rapidly and more freely; it tends to keep them all back to the pace of those who remain most nearly what they were in college years.
It must be admitted, however, that the cottage system does not do much to foster the kind of growth that comes, not from the clash of different types of personality, but from congenial associations. But is there not in every college adequate machinery for such expressions of tastes? With the students' associations, the women's leagues, the Young Women's Christian Association, literary associations, tennis clubs, golf clubs, garden clubs, walking clubs, journal clubs, - the multifarious club activities of almost any college, to which ability, or at least interest, is the test for admission, there should be no lack of opportunity for any student to encourage to the utmost any taste whatsoever. Nor should there be any limitation as to the number of clubs to which any student belongs, apart from the question of her interests and the amount of energy that she diverts from her main business as a student.
Because of the diversity of their activities, and the overlapping of their memberships, with such clubs as these there could be no question of rivalry. Rivalries and jealousies between the different cottages might spring up, but with a strong students' association and with partizanship weakened by the inevitable scattering of friends, this could not grow into anything like the hostility between fraternities and non-fraternities, between Greeks and Greeks, that exist in many institutions to-day.
Intercourse Between Alumna and Student
One thing not provided for in the scheme outlined is put forward by the fraternities as one of the great advantages of their organization, and that is the continued relationship between the alumna and her alma mater. without admitting the wisdom of allowing too much alumnae interference and control, one may see that some continuance of the tie is a good thing. The fraternities foster this connection, where they have chapter houses for the small proportion of students whom they reach, by means of a permanent college home and an abiding interest in the younger sisterhood. A similar result could be secured for the whole student body by means of a club-house built by the alumnae to put up those who return for visits and to accommodate offices for the various organizations of students.(3)
All this is visionary and impracticable, at present; and yet it is only following out the various lines of suggestion, which are based upon institutions already in existence.
Social Exclusiveness
If the colleges and universities should develop in this direction, what would become of the fraternities? The double system of cottages and clubs would remove the practical reasons for their existence. There is no work that they claim to do for the few that could not be done for the whole either in a cottage organization of students or by a club. They would be driven back upon the real ground of their growing prosperity in our land of the Newly Made - social exclusiveness. On that basis doubtless they will continue to exist. There will always be some people who will wish to wear a badge possessed by the few, who will wish to retire into an inner circle of common knowledge and common acquaintance where they are safe in feeling superior to those whom they keep outside as far as the choice lies with themselves. But these cliques, whatever each thinks of itself, will be forced to yield to the larger organizations of students both the control of affairs and the right to set the fashion in character and in social customs. They may become specialists in "cliquocracy" - the frat of the Vans and the frat of the Vons and the frat of the Log-Cabin Ancestors, the frat of the Ultra-Platonists, the frat of the Super-Bogies, and the frat of the Number-Two Shoes. That is, if the element of good which the fraternities give to their members is supplied to all college students in other ways, the fraternities themselves are bound to dwindle and shrivel until they become mere social excrescences, curiosities of aristocratic affinities.
Probably it is too late to make a stand. The fraternities are strong among the privileged classes, and tenacious of their privilege. They see, as who does not, that in an age and a country where opportunities are increasingly restricted to the few, this caste system of education is the best possible preparation to enable the few to use the opportunities that are theirs, in that it gives them all the social powers and affiliations by which chiefly the few rule the many; and the development of the individual is not the concern of a system that works to make corporate bodies closed against individual striving.
When one remembers the movement against the high-school fraternities, one is tempted for a moment to hope for a revision of popular opinion. How should what is generally condemned for the years between twelve and twenty be approved for the years between sixteen and twenty-four? Is there so wide a difference between the fraternity idea as it finds expression in the high-school girl of eighteen and the college girl of eighteen? The very women who most earnestly advocate the system in the colleges are bent upon driving it out of the high schools. Yet the fact that neither the joint effort of parents and teachers and state legislation has succeeded in this, argues ill for any successful movement against it in the colleges.
A New Altruism Needed
What can we do? We need a new religion to teach the subordination of personal good to communal welfare. We believe in it theoretically, we are anxious that our neighbors should practise it; but when it cuts home, we falter and fail. We see the evils of the fraternity system, and the fraternity people are among our most desirable acquaintances. We like them for friends and especially for our children's friends. We argue against the system and preach its abolition; but when Alice goes to college and is rushed by Beta and Gamma and Kappa in eager rivalry, we step down from the pulpit and rejoice with her and suffer with her anxious little heart until she is safely housed within the chapter that has the best standing.
And yet we do not call ourselves snobs. There must be a top layer. Why should not we be in it? Democracy? Yes; but that we and our children are to be on the same level with venders and hagglers and foreigners and other impossible people - absurd! Let us hasten to put on the Alpha Omega pin, which assures public recognition of our social superiority.
In other words, we still care more for individual distinction than for the welfare of society. I have heard more than a few thoughtful fraternity women sum up their position thus: "I hate the system; I deplore it! But as it's here, I've got to be in it because I can't bear to be left outside!" Can we fight this spirit? Can we win? If we do, the victory will mean that we have grown wise and sane and strong enough for such a democracy as the world has never yet known.
(1) At Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and Radcliffe; and, properly speaking, Smith.
(2) It has also been pointed out to me hat the system could be used even in a large dormitory by dividing up the building into floors or sections, and that this is now being done in the newest dormitories. The idea is not, of course, to secure boarding-school properties.
(3) Such club-houses are already in existence for men, and seem to fulfil their purpose admirably.