At least one of the women's colleges may claim to be well on toward a solution of the secret society problem. But the problem there was still complicated enough to be interesting and serious.
The five societies of Mount Holyoke had in the twenty years or so of their existence come to be thoroly [sic] entrenched in the life of the college. They were started, when Mt. Holyoke was going thru a period of reconstruction, with the admirable motive of adding to her equipment everything then supposed to be part of a model college. Every one was very proud of them then. But partly perhaps because of their local character, they grew to have an extraordinary firm grip on everything connected with the life of the undergraduates. As the college grew, the rushing came to be a distressing perversion of normal social life. Freshmen did little but talk over so-and-so's chances for such-and-such a fraternity and their own schedule of engagements for the next few days. The rushing season was long and gave plenty of time for a promising girl to acquire either a "swelled head" - which "queered" her with her contemporaries - or a series of low grades - which "queered" her with the office and often led to her return to her puzzled and outraged family.
The rushing itself was simple enough, as it was prohibited during class hours and was limited to a certain number of engagements a week with any one society. However to the freshmen's eye the life of the college was so colored by the whole business that the most casual meetings were significant and every sally forth upon the campus a new adventure.
The whole college was self-conscious. Society people could not mention their organizations to freshmen and seldom spoke of them even to their particular friends. Non-society people kept apart from all the rushing, looked on with disapproval at the treatment of the freshmen and kept silent except among themselves. The freshmen who were rushed gossiped in most of their spare time and behaved with circumspection before upper class girls, and those who were not being rushed went about miserably, stiffly or inconspicuously as their temperaments demanded.
The non-society people formed the majority of the undergraduate body, but most of the time they were too disgusted with society electioneering to oppose it and too nebulous a body to realize that they had any force of public opinion. The faculty looked on in distress at the state of affairs, tho it is to be doubted if most of them realized how things stood; it was known that they disapproved of societies but that any changes must first come from the students themselves. After a time the societies began to overreach themselves in the matter of elections, and there were several extremely disagreeable contests that hung on the society question. Societies that were known to be after offices for their members could always get them nominated, but the other societies usually opposed and the non-society girls quietly refused to vote for any society member. They took little pains with their own nominations, but they would stubbornly vote ballot after ballot and even hour after hour for the non-society candidate. The result was the really competent and fine girls from the societies did not hold office even when they were by nature amiably democratic.
Things got in such a muddle finally that a few non-society girls began to protest in the college magazine and call for more frank discussion of the subject, more sensible treatment of the freshmen and a better mutual understanding. They claimed that the society people had no idea how bitterly the bulk of the college was opposed to them; nor did the non-society people understand that there were laudable aims and occasionally real achievement on the part of societies as such. They announced that discussion of the question would continue thruout the year. The day the paragraph appeared the oldest sorority issued cards for a tea in its hitherto quite private room. The non-society people went, and the college began to talk openly. Then all the other societies opened their rooms, and before long they announced that there would be no more rushing and that students would not be taken in before their sophomore year. Finally a society alumna attacked societies chiefly because of their effect on the girl inside - the false ideas of loyalty that make her wear herself out in inconsequential matters, her waste of nervous energy, the danger of her missing the best intellectual benefits of college and of making friends of only her own particular kind. Then came the formation of a committee of students, alumnae and faculty to weigh the whole situation.
About that time public opinion turned all the way over, like an unruly church bell. People talked plainly, the societies did some real thinking and everyone was eager to have the thing thrashed out. After about six months of fruitful discussion the president called a mass meeting of the society members and put to them the question of abolishment as advised by the committee, the vote was strongly against perpetuation. It was a fine example of the essential fairness, open-mindedness and real democracy of the college woman, as well as the firm and tactful course of President Woolley. Many of the society alumnae could not see the effect of a few undemocratic societies on a large, well-housed college, and as their vote for disbanding was not obtainable, a faculty vote finally abrogated the charters. The effect on the college was the same, however, for the sentiment in the societies was still a conviction of their own unfitness to exist in that kind of college.
Of course while the societies are in process of discontinuing, plenty of girls, tho opposed in priciple, still feel that their convictions will not suffer if they taste the apple, as the tree will shortly be taken out of everybody's reach. But everywhere in college is quiet relief that societies are going.
"You can thank your lucky stars that you are out of it all," says the one class that can remember any thing of the old system, and general opinion, now articulate and stronger than ever before, is quite against exclusive secret societies at Mount Holyoke.
The advantages of the change are beginning to be apparent already. For one thing, the entering classes have a far more natural social life. In the close life of a college with dormitories for nearly all the students, there is no danger that the freshman will not get to know upper class girls. Moreover she is not now restrained by the limits of her "crowd" as she used to be if she joined a society and can make her own friends for herself in her own class. She is more likely to be interested and broadened by contact with girls of a different type from her own than if she had been absorbed into a clique that by its collective choice had made itself into a group consisting of a single type. There is now much less of the experience that many non-society girls went thru with - a wretched conviction during their first year that because they were not rushed there was something horrible the matter with them, a bitter and neglected sophomore year and an awakening sooner or later to the possibilities of an independent existence. Morbid girls will go through it in any case, but such a career is not now fostered among girls of the normal average type.
The regular college organizations are all gaining by the concentration now possible. There was a time when dramatic and literary organizations, for example, had difficulty in having any intercourse based entirely on their reasons for being. Society meetings, society electioneering and society friendships interfered everywhere. There are cliques now, of course, but they do not carry the prestige of a fraternity, they do not perpetuate themselves and they are not ironclad.
The final solution of the matter is likely to be found in the centralizing of the social life of the college and the closer connection of the college girl's social life with her intellectual interests. The new Student-Alumnae Building which Mount Holyoke is soon to build will be a center for all activities, both executive and social. There is already a non-exclusive social club which provides a dance and a play every week or so. With a free field it should develop well. Various schemes are afloat for providing points of contact between all returning alumnae and students such as the active chapters used to provide for a few. Student hostesses appointed at intervals would give all the old girls the characteristic welcome that delights '59 and '99 alike.
The success of Mount Holyoke's experience in dealing with so delicate a problem was largely due to the straghtforward way every one took hold of the subject. Considering the number concerned there was little quibbling or begging of the question; and in view of the feeling that any society member has for the memories connected with her college friendships, remarkably little rancor over the result. In every such situation the fairness of the students may safely be trusted, for the college woman, even in her flighty undergraduate days, has a fine sense of citizenship and of personal responsibility for the community.
New York City.