Page:The Fraternity and the Undergraduate (1923).pdf/259

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excellent scholastic standing. They were well thought of in the community, and they were interested in all sorts of college activities. There was a mixture of foreign names in the list of membership. The ancestors of some of them had come from Sweden and Holland, and Germany and Southeastern Europe. Some of the men were working in the various positions that are open to students who find it necessary to help in their own support.

"In what sorts of business are the fathers of these men?" the officer asked me when he came from visiting the club. I told him, and they were all respectable businesses as we democratic Americans count respectability.

"My fraternity will never grant a charter to men of that type," he said. "They are not gentlemen, and my fraternity is an organization of gentlemen." If this man's statement expresses the feeling of many fraternity men today, then the fraternity of the future will have to modify its ideas with regard to what the characteristics of a real gentleman are.

There are two young freshmen in my own institution with whom I have become pretty familiar this year who, as fraternity men now look at life and define "good material," have little chance to get into any such organization. They are both