Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/125

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

ship, yet it manages every year to name most of the successful candidates for office and to control most of the undergraduate affairs which have connected with them either profit or honor. The only explanation of why members of Greek letter fraternities, in most of the colleges in which they exist, hold much more than their proportionate share of class offices and political jobs in general is because these men are organized, and so have little trouble in getting their men by. The man in an organization comes to expect appointment or election merely because he belongs to an organization, and the public very often comes, also, to expect the same thing.

I have not thought it necessary to explain, excepting by implication, what I mean by politician and politics. What I do mean by politician as related to college is the man who through diplomacy and finesse and conscious planning and organization gets control of undergraduate affairs, decides who shall run for class president, who shall be editor of the college daily, who shall be chairman of the Junior Prom committee, and who shall run whatever in student affairs needs running—in short the man who in the college community is the power behind the throne. The mayor of a city is not necessarily the most influential man in the conduct of municipal affairs; in many cases he is merely a figurehead who was chosen by the real politicians of the community to be a foil for their schemes and plans. So, too, in college. The recent president of one of our sophomore classes was in no sense prominent or influential. He was picked for the place by the real leaders who got him elected and who told him what to do,