Page:The Fraternity and the College (1915).pdf/42

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of action in accordance with his own personal wishes. Some one must be in control. The fraternity home must be run in the same way, but the man who is at its head must be broad-minded and sympathetic and strong willed. He must be the head in fact as well as in name. I could give innumerable illustrations of men elected to the head of fraternities because they were popular, because they were good athletes, because they had been the longest in the chapter, because they were good fellows, but without the slightest fitness to be in control of the house. Sometimes the only reason seems to be that the man is "entitled to it," but we shall not get far until we decide that no man is entitled to a position until he can fill it satisfactory. A large percentage of the failures in fraternity management and so in fraternity life come from the fact that there is a weak or inefficient or undiplomatic man at the head of the chapter.

The influence of the size of the chapter upon the possibility of realizing the ideal home life in the chapter house has been variously estimated. There are those fraternity officers who think a chapter roll of twenty is as large as it is ever desirable to allow; others argue for a larger number. With us at the University of Illinois the chapters of those organizations which live in their own houses have sometimes run nearly or quite to forty, the only defensible excuse being that the larger the