Kappa Alpha Theta Volume 8-9

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 Excerpt: ...his present want is a shrine for present worship. The Greek-letter society aims to be select, indeed, but also to be democratic, catholic, liberal. Not limiting its privileges to a small and mystic number, to twelve, fifteen or thirty, by a law so rigid that if Pericles or Plato, Shakespere, Goethe, Sheridan or Gladstone were the thirteenth or sixteenth candidate, he must stand outside, but welcoming every one who answers its standard of manly merit, it attains a wholesome breadth in its relations to the whole community of students. But this liberality is not always consistent with successful selection. It will sometimes happen that, in a particular college, the material for an ideal society can not in certain classes be found, or can not be brought into the most wisely conducted fraternity. If the chapter stood alone, it must degenerate and perhaps deservedly die. But the fraternity at large exercises an influence, rarely by direct interference, but always by its honorable prestige, and now more and more by the agencies which the increasing community of interest among the chapters is producing, to sustain and recruit the weak member. The oldest and strongest chapters of our best societies are perhaps those which would most freely acknowledge the great service which at times has been rendered them by such influences as these; and each of the great fraternities owes no small part of its present general prosperity to the generous aid and moral support which the whole body has at times afforded, however silently, to its weaker parts. THE ETHICAL INFLUENCE OF FRATERNITIES. By Miss Gertrude B. Black welder.' A great deal is being said of late in regard to the shortcomings of our colleges and universities; indeed the whole American educational system is now upon ...