8. College Days

But, viewing things by and large, the student was much more comfortable if he belonged to a fraternity. The deuce of it was that you couldn’t explain why you didn’t belong. Perhaps you hadn’t wanted to; perhaps you had been bidden and had declined. But you couldn’t go about wearing a placard telling this to the public.

The Y.M.C.A. was often referred to as the barb’s fraternity; and, because the Y.M.C.A. housed many religious activities, it was easy for a thoughtless youngster to deduce that religion might properly be left in the custody of the socially unwanted.

This predicament may seem to elderly people, who have forgotten many things of importance to youth, as a mouse begot by a mountain; but this dilemma of being overlooked by the fraternities can be a tragic thing. I have been through this heartbreaking business with a ladder and a lantern, again and again.

I knew a case of a sensitive youngster who had every right to believe that his daddy’s fraternity would be happy to welcome him. In the event you have not kept abreast of the changes in fraternity policies and problems through the years, a student whose father or uncle belonged to Alpha Alpha Alpha (let us say) is referred to as a “legacy.” What to do with legacies is a distressing question. The boy’s papa may have been a very popular fellow but there is no one in the active chapter now who ever heard of him. Junior himself may be a noisy, impudent pain in the neck who barges into the Alph chapter house to announce that this was his daddy’s “frat.”

Fraternities are not called “frats” except by the bards; it has been all of a quarter-century since fraternities were “frats.” Of course this is a small thing to cavil at, but the universe is made up of small things. Here you have the same problem to be encountered in California where the residents of San Francisco go into a screaming tizzy if anyone refers to their city as “Frisco.” My Uncle! How they hate that word “Frisco.” The seasoned resident of Los Angeles venomously despises people who say “L.A.” Only the hicks and people in “Frisco” call Los Angeles “L.A.” Only the hicks and people in “L.A.” call San Francisco “Frisco.” Naturally, Los Angeles is called “L.A.” more frequently than San Francisco is called “Frisco.” There are three or four times as many hicks in “L.A.” as there are in “Frisco.”

Of course, if you live in the East and have never been out here, you may say you’re going to Frisco, implying that you and good ole Frisco have been frisking about together for lo! these many years. But if you do that you are a hick, so the rule still holds.,

To get back to Junior and his daddy’s frat. The Alphs did not welcome him. They told him to get th’ell out of there and not come back until they sent for him. You retort, “Somebody should have briefed Junior before he left home.” Right you are, brother; but they didn’t. And now there’s nothing to be done. If Junior doesn’t want to feel like an outcast through his college days, he’d better move to a more comfortable environment.

Here is the case of four youngsters who were chums all through high school. They travel on the same train to the University. Three of them are bidden to Beta Beta Beta. Freddy Frey is overlooked. Freddy is a Catholic. Fifteen years ago the Betas would have bidden him. But, about a dozen years ago the Betas had bidden a couple of Catholic boys and pretty soon they had eight Catholic members and Father O’Toole was dropping in to call. Then the Betas’ Alumni Chapter reared up on its hind legs and decreed that there were to be no more Catholics admitted until further orders. It wasn’t that they had any objection to a Catholic because he was a Catholic, but they didn’t want to see the chapter tagged as a Catholic fraternity, as it certainly would be if the current trend continued. The alumni would have taken a similar action if the undergraduate chapter was filling up with Seventh-Day Adventists or Latter-day Saints or Jews.