Education: Frats

Volumes have been written to show that college fraternities are valuable institutions. Volumes more have been written to show that they are bad. A university president daring to come out flatly on college fraternities speaks more than volumes. Last week, President Max Mason of the University of Chicago spoke out in meeting: "If a fellow should buy a book in a course which he is not taking and should go back to his fraternity room, read it and think about it, he would be judged a queer fellow. And probably he would be. Scholarship today seems to be an affair for the shut-ins and queer fellows." He described the fraternity type of student: "Facile in the classroom and ready with answers in emergencies . . . superficial . . . the fellow who comes to class with a hangover and gets by, nevertheless. . . . Fraternity men, with their social advantages and intellectual capability, should form the nucleus of the group of creative personalities."