1912–13 Volume 37 No 1–5 - Phi Delta Theta Scroll Archive

330 THE SCROLLThere must be reasons which the college is ready to assign for not havingincluded college fraternities in its college Ife. We have discovered that fromconversations with other Phis. Either there has been some special circumstance,we will say, in the case of the University of Alaska, there have been breachesof decorum on the part of the members of the fraternities in that institutionor in the neighboring University of Yukon, or else the university authoritieshave taken a general view of the situation and have decided that, fromwhat they know and can find out about college fraternities, they are rather amenace than a healthy, natural element of college life.We know perfectly well that in fraternity life there is an element of extravagance.There is rather a tendency to make life too soft and agreeable,too nicely padded. We concede these things. And yet we insist that a collegewithout a fraternity is like coffee without cream, bread without butter, greenswithout bacon, love without kisses. But as one of the previous speakers hassaid, college men are the pick of the young men of the nation. I am surethat we will all agree that the highest and finest expression of college life isonly to be found in the fraternity. (Applause.)THE TOASTMASTER: The subject of the next speaker is "TheInterrogation." He represents the great Young Men's ChristianAssociation contingent, Brother John W. Pontius, Ohio Beta, '06.BROTHER PONTIUS : Brother Toastmaster, Brother Phis, Sisters in the triplebond, the Bond of Phi Delta Theta, the bond of matrimony, and, from thestandpoint of the cynic I suppose the third, and best of all, the prospect of thesame bond.It was my privilege in one of our western chapters a few years ago loattend an initiation. I was called upon that night to read the Bond. BecauseI appreciate it so much, because I love it, because I consider it a great expressionof human brotherhood, 1 endeavored to read it to the very best of myability, and although I am a very poor reader, at the conclusion of that initiation,to my surprise, several Phis came around me, quietly, by themselves—-I do not suppose any one of them knew -the other was coming—and said:"Under Heavens, Pontius, I never knew that there was anything in that Bondlike that."It seems to me that in a gathering of this sort steps should be taken bythe introduction of more secret work and by still other methods that couldbe developed for the better study and better appreciation of the great Bondwhich has been referred to by Brother Morrison. To me the Bond of thePhi Delta Theta is one of the most solemn obligations, one of the most beautifulrituals and one of the finest expressions of true brotherhood in the world,or that I have ever been privileged to place my name to, or even read over.It seems to me to be important that Phi Delta Theta should now declare itselfin favor of the adoption of sophomore pledging. Only by the adoption ofsuch a plan, can we properly discover whether or not a man has the ideals andthe manhood to come to us and be one of us upon the basis of the really fundamentalinterests in life. By spiking a man within three days, or six days orsix weeks or six months, after he comes into the university, it is not at allpossible for us to discover whether he has in him the capacity and characterwhich makes for true Phi manhood, whether he is of the caliber and characterwhich is set forth in language unmistakable in the terms of the Bondof our Phi Delta Theta.And then last, but by no means least, I believe that it is necessary for usin our fraternity life to make it a practice and definite plan to study and helpwork out in our civic life and social life some of the great human problemsof the day. Probably there never was a day in the history of the ages whenhumanity, and especially educated, trained humanity was confronted by so manyvital problems as at the present time. How many American college men goout into life with any knowledge of these problems? Or, much less, how theyare to be approached or solved ? Now, if the college men are the pick of the