Problem

Fraternity men throughout the land had their eyes on Yale last week. There, where the college fraternity system took early root, it seemed about to die. First, Alpha Delta Phi said it would pledge no new members this year and Alpha Delts said privately they would probably close their house, disband the chapter. Few days later Psi Upsilon said it was turning in its national charter, to become a local, nonsecret club.

Yale College fraternity houses have never bedded their members, a decade ago were not equipped to feed all of them. Scattered among New Haven boarding houses, fraternity brothers gathered only at weekly meetings. It was chiefly to draw brothers together at the dining table that the fraternities in the late 1920s canvassed their alumni, put up fine new houses at prices ranging from $150,000 to $250,000, most with sizeable mortgages. The university administration beamed on this move toward a warmer campus social life.

But hardly were paint & plaster dry on the new mansions when Philanthropist Edward Stephen Harkness came along with some $10,000,000 and an idea that Yale should be broken up into small residential colleges on the English plan. Last autumn his idea became a reality. Each upperclassman was required to eat at least ten meals per week, at $5.50, in his college. For $2.50 more he could have all his meals there. Fraternity treasuries felt the pinch as members dropped away from dining rooms, their chief sources of income. Mortgage payments came hard, and so did the fat sums which every local chapter pays into its national headquarters. Fraternity ties, never overly strong, grew weaker as Yalemen found friends among their college-mates.

Said Yale's President James Rowland Angell last week: "The fraternity problem is the one outstanding problem left over from the old Yale. Its answer is not easy. . . . But the fraternity has in past years served as a very necessary part of Yale's social life and I am confident that when they have sufficient adjustments to the changed conditions ... of the college plan, these adjustments will satisfactorily take care of the enduring social interests of the undergraduates."

Said the Yale News: "The only distinct and undeniable advantage of the modern fraternity is that it possesses all the facilities for a complete game of billiards."

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