Fraternities

 

La Marseillaise

Aux armes, citoyens

Formez vos bataillons

Marchons, marchons!

Qu’un sang impur

Abreuve nos sillons!

Vive L' Liberté! Vive L'Égalité! Vive L' Fraternité!

Fraternities are a way to have a tribe (i.e. a fraternity) within a tribe (i.e. a university).  The issue is whether the large tribe has a selection standard with which the smaller tribe agrees.  The selection criteria in European Universities was either already class based (e.g. Oxford, Cambridge, Eton, the “right” schools, etc.), or was merit based. ( e.g. the Sorbonne, Bologna, Copenhagen, etc.).  In many cases there are already colleges (schools, houses) within a university, so the need to join a smaller tribe is already provided.  Pembroke College is within Cambridge University.  You apply to Cambridge.  You are assigned to Pembroke.  Harry Potter applied to Hogwarts. Once at Hogwarts, he was sorted into Gryffindor House.

Joining a tribe is a perfectly natural and justifiable instinct ( “there is safety in numbers”).  Excluding members from your tribe on prejudice, is not a good thing.  ( e.g. Jim Crow laws, "No Irish  need apply").  The good purpose of a fraternity is such that when you travel to other places you can identify someone in your tribe ( e.g. same Fraternity, different chapter house). But fraternities are also exclusive (e.g. a potential member, a pledge, can be blackballed.)

In the European country with which the US is most familiar, the United Kingdom, there was already a very definite class system (“Upstairs, Downstairs”).  There was no need to exclude "lower" classes from the “right” schools, since  those schools were only for the “upper” classes anyway. The university was already class‑based, or in other countries where the society has no classes, there was no need to adopt an exclusive class structure within a university. This is not the case in the U.S.  Exclusive schools admit people who are not in your class (e.g. I am an Irish-Polish, Catholic, working-class graduate of an Ivy League university).  The alternative is to form fraternities, i.e. tribes, within those colleges where you can exclude the “wrong” people from your tribe.  Some that are excluded, may seek to form their own fraternities where they, and others like them, can be accepted, while others view this exclusion itself as folly ( “I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”- Groucho Marx.)

Can fraternities do good? Absolutely.  Is there a benefit of joining with others? Absolutely.  Can fraternities exclude people? Yes, and that is their cost.  Members have to decide for themselves whether the benefits outweigh the costs. Fraternities don’t exist in European Universities because there was no need for Fraternities.