Education: Memoirs of an ex-Greek

Charles W. Morton’s first weeks at Williams College were an adolescent agony of waiting for an invitation that never came. When fraternity rushing was over, the unpledged and miserable Morton took the first train home.

Two years later, back at Williams and still eager to be a Greek, Morton had his “heart’s desire” fulfilled. But his stomach’s desire was not. Morton endured fraternity food as long as he could, then transferred his patronage to the Williams Inn. By this week, 29 years later, Morton had decided that his stomach had been a sounder guide than his heart. In the Atlantic Monthly, of which he is now associate editor, Morton paid his respects to Fraternity Row in an essay that the Greeks would probably have several words for.

Incomparable Secrets. Writes Morton:

“Fraternity Row is a neighborhood of teen-age Little Scorpions Clubs, each with its secret grip, passwords and recognition signals. It may well be that all fraternities are using the same grip without knowing it, but . . . secrets of this caliber . . . can never be divulged, let alone compared . . .

“The undergraduate of sufficiently bland racial, religious and financial status awaits the call of brotherhood. The insufficiently bland will join the Commons Club . . . The college president turns resolutely away from the whole subject: these are matters of taste and congeniality for the boys to settle among themselves—and besides, the college could never afford to take over all that real estate at today’s prices . “. .

“The local chapter keeps decently to itself, avoiding traffic with neighbor fraternities and above all with the barbs*. . . Thus [a] fraternity man can go through [college] as one entitled not to meet more than 40 or 50 other undergraduates . . . Fraternity meals . . . are distinctive, and few Americans not confined in a state prison eat anything comparable to them as a steady diet. Consumption of ketchup along Fraternity Row is estimated at 1.27 gallons per week per brother . . .”

Good Old Himmelfarber. What comes of it all? Says Morton: “The college fraternity is highly regarded by manufacturing and retail jewelers, dealers in seed pearls and chip diamonds, and, naturally, by the ketchup industry. [But] the principal beneficiary [is] the executive secretary … of the national fraternity itself. It’s a life job, and because no one really knows how [he] got it, there is no ready way of getting rid of him . . . [His] entire life is spent in confecting doleful yet enthusiastic appeals for funds . . .

“Of all the mysteries in the fraternity system, none is more inexplicable than the complete disappearance of the fraternity man . . . after his graduation from college. No managing editor was ever heard to say, even in a Hollywood film : ‘Lead the paper with Himmelfarber’s story—he’s a Sigma Sigma from the Wingding School of Mines! I understand the Tau Taus were after him too.’ And . . . who ever heard of a fraternity man, even with distress signals flying, beating out a son-in-law for a fat job in the family business?”

*Barbarians, i.e., non-fraternity men.