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THE MICHIGAN DAILY
The SOAP BOX
Letters published in this column should not be
construed as expressing the editoria opinion of The
Daily. Anonymous contributions will be disregarded.
The narnesof communicants w, however, be regarded
as confidential upon request. Contributors are asked to
be brief. the editor reserving the right to condense
Hell Week Menace
To the Editor:
It was with a feeling approaching amazement
and amounting almost to disbelief that I read in
the current issue of the Michigan Alumnus that the
Interfraternity Council at the University of Mich-
igan had voted in favor of the continuance of Hell
Week. As a national president of a social fra-
ternity, the editor of a national fraternity mag-
azine and the director of the new service for the
National Interfraternity Conference, I had felt
that I knew something about the trend of fra-
ternity movements, and I have taken considerable
satisfaction in what seemed to be the fact, that
Hell Week, one of the greatest menaces to the
fraternity system, was steadily becoming obsolete.
persisting only in some of the smaller colleges
and a few provincial-minded universities.
Despite the difficulty of uprooting practices
which had carried over from vicious high school
fraternity programs, for they had no place in col-
lege fraternities originally, I had believed that tre-
mendous advances had been made toward that end,
even before the depression brought problems which
sobered fraternities, making them realize that
their very existence was dependent upon a realiza-
tion of their social responsibility and definite evi-
dence that their influence was positive in giving
members the right social training and creating
desirable social attitudes. Today it is generally
recognized that those chapters which bring dis-
credit to themselves by continuing Hell Week prac-
tices are doing injury to the entire fraternity
cause.
As a Michigan man, I had assumed that fra-
ternity chapters in Ann Arbor had grown up, had
put away childish things and were justifying
themselves as organizations worthy of the respect
of men. Somehow adherence to such a high
schoolish tradition as Hell Week does not seem
consistent with what I have always held to be
University of Michigan standards. I had never
thought of Michigan as being provincial and im-
mature. If the action of the Interfraternity Coun-
cil merely kept fraternity chapters in the class of
kiddish organizations, denying them what should
be their rightful place in the estimation of right-
minded men and women as groups making a satis-
factory contribution to the intellectual and social
development of their members, it would be serious
enough, but any mature student of the fraternity
system knows that Hell Week practices injure, if
they do not destroy, the very ideals for which
the college fraternity stands.
What an absurdity it is for men to attempt
to develop a spirit of brotherhood by physically
mistreating and by humiliating those who are to
enter the organization named a fraternity! I
know Michigan alumni, who today are mature
men of affairs, yet who still hold nothing but
contempt and dislike toward certain of their chap-
ter brothers because pre-initiation activities gave
the latter an opportunity to exercise their sadistic
impulses.
To minimize, even partially destroy the effect of
a ritual by practices that are so completely counter
to the ideals and purposes of a fraternity is not
only inconsistent and silly, but it is downright dis-
loyal to those who have given or are giving time,
energy and thought to making college fraternities
not only worthy of respect, but of highest possible
value to members. At the same time, it under-
mines the fraternity in the minds of its entering
members, for certainly every decent-minded man
resents Hell Week practices and loses admiration
and respect for any organization that permits
them. As a result, the chapter which carries on a
program of Hell Week activities is simply weaken-
ing itself with its own members.
As an alumnus of the University of Michigan, I
regret this action of the Interfraternity Council, for
it places the institution in the class of provincially-
minded colleges and universities that are clinging
to obsolescent traditions consistent only with im-
mature youths. As one who is vitally concerned
with the general welfare of the college fraternity
system, I deplore it because it does harm to have
such an outstandingbinstitution as the University
of Michigan take this backward step and thus
bring discredit to fraternities as a whole.
Both as an alumnus of the University and as a
worker for the fraternity cause, I urge the recon-
sideration of the question in the hope that Mich-
igan fraternities will give evidence that they have
grown up, have put aside childish things, and are
ready to meet the challenge of today: to prove
that the fraternity can do more than any other
institution to give university men the social habits,
the social attitudes and the sense of social respon-
sibility that belong to really educated men.
-George Starr Lashoir, '11.
Cycle-pedia
To the Editor:
Among the fads of 1935 cycling appears to be
second only to the chain leter craze. It is a more
wholesome hobby and worthy of encouragement.
A few suggestions are hereby offered in the hope
that students will find more pleasure in the riding,
and more power when climbing hills or facing a
stiff wind:
(1) The (front) tip of the saddle should be in
line with the center of the sprocket shaft.
(2) The handle bars should be at the same
level as the saddle.
(3) The seat should be so adjusted that when
the pedal is closest to the ground the leg is extend-
ed with no bend in the knee. This gives a maxi-
mum of power and riding comfort.
-S. A. Zawadzki, '35M.
12
M
COL LEG IATE
OBSERVER
i
a
i
By BUD BERNARD
'36, sends the following contribution
E.O.B.,
entitlud:
POME
When first I came a freshman green
Naught but success could be seen.
My grades I knew would be straight A,
Phi Beta Kappa but a step away.
And now there came my sophomore year
My prospects now were not so clear.
My hopes of A, 'twas plain to see
Had dwindled slightly to a B.
Quite five semesters-gone at last-
I looked upon my happy past
And offered up a fervent plea
My kingdom for a lovely C.
In gratitude of man to man,
Unhappy mortals, smile who can,
For with the end of my junior year
I'll just be thrown out on my ear.
No longer can college editors be accused of los-
ing their "individual initiative" or of following
the leader. The editor of the paper at the Uni-
versity of California threw a bombshell into the
ranks of the campus writers by coming out with
an editorial in defense of William Randolph
Hearst, who, all this year, has taken a universal
drubbing at the hand of American collegiates.
Said the California martyr: "Hearst has a perfect
right to express his own opinion - as much or more
so than the college editors . . a group of half-
baked undergraduates."
- One of the campus wise guys recently asked
a pawnbroker in Detroit why he has hardly
anything in his windows but guitars and re-
volvers.
"Well, responded the pawnbroker, "Every
now and then someone buys a guitar, and
strange as it seems, pretty soon some other
member of his family purchases a revolver."
Three professors at the University of Wisconsin
have put their heads together and evolved the
following rules for a happy marriage:
1. The couple should have positive ideas about
the future of their wedlock. The "drift into bliss"
is nonsense.
2. They should assume that their marriage is
going to last, and forget about the statistics on
divorce percentages.
3. The man should dispense with all feelings of
sex superiority. That's poison to happy wedlock.
4. Marriage is a moral issue, a matter of the
adjustment of personalities.
Two hundred students at the University of Wis-
consin recently gathered in the Memorial Union
Building there and raised their voices in a defiant
singing of the Internationale. No action was taken
by school authorities.
Mil
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A Washington
BYSTANDER
By KIRKE SIMPSON
WASHINGTON, May 7.
T WOULD be difficult to say whether the Bank-
head "Farmers' Home Corporation" bill in the
Senate has definite White House approval. It
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ixpSEPN ROB/M' 0
involves a potential billion-
dollar bond issue to be used
in converting tenant farmers
into small farm proprietors
and Sen. Joe Robinson of Ar-
kansas, Democratic leader,
abandoned a bill of his own
making to throw his support
to the Bankhead measure. Yet,
what he told the Senate failed
to indicate whether President
Roosevelt stood ready to
launch the program if Con-
gress enacted it.
A provision of the work-re-
lief bill would permit the Pres-
ident to "subscribe" the $50,000,000 from that
source to start the operation. All that Robinson
would say as to presidential commitment to the
plan, however, was that if the President signed
the bill he "presumed" the money would be al-
lotted. Opponents of the Bankhead bill brought
out the fact that no treasury comment on its bond
proposals had been sought by the committee which
framed it.
THAT THE FARM CENSUS now in compilation
will show another big increase in the ranks
of tenant farmers was made clear in the debate.
The last detailed government figures go back to
1930. They were revived by Senator Vandenberg
in his opposition to the Bankhead bill and showed
2,644,365 tenant operated farms out of a total of
6,388,648, or 42.4 per cent. Since then the back-
to-the-farm migration precipitated by the depres-
sion has unquestionably greatly increased tenancy.
"Fundamentally, it is a cotton problem," Van-
denberg said. "It is localized. I do not desire to
inject the sectional viewpoint. I call attention
to this solely to identify the type of agriculture in-
volved."
NEVERTHELESS, that section concentration will
have an influence on the outcome of the pro-
posal. Particularly when it has the opposition
Re lgious Activities
TFee
FIRST METHODIST
EPISCOPAL CHURCH
State and Washington
Charles W. Brashares, Minister
L. Laverne Finch, Minister
A. Taliaferro, Music
9:45 A.M. - Class for young men
and women in the balcony of the
church auditorium. For the re-