ANTI-FRATERNITY AMENDMENTS.

At the beginning of the college year of 1884-5 fourteen Palladians were members of secret Greek-letter fraternities. Previous to that time college fraternities in the University of Nebraska had been undemonstrative and had attracted but little attention, but during the year above mentioned they began to be strong enough to exert an influence in college politics in general and upon the literary societies in particular. By those most deeply interested, their influence upon the societies was believed to be bad, and a patient collection of impartial testimony was undertaken, the result of which may be briefly summed up as follows: (1) Active, open literary societies are indispensible features of our college life and their place cannot be filled by secret fraternities. (2) Wherever fraternities have become strong they have killed the literary societies, or have utterly destroyed their usefulness. (3) The same tendency is already apparent here, and the danger calls for decisive action. It as found that the society enthusiasm was being broken down, that society work was done mainly as it might influence "frat" or "barbs," and that confidence between society members had been destroyed.

On October 24th amendments to the constitution were offered to the society declaring that thereafter no Palladian should be a member of a secret college fraternity, excepting only those members who were already in fraternities. Similar amendments were offered in the University Union on the same evening. A meeting of all students was called to meet on the following Saturday in the chapel for the discussion of these amendments. A few fraternity men were present at the meeting, but they refused to do anything except report the proceedings. The anti-fraternity men stated their position, offered their evidence and adjourned.

On Friday evening, after a warm debate, the Palladian society passed the amendment by a vote of 40 to 17. At this time, or soon after, the defeated party withdrew and together with exiles from the Union, formed the Philodicean society. Their loss was a blow to the society, which then numbered not far from 60 members; but it was much less dangerous than the presence of fraternities in the society would have been.

The conclusions upon which this action was taken were strongly contradicted at the time by the fraternity men, who claimed that fraternities and literary societies were congenial. This claim they have since abandoned, and they now assert that the literary society is a relic of a past age, admitting what "barbs" have always held, viz.: that the action of the fraternities is deadly to the literary society, that the former attains its perfection only on the ruins of the latter, and that a choice between the two must be made.