Page 29 - 1925 November - To Dragma

TO DRAGMA OF ALPHA OMICRON PI 109

A WORD ABOUT "RUSHING"

S EPTEMBER—To active girls it means rushing, and it may mean that to
some of the alumnae who can successfully brush away the cobwebs.
The average fraternity girl's capacity for digesting and appreciating
a message of honor and ideals is in a chronic state of being over-stuffed
and it is only after her summer's vacation that we dare offer these obser-
vations, which are the result of a few years of experience in life.

The fraternity receives more adverse criticism than any institution of
university life in this country today. A great deal of this criticism is
based on the conduct of fraternity members during the so-called "rushing
season." Have you not had some mother tell you how she has been dis-
illusioned about, and disappointed in, fraternities since her daughter was
rushed? Certainly, a fraternity as an organization, has no more excuse for
being discourteous to a freshman than has an individual. Sometimes
there seems to be a different code of social customs in practice at the
rushing season. In the mad race for supremacy, we forget that respect
for personality and lose our sense of proportion. W e forget that we
are college women and because we are, much greater things are expected of
us.

Dr. Henry VanDyke says, " A college education teaches us, through
literature, science, and philosophy, how to see things as they are, imagine
them as they might be, and to make them as they ought to be." Can't
we enter this fall rushing season with the assurance that we are educated
women, ready to do our part in justifying the existence of fraternities?—
Alpha P h i Quarterly.

The University of California, Southern Branch, has recently been
placed on a par with the parent institution at Berkeley. Previous to this
time the courses of instruction have run for two years only in the L o s
Angeles Branch and it has been necessary for the student to transfer either
to Berkeley or to some other institution in order to obtain a degree.

Beginning with the opening of college next fall, the course will be
extended to cover four years and degrees will also be granted. T h i s move
has been anticipated for some time by those who have studied the rapid
growth of the Southern Branch of the University. I t is a very welcome
one and will mark a new era in the history of the institution.

—The Tomahawk.