To The Editor:
I should like to address a few comments to Mr. Rorty concerning the rather hopeful tone of his article in the February issue of Commentary. I quite agree with him that the fraternity discrimination problem is much improved in the larger universities in this country, but there still remains much to be done at the smaller colleges, and not much is being done. The courageous steps taken by the administration at Amherst College have not been duplicated in many places. Indeed, the more usual attitude taken by college administrative staffs is one of . . . passive agreement with the outmoded concept that “the fraternity has an inherent right to be selective. . . .”
It may be quite true that the alumni trustees of the various national fraternities are, in many instances, most directly responsible for the persistence of the various restrictive covenants and “gentlemen’s agreements” in their fraternities, but they are not solely responsible. The undergraduate members of many of the fraternities are often themselves quite devoted to the principle of social segregation because of religion or color. This persistent tendency to preserve the restrictions is probably most noticeable in the smaller rural colleges. . . . The Jewish students from urban areas still find it tough sledding when it comes to fraternity acceptance at a rural college. They are said to be “more Jewish” than the occasional non-urban Jew who comes to the college. This form of narrowness in fraternity rushing policy, can, I feel, be far more insidious than the open segregation practiced at a large university where the principle of “separate but equal” holds forth. At the rural college the Jewish fraternities have still to find a foothold. Often it is not a matter of an insufficient number of Jewish students to maintain such a fraternity, but rather an administrative fiat which keeps the Jewish fraternities off the campus. The administrations hide behind a guise of gradual integration, and thus prevent even this inferior solution to the problem of the Jewish student from being carried through. . . .
Daniel Thau Teitelbaum
Hamilton College
Clinton, New York
_____________