Education: The Bonds of Fraternity

Most U.S. college fraternities keep out Negroes and Jews, and in some cases Catholics. They don’t talk about it. But their own silence has not kept others from talking. In Manhattan last week, 500 delegates to the 39th National Interfraternity Conference met to beat around the subject, if not to face it squarely. They went away seemingly satisfied with the justifications offered by their chairman, David A. Embury, 61, a Cornell alumnus (’08) and a member of Acacia. Said he: “There is nothing arbitrary or capricious or unnatural about . . . restrictions based on race, creed or color. . . . [Fraternity] members live together, eat together, sleep together, date together and share each other’s joys and sorrows. What then could be more natural [than to] seek men with the same . . . backgrounds as their own?”