A STEP TOWARD MATURITY Offering young men a sense of home and the mutual responsibility that goes with it. BY HOWARD FINEMAN Howard Fineman, Colgate ’70, is the Global Editorial Director for Huffington Post Media Group and an NBC/MSNBC News Analyst.
I
loved the idea and the reality of the core curriculum in the liberal arts, a dedicated faculty that was like family, a small place in a beautiful rural setting, full of history and tradition.
A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY, I was a 17-year-old freshman at a small college in a small town in Central New York State. Colgate had fewer than 2,000 students. (My high school had 3,000.) The college, like many others, was all male. Culturally, it seemed as far away as I could get. Which is why I went there. I wanted something different.
But I knew no one. Not a soul from my high school, so far as I knew, ever had ventured there. I was alone in a small place. We all know the risks and periodic disasters of fraternity life. They must be urgently addressed, and are. They are inexcusable. But there still is something to be said for the idea of friendship for its own sake, and for offering young men a sense of home and the mutual responsibility that goes with it. In packs, young men can be dangerous, and certainly self-destructive. And yet they also can learn how to fashion a useful and generous community. Fraternities can be a step – not the only one, to be sure – towards maturity.