The Fraternity [excerpt]

McKinley and Roosevelt.

     It is unusual for any order to have as members both the President and the Vice-President and probably no other fraternity has had the high honor. The catalogue at present does not contain the name of William McKinley, but several members of Swan chapter inform us that he was duly initiated by their chapter as an honorary member and that the chapter roll so records. The delegates to the Sixth Convention at Washington recall with pleasure the special audience Mr. McKinley gave them and the interested and gracious way in which he greeted them and inquired about the welfare and condition of the Fraternity.
     Theodore Roosevelt was initiated while an undergraduate at Columbia law school, but the Phi Delta Phi virus did not take very well, for when he visited Ann Arbor, Mich., some few years ago, and was met by a committee from Kent chapter [436][437] and invited to the chapter house, he asserted that he was not a member—so Mr. Roberts P. Hudson of the Council tells us. He knew the Story club at Columbia, but he did not know Phi Delta Phi. Since then, the New York Club has changed Mr. Roosevelt’s views on the matter, but the incident well shows the result of conducting a fraternity on the old laisser-faire [sic] idea, which formerly obtained.