Letter to PBS Graduate members

Dear Brother,

In order to rekindle, keep alive, and to develop the spirit of loyalty for the fraternity on the part of the graduate members, the General Office is addressing this communication to you. We recognize the fact that there is a large number of our members who have been away from college and out of touch with the fraternity so long that the flame of devotion for Phi Beta Sigma may be growing dim. For this reason we feel that a better understanding of the present aims, program, and needs of the fraternity is necessary before we can hope to have the whole-hearted support of our graduate members. We therefore urge you to carefully consider the following statements.

1. Function of the Graduate Chapters
A graduate chapter may choose any line of work it may desire that is consistent with the ideals of the fraternity; it may function as a study, social, civic, or literary club. Graduate chapters, however, are subject ot the general laws of the fraternity the same as undergraduate chapters.

2. Fraternity Pin
All members should wear the fraternity pin; this is a medium of advertisment which is both wholesome and beneifical in that it shows self-interest, and lets the public know that the wearer is a Phi Beta Sigma member.

3. Recommending New Students
Graduate members should single out high school students, who are planning to, enter college, and refer them ot the fraternity and write the chapter in college where the student plans to attend, or write the General Office in reference to the matter.

4. Visiting Members
Members visiting cities and schools were chapters are located should look up the fraternity members and visit the chapter house when such is convenient.

5. The Douglass Fund
The Douglass Scholarship Fund was established by the convention of 1920 and is now in full operation. This is a worthy effort on the part of the fraternity to be of real service to mankind. The fraternity aims to increase the fund to three thousand dollars; this amount will assure a very substantial scholarship.

6. Fraternity Support
Graduate members are in a far better position to give advice and aid to the fraternity than the undergraduate members and for this reason we are calling upon our graduate members to rall to the support of the fraternity in its hour of need. In making this appeal for your support of the fraternity, we are looking far and away from a mere school organization to to an organization that has taken its place in the great field of human uplift, to an organization that is made up of men devoted to the noble principles for which the fraternity stands. We urge you to not forget the spirit of the fraternity, to help build up a strong graduate organization that shall be, as it ought to be, the backbone of the fraternity. We have always maintained that the fraternity should mean more to its members than what they get out of it while in college.

The friendships we form, the ties of brotherhood, the mutual understanding of each other as result of fraternal association, the spirit of helpfulness and cooperation as proacticed in school should follow us far and away from our school days. These influences, so beneficial while in college, should serve as a factor for good in our lives through the years that follow.

With best wishes for continued success, I am, Fraternally yours,
Founder A. Langston Taylor
a letter from Founder A. Langston Taylor to Graduate Members, 1924
Crescent Magazine