The Amherst Senate.

The idea of a student board of government is due to President Seelye of Amherst, in accordance with whose suggestion the senate was established at that college about two years ago. As the body owes its origin thus to the faculty rather than to the students of Amherst, its continuance is well assured, and the powers with which it is invested are considerable.

The senate is purely a student body, with the exception of the president, and numbers ten; of these, one represents the freshman class, two the sophomore, three the junior, and four the senior. The senators are elected for a term comprising two college terms; a length of duration in office which prevents the membership of the body from being entirely changed at any time, and, by the frequent rotation in office, renders it more nearly a representative of college sentiment. The president of the college sentiment. The president of the college is the president of the senate. The right of absolute veto which he exercises also as president of the faculty is retained, otherwise his duties and powers resemble those of presiding officers in general. Meetings of the senate are held once each month; while the president, or any two members, may call an extra meeting at any time.

It has been President Seelye's idea that the constitution of the senate, like the English Constitution, so called, should grow up with time; and so it happens that at present the constitution covers scarcely a page in the secretary's book. The jurisdiction of the senate is by no means sharply defined as yet. Broadly stated, however, in substantially President Seelye's words, the faculty have to do, or should have to do, simply with the literary life of the college; while to the students, through the senate, is left the control of all matters in general, other than literary, with which the undergraduates have to deal directly. Both in theory and by precedent athletic questions fall to the province of the senate. This, indeed, is perhaps the only precedent which has been at all firmly established thus far. Cases of expulsion and suspension are judged by the senate. Of course, the great value of the senate, as of the conference, is in the expression in an authoritative way of the sentiment of the college. The senate, however, has the power in many cases to render this sentiment the college law.

But the senate is not supposed to create business for itself; and like the nation whose happiness it is to have no annals, Amherst has been singularly free from all disturbing questions for some years past. Only one case of discipline has occurred during the existence of the senate; the question of athletics or no athletics was settled soon after the body's organization; and in fact the senators have done but little more at their stated meetings than to pass congratulations with the president on the prevailing harmony of the college. This accounts in a large degree for the embryo state of the constitution and the lack of fixedness in the prerogatives.

Perhaps once or twice there has been some feeling that the faculty have decided cases which should justly have come before the senate; these, however, have been unimportant, and in general it may be affirmed that the theoretical relations between the faculty and the senate have been preserved. Unlike every similar body, probably, the senate has the sympathy of the faculty to a greater degree than that of the students. The new system of government, of which the senate is merely a phase, was at first as thoroughly misunderstood at Amherst as it has been since throughout the college world, and the senate shared the same disapprobation and ridicule. The old disfavor is, of course, rapidly dying out; the senate is no longer expected to accomplish impossible things, and depreciated because it does not.

As it happens, the real strength of the senate remains for the future to test; and the longer a general quiescence delays this, the more Amherst is to be congratulated. The past has proved, however, that the senate is entirely practicable; the judgments, while few, have not been made hastily, nor to the detriment of the college; the senate has not proved more lenient than the faculty; the latter have been entirely satisfied with its workings; and the growing popularity of the plan at Amherst and at other colleges is a good omen for the success and an increase in the powers of the conference.