College Discipline.

The following extract from an article in a recent number of the "Dickinsonian" adds new material to the question of college government:

College journals have always considered it their inalienable right to criticise anybody and everybody, but we propose to draw the line at the decision of a county judge, leaving it to those whose proper business it is to deal with such matters to make whatever comment they may deem advisable. But as to the general bearing of the new ruling, in reference to college discipline, regardless of its special origin and application, we venture to make a few observations.

The decision of Judge Sadler, though not at present in writing final as to the actual issuing of the mandamus against the faculty, which has not yet been done, may be considered as law relating to methods of trying offenders for breach of college discipline, until it may be neutralized by some other legal decision.

As we understand it, the position taken is, substantially, college trials must be conducted with the same limitations upon the authorities as are laid upon court officials; positive evidence such as would hold good in law, as against testimony that would perhaps hold good in enforcing parental discipline, or in the regulation of the methods of employing and discharging employees of a store, factory or corporation, must be obtained before an accused student may be a judged guilty.

That it is already difficult to secure testimony in college against offenders under the present prevalent sentiment, and that opprobrium is heaped upon one who does testify, however right he and his friends may consider his case to be, has been recently illustrated by the very events which indirectly led to the complication of a court trial, and the student whose testimony figured somewhat in the late trial was exempt from criticism by those who are usually disposed to shield wrong doing at all hazards, only because of his uniformly courteous bearing towards his fellow students, the high respect which his general course in college has gained for him, and because his testimony was not volunteered, but was given in the course of ordinary conversation at the table of one of the professors, to whom he is related and with whom he resides.

In the absence of testimony against students, faculties have had to govern their course largely by general circumstances, incidental evidence, personal observation and numberless other details perhaps insignificant in themselves but which go to make up the chain of evidence. That there is danger of injustice being done under this method is admitted, and the conscientious fear on the part of college faculties of committing injustice will perhaps largely account for what seems strange to the non-collegiate public - the little punishment there is meted out to students in proportion to the number of offences committed.

But indeed the validity of such testimony is by no means to be lightly regarded, except in the severe processes of law counts. Men are discharged from clerkship, from positions on rail-roads and numerous other corporations on much less weighty testimony than the average faculty considers necessary to the infliction of discipline upon refractory students. In fact, high authority may be found in favor of such testimony. The technicalities of law cannot be wisely admitted into the common relations of business and life. In regard to that which touches the courts so nearly as the regulation of police removals in New York, Chancellor Howard Crosby, in a recent number of the "Forum," advocates that "the legislature make the board of commissioners' powers final," for under the regulation which allows discharged policemen to appeal to the civil courts, if the commissioners discharge men for what seems to them adequate cause, "the civil courts, with their abounding technicalities, will at once reinstate them."

But, if you insist on such evidence against a student as would stand only after passing through the mazy and fitful processes of law courts; if, as was remarked in our own recent trial, you are going to make the faculty not judges but mere jurymen, how in the name of common sense is the conviction of any student to be secured? You say, "take measures that will compel students to testify under penalty of expulsion." But to say nothing of the inquisitorial character of such a proceeding, two very serious difficulties stand in the way which the law escapes, and which, if they existed in law, would make almost all attempts to enforce law a farce.

First, in law the witnesses usually suborned are interested parties who volunteer their testimony, or are, if not interested themselves, summoned by those who are interested. In college, as we have intimated, under the present sentiment, volunteer testimony is out of the question and those usually most competent to testify are interested by reason of friendship for the parties accused and lack of sympathy with the authorities, and usually by reason of participation in the offence themselves. The most flagrant violations of college discipline are committed in secret and where all likely witnesses are sharers in the offence, not interested as abroad in bringing culprits to justice, but in shielding them from justice. Whether this is right is not the question here; we are dealing simply with fact.

Second, in law a skillful and thorough detective system is employed to ferret out witnesses as well as detect criminals, and thus usually all whose testimony have a bearing upon the case are brought in whether willingly or not. It is needless to add that such a system in college is neither desirable nor possible. The ends for which colleges are established, namely, the training of the mind and character would be defeated by the consciousness to the students that the normal attitude of a faculty towards them was one of suspicion and distrust.

If we interpret the new law right - and we would be most happy to be corrected, if we are laboring under an essential misapprehension - there are but two courses open, either of which it fraught with serious difficulties.

First, beat down all attempts to withhold testimony. Establish the custom of compelling students to testify, no matter how nearly this may approach the principles of the old time inquisition, and how difficult it may be to change the present sentiment, or:

Second, let the faculties of colleges abandon the idea of control altogether, confining themselves entirely to the scholarship of students and making no note whatever of conduct. Throw students entirely upon their own responsibility.

Are these impossible? What else can be done? Who will make further suggestions?