On Leave

Yesterday we carried on the front page a notice to the College signed by Palacopitus. It was a routine announcement made every year in an effort to meet an annual problem. There will be similar announcements throughout the year. At house parties, at Carnival, at any major weekend of festivities, the student council will appeal to the undergraduate body to guard against any undue smirching of the college scutcheon.

It is, of course, no more than a gesture.

But it serves to raise the question of just how much fealty the College can justifiably require from an individual outside Hanover walls. To what extent is the individual obligated? To what extremes may the College proceed to maintain a normal tone of decency among these undergraduates who, for the moment, are not clustered under the very flagstaff of the College's banner?

In theory, it goes without saying that the College naturally can tolerate no one but a gentleman. In theory, then, each individual is obligated to the extent of maintaining a gentlemanly decorum at all times. All that in theory.

But in practice it is easy to argue that what a man does on a Harvard weekend, or what he might do during Christmas or summer vacation is no-body's business but his own. Carried to an extreme, this argument is absurd. It is obvious that the College could not tolerate a man who has been definitely accused of murder during the summer vacation. But it is hard to admit that a comparatively minor indiscretion should concern any one beside the individual and such others as have been directly connected. It is no more the concern of a man's educational institution than it is of his home town chamber of commerce.

However, in extreme cases, a man's home town has been known to resort to subtle coercion and even to sawed-off shotguns to force the removal of an individual. The individual, it is argued, is definitely anti-social, and, as such, is detrimental to the best interests of the town.

It is not generally known that Palaeopitus has it within its power to recommend to the administration the separation of certain undergraduates. This power has not been invoked for four or five years. Such a procedure is analagous to the sawed-off shotgun tactics of hooded towns-people. At times it is well justified, provided the leaders are responsible men competent of cool judgment.

Setting aside, then, all hysterical sentimentalizing usually dragged out in a discussion of a Dartmouth man's obligations to Dartmouth College, it remains that the individual is obligated to his community. And if the College is unable to rely upon a gentlemanly code of behaviour from its undergraduates, it is justified in its capacity as an educational institution, to instill this code by sawed-off shotgun procedure.

We go to Harvard. The Dartmouth.