113 



conteniptiblo in the sreat body of stmlents. and if you do that on things in- 

 tended to be innocent — like a cane rush, for instance — if your approval can be 

 sained in such matters as that. I think you will be oblij;;ed to take up more 

 serious ones. We have found that the little thins grows into the l)ig and more 

 regrettable thing, into matters of bloodshed and very serious personal injury. 

 which, of course, after they have occurred, all persons speak of as regrettable 

 occurrences. And yet we have nevi-r. where I have been, forbidden out and out 

 that such a thing as a cane rush should be held. We have never passed a rule 

 to the effect that any man who is engag«Hl in any such thing should be expelled 

 or should be dealt with, and this seems to be an advisable course. It works 

 fairly well. Many a thing can be dealt with better by teaching against it, 

 laughing it down, and calling it foolish, which it is. than it can be dealt with 

 in any other way. 



Another thing is the proper supervision of students in their own residences. 

 We have im dormitories, and in the State universities and schools generally 

 we do not have such. If we do have them, we have them in such numbers 

 or with such capacity as to make it no longer necessary that students shall 

 lind their residences here and there. And I believe it was understood the 

 other day when this matter was up in another meeting that there is a growth 

 of the fraternity house. That is certainly so with us. How shall we deal 

 with students in fraternal and sorority houses'.' They generally behave. I 

 think in few fraternity houses there is drinking, which is to be deplored. I 

 think all drinking is to be deplore<l, but what I mean is that sometimes there 

 is a drinking bout. We try to get the resident members of the fraternities to 

 intercede and bring infiuence in oi'der to stop the practice, and sometimes they 

 succeed and sometimes they do jiot. In all the places where I have ever had 

 to do with the management of students I have often gotten the resident mem- 

 bers of the fraternity or graduate memi)ers. even if I have to call them in from 

 a residence elsewhere, to deal with their members and conferees in their fra- 

 ternities who were undergraduates. Even this with us has not in all cases 

 made it exactly right. In some of these houses some people do not study as 

 they ought to. and take up more time in other things than they should. These 

 things are not serious inconveniences, but they are troubles, after all, of a 

 certain kind. But the worst problem, and I wish I could believe it was local 

 purely, but I am afraid it is not. the worst problem is the disposition of a few 

 students to crib, as we call it. in examinations. Perhaps that is the worst 

 fault of American colleges to-day. It is with us a considerable evil. I do not 

 think from what I have heard that it is worse with us than at other institu- 

 tions of learning, but this trouble exists with us, and I do not for my part see 

 just how to reach it. I can not think that in any considerable number of the 

 institutions of this country it would be wise to leave the supervision of exami- 

 nations to the students. I do not know whether it impressed other gentlemen 

 as it did me when Dean Thornton of the University of Virginia was speaking 

 the other day in one of the other meetings about the procedures that occurred 

 in that eminent institution in the case of students cheating. The whole exami- 

 nation is practically, so I understood him to say, given over to the students. 

 They are supposed to be on the watch, or at any rate no other watch Is set 

 than that which is spontaneously set by the students. And I think he said 

 explicitly that unless a student who is charged with cribl)ing could make his 

 fellow-students believe he was innocent he left the institution and never came 

 back, and not only so, l)ut the ill repute of this followed him through life, and 

 that it was equivalent practically — though it was not his illustration, but my 

 own thought— to being drunnned out of the army, out of his regiment, or cnit 



2133G— No. IG-J— tMJ M 8 



