348 AS UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT-IV 



became disreputable for any student not to be really at 

 work in some one of the many courses presented. There 

 were few cases really calling for discipline. I prized this 

 fact all the more because it justified a theory of mine. I 

 had long felt that the greatest cause of student turbulence 

 and dissipation was the absence of interest in study conse 

 quent upon the fact that only one course was provided, 

 and I had arrived at the conclusion that providing various 

 courses, suited to various aims and tastes, would diminish 

 this evil. 



As regards student discipline in the university, I had 

 dwelt in my &quot;plan of organization&quot; upon the advisability 

 of a departure from the system inherited from the English 

 colleges, which wa,s still widely prevailing. It had been 

 developed in America probably beyond anything known 

 in Great Britain and Germany, and was far less satisfac 

 tory than in these latter countries, for the simple reason 

 that in them the university authorities have some legal 

 power to secure testimony and administer punishment, 

 while in America they have virtually none. The result had 

 been most unfortunate, as I have shown in other parts of 

 these chapters referring to various student escapades in the 

 older American universities, some of them having cost hu 

 man life. I had therefore taken the ground that, so far as 

 possible, students should be treated as responsible citizens; 

 that, as citizens, they should be left to be dealt with by the 

 constituted authorities; and that members of the faculty 

 should no longer be considered as policemen. I had, dur 

 ing my college life, known sundry college tutors seriously 

 injured while thus doing police duty; I have seen a pro 

 fessor driven out of a room, through the panel of a door, 

 with books, boots, and bootjacks hurled at his head; and 

 even the respected president of a college, a doctor of di 

 vinity, while patrolling buildings with the janitors, sub 

 jected to outrageous indignity. 



Fortunately the causes already named, to which may be 

 added athletic sports, especially boating, so greatly dimin 

 ished student mischief at Cornell, that cases of discipline 



