SOME LEGAL ASPECTS OF HIGH-SCHOOL 
FRATERNITIES: 
By JouNn D. FLEMING 
The authority of governing boards and faculties of high schools 
over organizations within such schools known as high-school fraternities 
has been a question much discussed during the past two or three years, 
and the fraternities themselves, their influence and tendencies, the 
subjects of no small concern among parents and educators. It is the 
purpose of this paper to present some legal aspects of this question, 
referring at the outset briefly to a few general or basic principles bearing 
upon the subject and more particularly to the laws of Colorado in rela- 
tion thereto, and to the adjudged cases. 
By the Constitution of Colorado the maintenance of free, public, 
non-sectarian schools and the gratuitous instruction therein of all chil- 
dren between the ages of six and twenty-one years is forever guaranteed, 
and the general supervision of such schools is vested in a board of edu- 
cation, whose powers and duties shall be prescribed by law. The 
superintendent of public instruction, the secretary of state and the 
attorney-general constitute what may be called the general or state 
board, and provision is made in another section for the organization 
of school districts of convenient size and the establishment therein of 
another board of education consisting of three or more directors, to be 
elected by the qualified voters of the district, and to these directors is 
committed the “control of instruction in the public schools of their re- 
spective districts.’’? 
Observe that in the exercise of its general supervision the powers 
and duties of the State Board of Education according to the constitution, 
shall be as subsequently “‘prescribed by law,” that is, by the legislature; 
while the control of instruction in the public school is vested in the 
school directors in their respective districts, and that such command over 
the public schools by such directors is prescribed by the constitution 
t Revised by the author from a paper read before the Colorado Teachers’ Association, January 1, 1908. 
2 Const. Colo., Art. IX §§1, 2, 7, 8, 15. 
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