SOME LEGAL ASPECTS OF HIGH-SCHOOL FRATERNITIES 235 
the student in this case. ‘The legal right to do a thing,” he says, 
“means that the law does not forbid the doing of it; not that one may do 
it at all possible times and under all possible circumstances. A person as 
a citizen may do what he may not do as a student of Wheaton College.” 
He adds, in substance, that a man may marry, walk the streets at all 
hours, board at the big hotel, but not if he be a student and the trustees 
forbid; and they may expel him if he refuses to obey. 
It is not to be doubted that the reasoning of this case is applicable to 
public schools supported by public taxation; it being granted, of course, 
that the directors of such schools have the legal right to make and have 
made reasonable rules. 
It has been shown above what powers and duties the constitution 
and laws of Colorado confer upon the school authorities in this 
behalf, and the constitution and statutes of perhaps all of the 
states contain substantially similar provisions. Thus, in Illinois, 
the board of education in the city of Chicago is given “all the 
rights, power and authority required for the proper management of 
schools” with “power to expel any pupil who may be guilty of gross 
disobedience or misconduct.”! In Illinois also the validity of certain 
rules of the Chicago school board, pursuant to the foregoing powers, 
was put to a test in an appellate court, the case being the second of the 
high-school cases above mentioned. A pupil of the Hyde Park school 
brought an action, by his mother and next friend, to enjoin the enforce- 
ment of a rule of the Chicago board denying to ‘‘secret”’ societies the 
privileges of school buildings and to student members thereof repre- 
sentation in any literary or athletic contests, etc. The rule, it will be 
observed, like that of the Denver school board, is modeled after that 
in question in the Seattle case, supra; and, like the appellant there, the 
Hyde Park student alleged that his natural rights were being infringed 
and that there was unlawful discrimination against him. The trial 
court from which the appeal was taken had dismissed the plaintiff’s bill 
for want of equity, and the reviewing court, the Appellate Court of 
Illinois, First District, unanimously affirmed its decree.? 
t Stats. Ill., Art. VI, chap. 122, §22. 
2 Wilson v. Board of Education, Chicago Legal News, November 16, 1907. 
