Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/13



long as we deal with youth we shall have pretty regular violation of rule in college. "How long are we to have student outbreaks, and student irregularities?" our president asked me not long ago. "Can't you ever get the boys educated so that we shall not be longer troubled with these things?" "I could, I think," was my reply, "if I were allowed to work with them long enough. But when they are educated they leave us. A big new crowd of young ones is introduced every year, and the process of education must be begun again."

I remember being asked at one time, with reference to an action taken by the executive body of the University, what caused the members to vote as they did? When I put the question to one of the officers concerned, his reply was that it was a question which no one could intelligently answer. No two men, he said, have in mind the same reason or purpose in coming to any conclusion. I vote for an issue for one reason, my neighbor for another. It is all a matter of personal judgment. The same thing is true, I have no doubt, with reference to the college derelict. The purposes in the mind of half a dozen different individuals who vote to impose a penalty upon an undergraduate who has been guilty of a violation of college rules are probably in no two cases alike. In the main, I take it, however, there is little if any thought