Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/17

 college is too large for such a purpose, and is too conglomerate and bizarre. A man or a woman may be a very good teacher without having any of the judicial qualities which are required in passing upon cases of discipline. Every extreme of attitude toward the violations of college regulations will be found in any faculty, from the man who would condone any overt act to the one who would guillotine or burn at the stake the perpetrator of the most trifling prank. The time necessary to be consumed by a college faculty in this sort of work, if it is taken at all seriously, is beyond all reason, and in the end offers little likelihood of justice to the student.

It has never seemed to me good policy that the president of an institution should have entire charge of disciplinary matters, not only because the time of the president of any institution is ordinarily taken up with other matters of equal importance, but also because I do not think such matters should ever be wholly in the hands of one man. The cases are frequently so puzzling and so complicated and so hard to unravel that several heads are better than one. In cases where the evidence is not overwhelmingly convincing it is a comfort to feel that one has other men upon whose judgment one can rely and upon whom one can fall back in case of difficulty. Every college president who does not think himself omniscient will feel the same way.

Many institutions throw the burden of deciding all disciplinary cases, such as those concerned with cribbing, and stealing, and drinking, upon a committee of students or a student council. I have talked with a number of college officials the disciplinary