Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/22

 social pleasures; they should have high moral and scholastic ideals. They should have backbone enough when an unpleasant thing has to be done, and ought to be done, to do it even though it hurts some students and some fathers and mothers. Ordinarily I should not consider it a calamity if neither women nor lawyers were on such a committee. Women are more often than men influenced by their prejudices or their emotions, and lawyers are likely to insist upon a "legal" conviction. Conditions are such that a man should often be allowed to go free who has violated a college regulation, while another man who may not be proved guilty of any actual dereliction may yet clearly be a detriment to the community, and should be sent away.

During the years in which, as chairman of our committee on discipline for men, I have had to do with discipline at the University of Illinois I have had a good many interesting experiences, and have drawn from these experiences some pretty definite conclusions. I have come to realize that a disciplinary officer to be successful must have certain personal traits of character. He must first of all have the confidence of both students and faculty. The faculty must feel that matters given into his hands will be dealt with squarely and without delay. No college instructor wishes to be humiliated by having matters of discipline which he reports either ignored or treated lightly. Neither should he feel that he is compromised, if not every student whom he reports for discipline is found guilty. Some instructors whom I have known are as sensitive upon this topic as aeolian harps. I know more than one who re-