Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/31

 that these friends think the student innocent of the charge against him, it is not that they feel that the penalty imposed is in general too severe; they simply ask for special privilege and special leniency in the cases of their friends. They have worked for the institution; it owes them something for this effort, and they wish the debt paid through the granting of special moral or intellectual indulgences to their friends. Public officials of all sorts, business men, teachers, and even ministers have written me and called upon me to ask for clemency for their friends and sometimes almost to demand it as a right. For the reason that almost every penalty that is imposed will be challenged I have learned that it is wisest in imposing a penalty to make it a conservative one—one mild enough reasonably to be defended and justified, and then to adhere to the conclusion reached. It invariably weakens the authority and the confidence in the judgment of college officials when disciplinary penalties are frequently being set aside.

As a rule the man himself who is disciplined takes his punishment without whining; he accepts a just penalty, admits his error, and generally comes in to say good-by to me and to ask me to write a somewhat detailed explanatory letter to his mother, to give her all the facts and to show her that he is not wholly bad. But parents seldom accept the punishment of their children as just. They have the general attitude of a father who talked to me a year or two ago concerning an attack by students upon one of our local theaters. "When I read the account in one of our local papers of the dreadful things those students did," he said, "I spoke right out. If I had