Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/1029

Rh taste, are among the accidental causes which may keep the student from any or all of the pleasures named above. But much more important than any of these things in determining his social life are the duties incidental upon a course here. It is a theory of the faculty at Cornell that men go to college chiefly to get an education. Hence any act that may appear to them to interfere with that purpose is subject to prompt punishment, varying in degree from a sharp reprimand to immediate expulsion.

Directly, they make very few rules with regard to the acts of students. In the eight- or ten-page pamphlet labelled "Rules for the Guidance of Students" you will find three short paragraphs devoted to "offences." One of these refers to the use of fire-arms on the campus, another to the responsibility of a voluntary witness to an offence committed by another, and the third reads as follows: "Students found guilty of intoxication, gambling, or other gross immorality, or of hazing in any form, will be removed from the university." Aside from this, perfect personal liberty is enjoyed by the student in the selection of his pleasures. Expulsions are exceedingly rare; for another and much more powerful check is imposed by the faculty, which usually causes a man guilty of any of these offences to leave the university before he has been detected in them. I refer to the examinations.

At the end of each term the professor or instructor prepares an examination which shall test the work done by the student during the term. Failure to pass a specified number of these permits the student to seek other fields of usefulness. Something of the severity of these examinations may be known from the fact that during the present year fifty-five men have been "dropped" from this cause alone. These failures occur chiefly among the Freshmen and Sophomores. Some of them are no doubt due to insufficient preparation or to natural inability, but a vast majority of them have been caused by a waste of time and opportunity. These examinations serve not only to remove from the university men addicted to vice, but also act as a reforming influence in leading men to drop practices which will otherwise "drop" them.

Of the offences named above, hazing is, as before noted, absolutely unknown. Gambling is known only in its mildest form,—i.e., where pleasurable excitement and not money is the object of those engaging in it. Even in this form it is confined to a few men and occupies little of their time. There may be in any Freshman class some men who occasionally drink too much, but their stay at Cornell is usually short. By the end of the first year they have almost disappeared, and invariably the Sophomore year weeds out the remaining few. Among the upper-class men drunkenness is unknown.