_College government_ is an important question. The college, as a
distinct and separate community, has rules and regulations based on
well-established principles, which aim to conserve the general good of
the whole body of students. The college honor can not be sustained
unless there is a recognition of authority and responsibility.

The college legislation and government rests principally with the
faculty, overseers and trustees, who aim to be liberal, yet firm.
College sentiment among students is often capricious and subject to
sudden revolutions. Some of them have strong passions, immature
judgments, and impetuous and weak wills, and authority must be lodged
with those who will sacredly uphold law and exercise a firm, rigorous
discipline.

In the early stages of college life in this country the regulations
were quite severe. In many cases the college authorities did not
hesitate to inflict upon the students corporal punishment for certain
offenses. College Presidents would sometimes personally attend to the
flogging of students, resorting to this punishment with great
solemnity. Mr. George C. Bush tells us what occurred at Harvard
College in 1674: "On that occasion the overseers of the college, the
President and Fellows, the students who chose to attend having been
called together in the library, the sentence was read in their
presence and the offender required to kneel. The President then
offered prayer, after which 'the prison keeper at Cambridge,' at a
given signal from him 'attended to the performance of his part of the
work.' The President then closed the solemn exercise with prayer."

Possibly this relic of severe college government found its example
across the water, where it is related that in a bygone age a Fellow at
Oxford, "who had been proved guilty of an over-susceptibility to the
charms of beauty, was condemned, as a penance, to preach eight sermons
in the Church of Saint Peter-in-the-East." In the days of President
Dunster, of Harvard, "no possible conduct escaped his eye. Class
deportment, plan of studies, personal habits, daily life, private
devotions, social intercourse, and civil privileges, were all
directed."

The student should feel that, in disobeying the rightful authority of
the college, he abridges the rights and privileges of every student.
The college sentiment should be so strong against unworthy conduct
that a student would as soon shrink from doing a mean action, and
having it kn