Discipline and the Derelict

Front matter

Discipline and the Derelict

Being a series of essays on some of those who tread the green carpet

By Thomas Arkle Clark Dean of Men, University of Illinois

Discipline and the Derelict

As long as we deal with youth we shall have pretty regular violation of rule in college. "How long are we to have student outbreaks, and student irregularities?" our president asked me not long ago. "Can't you ever get the boys educated so that we shall not be longer troubled with these things?" "I could, I think," was my reply, "if I were allowed to work with them long enough. But when they are educated they leave us. A big new crowd of young ones is introduced every year, and the process of education must be begun again."

I remember being asked at one time, with reference to an action taken by the executive body of the University, what caused the members to vote as they did? When I put the question to one of the officers concerned, his reply was that it was a question which no one could intelligently answer. No two men, he said, have in mind the same reason or purpose in coming to any conclusion. I vote for an issue for one reason, my neighbor for another. It is all a matter of personal judgment. The same thing is true, I have no doubt, with reference to the college derelict. The purposes in the mind of half a dozen different individuals who vote to impose a penalty upon an undergraduate who has been guilty of a violation of college rules are probably in no two cases alike. In the main, I take it, however, there is little if any thought in the mind of most men that such discipline is to punish the offender as the state for instance might punish crime. The purpose I have kept before me in whatever I have recommended is, first of all, to correct the offender, to turn him in the right direction, to make it less likely that he will offend in this regard again. The main function of education as I see it is to make good citizens. There is a further one, of course, which discipline subserves, and that is a deterrent one. Offenders are disciplined because it is hoped by that method to call the attention of others to the fact that certain things are objectionable or wrong, and so to reduce the tendency to such irregularities.

There are those whose ideas of right and wrong are so rigid, whose feelings are so strong, that they insist that every one who does wrong should submit: to a definite punishment which will inflict upon him a certain amount of pain and disgrace. Not long ago I received a letter from one of our former students, saying that when he transferred his credits from a neighboring institution to the University of Illinois he had changed two of the grades, and so had received credit for five hours of work to which he was not entitled. He asked to have this error corrected, and said that when he returned next year to finish his college work he wished to register for the five hours stolen and earn his credit honestly. There was a wide range of opinion among our officials as to what action should be taken in his case. The error was one which by no possibility would have been detected had he not admitted it, and it was an error which affected no one but himself, since no one else knew of it. One university officer felt strongly that notwithstanding the fact that the man had confessed and expressed a desire to make good the false credits, here was a case which demanded punishment, a more complete expiation, and he thought that the student should be expelled. I felt very differently. It seemed to me that a young fellow who had the courage to confess a dereliction of this sort and to offer to make such restitution as was possible was well on the way to good citizenship, and should be met half way. In his case the purpose of discipline had been accomplished.

Each institution employs its own methods in the handling of disciplinary matters. If the college is small, the president often is the autocrat who decides the fate of the untoward. Sometimes it is the faculty as a whole which deliberates long and seriously over the cases of delinquents. In my own undergraduate days when a young fellow had been drunk, had danced in a college building, had carried away the campus fence to add fuel to the bonfire in celebration of Hallowe'en, or had backed the cannon into the sluggish campus creek in order to show his disapproval of military drill—when he had done any of these things and was caught, he was brought before the entire faculty, assembled in serious session, and here he was tried. It was a harrowing experience, and not one always likely to bring justice. When an entire faculty deliberates on disciplinary matters, there is likely to be much talking, some wrangling, and uncertain conclusions. The responsibility is too widely scattered, and the student and good order are likely to suffer.

In many institutions these matters are left entirely in the hands of the students who through one sort of organization or another sit upon the cases of offenders against good order and college regulations and pass judgment upon them. At other places such matters are handled by a small committee of the faculty, or there may be a combination of these various methods in operation in the same institution. Since I have been a college officer I have had more or less experience with all of these methods.

When I was in college I have no recollection that discipline was often enforced. The institution, just previous to my entrance, had recovered from a rather serious attack of student government in its worst form, and disciplinary affairs were running along pretty much by themselves. There was cribbing, but no one seemed to pay much attention to it. I have no remembrance that any one was ever called to account for dishonesty or in any way punished for it during my whole college course. There were student outbreaks, but if anything was ever done to the individuals concerned, they petitioned the faculty, peace was restored, and the offenders were immediately reinstated in their former positions. Nothing short of a riot ever aroused any comment on the part of the faculty, for with us at that time, as I have said, it was the faculty before whom the culprit appeared, who heard the evidence, and who after much talk and discussion, pronounced the verdict.

For myself, I believe that college discipline may best be administered through a small group or committee of the faculty. The entire faculty of any 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 affairs of whose institutions are so managed, and they all expressed themselves as well satisfied with the result. One officer who was in general charge of undergraduate affairs in the institution to which he belonged said, in speaking to me, that he should not himself want to assume the responsibility of deciding the complicated matters which arise in connection with student discipline; they seemed to him too difficult to solve, but he was very well satisfied to leave such things with the students who were doing it seriously and satisfactorily. His viewpoint seems to me very much as if a banker might say that his financial affairs were so complicated and tangled and so difficult of intelligent solution that he was more contented to turn them over to his children to be dealt with than to settle them himself.

I have always had an abiding faith in students, and I am quite sure that when they set themselves seriously to the accomplishment of even a difficult task it is likely to be done well; but I have had experience in disciplinary matters and know something of other executive problems which may come before a college officer. There is nothing with which I have had to do officially that requires such careful judgment as disciplinary matters—such diplomacy, such sympathy, such firmness, such freedom from prejudice and bias, such skill in handling all who are concerned with the affair. If the lines between good and evil, between truth and falsity, could always be clearly drawn, if motives and the influences which surround the erring student did not have to be considered, if, in short, we were not dealing with the most subtle and intangible things when we are trying to mete out justice in discipline, I should be willing perhaps to trust these matters to the experience of students. But I know how hard these matters are to decide with fairness, how easy it is to make an error, how difficult, if not impossible, to correct one after it is made, and how much is at stake for the undergraduate concerned.

The greatest handicap in my experience to successful college discipline is the number of rules laid down by the college authorities for the conduct of students. Many college officers feel that when an evil exists or an erroneous custom prevails the only thing necessary is to pass a regulation against the evil or the custom, and the matter is settled. I have found that I can in the long run do far more by suggestion and persuasion than by rule, and do it much more to the satisfaction of the students concerned, for often it is possible to have them feel that they have done it themselves. Generally the more rules an institution has, the more difficulty officers find in maintaining good order, and in keeping the young people within bounds.

It is safe to take for granted that young people of college age know in the main what is right and what is reasonable as to conduct, so that it is not necessary that every sin in the decalogue or that every violation of law under the statute should be named in the college catalog and the penalty for its violation attached. Rules often prevent individual action in specific cases. Every violation of good order should be taken up, looked into, and judged as if it were the only one of its sort. Rules often hamper such judgment. Only a short time ago the members of our own disciplinary committee were discussing the penalty which was about to be recommended for a student who had been somewhat irregular in conduct. "I should be glad to vote for this penalty," one of the members said, "if it did not seem to me inconsistent with what we have previously done in similar cases. The last man we had before us who had been guilty of a similar irregularity received a much more severe penalty."

"Any one who has been on this committee long," a second member answered, "must realize that its chief virtue is that it never pretends to be consistent. It treats men as individuals, and we have never met two individuals alike."

Many college rules are virtually a dead letter because they are difficult or impossible of enforcement, and the existence of such regulations can do nothing less than bring the whole system of college statutes into ridicule and disrepute. If a rule is made, some effort should be made to enforce it; though many people think that laws in themselves carry weight, even if allowed to go unexecuted.

More than this, the very existence of regulations will frequently incite students to insubordination that would not otherwise have been thought of. "I've just discovered," one freshman said to another, "that it's against the rule to smoke in the quadrangle. Now I suppose it will make me sick, but I couldn't let a thing like that go by without having a try at it." I am not arguing against regulations per se; some, of course, are necessary for the proper conduct of any business or institution, but the fewer the better, and then only those which are absolutely necessary.

The best way to manage the student guilty of misconduct is to look after him so personally and so carefully that he may be brought to account just before he has been guilty of the act which would subject him to discipline. The most skilful disciplinary work which I have ever done has been connected with the things that never happened, because they were not allowed to do so.

Granted that the college has made few rules, and that there is some one who keeps himself thoroughly conversant with what is going on, there will still be misconduct, and necessity on the part of college officers to exercise authority. Youth is still young and curious and irresponsible, and is quite as likely to be guided by impulse as by judgment. As I have said, I believe that disciplinary matters in college will be more satisfactorily handled to all concerned if put in charge of a small committee of the faculty composed of from three to five persons chosen because of their knowledge of student life and conditions, and because of their special fitness to form reasonable and sympathetic judgments on the cases that come before them. The members of such a committee should be young or should have once been young with the memory of that time in mind, and their appointment should so far as possible be a permanent one. They should be broad-minded, and above petty prejudices; they should still be interested in the things outside of books that interest normal healthy young people,—such as athletic sports and 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- fuses to report cases of alleged cribbing, because of the fact: that a student previously reported was not proved guilty by the disciplinary committee. It was not justice they desired but conviction.

No disciplinary officer will get on well unless he has a reputation for playing fair. If the college officer is willing to give the square deal, he will have gone a long way toward solving his official difficulties. He will sometimes have to listen to some long stories, he will have to bury his prejudices against races and individuals, he will, perhaps, often have to go a long way and suffer some inconveniences to discover necessary facts, but, when the college officer was able to show them that he desired to do the fair thing, the college students I have known have for the most part been square, and have been willing to take without complaint or whimpering what was legitimately coming to them for their misdeeds.

The college students I have known will use all sorts of subterfuge to shield a fellow student, but they will usually tell the truth about themselves. There are always two sides to a story, and it is never wise to reach a conclusion until both of these have been heard No matter how damaging or convincing the evidence may be with regard to any question under dispute, it is best to hold one's judgment in abeyance until the accused party has been heard and given a chance to defend himself. Only a few days ago a woman called me on the telephone to settle a dispute with reference to an alleged agreement which she had had with a student. "Should not a student who has rented a room for a semester, and who leaves before the end of his contract, pay for the whole semester?" she asked. "Ordinarily, yes," I replied, "but I should like to talk to the student before answering." When I did so, I found that in reality the woman had violated her contract, but wanted still to hold the student to his.

One of the things that has impressed me most in the pretty wide experience which I have had with college discipline is that no two cases are alike, because no two men are alike. There is always something new coming up—new character, a new viewpoint, new conditions, a new view of temptation and weakness. The work can never become mechanical because of its infinite variety. One might think, if he did not know, that, having seen fifty men during a year on fifty different sorts of wrongdoing, there would be nothing new, and that the next years would be a repetition of the old stories, but it is not true. Every case of discipline which I have had to do with was a special case. I have found, too, that women up for discipline are not at all like men. I have not for years had any direct connection with the discipline of women, that work being done by a committee of women, as I think it best perhaps that it should be. The experience which I did have, however, led me to the conclusion that they are less frank than men, less likely to tell the truth if they have done wrong than men are, because they are more nervous, more temperamental, and have more to lose, as society is now constituted, than men have, if they should be detected in wrongdoing.

I have come to look upon the work of discipline in a somewhat different light than I did during the first few years I had to do with it. At first it took all the courage and force of will that I could summon to recommend discipline of any sort, and especially the dismissal of a student from college. It is no small matter to send a young fellow from college in disgrace. As time has gone on I have realized more clearly the effect of discipline upon the indivdual, and I have seen, too, that the parent quite as often as the child is at fault, and needs the shock which discipline brings. When one sees the fathers he often feels like being more lenient with the sons.

A young fellow who has been detected in a violation of college regulations, whether it be a case of cribbing, or gambling, or stealing, or whatever it may be, almost invariably thinks first of his parents, usually of his mother. I have remarked often, not as a jest, but as a matter of fact, that one parent at least, and often both, of most of the students with whose discipline I have been connected for a good many years has been in the most critical physical, mental, or financial condition,—a condition which the boy thinks will end in a complete breakdown if the parents hear of the son's disgrace. I have often wondered why such critical situations do not more often keep sons within the narrow path.

"It will break my mother's heart," I am told over and over again by boys who think they are uttering the truth, and though this fact is no logical argument if the punishment is deserved, and the good of the University community is to be furthered, I have come to know that it is not true. "If I am sent home," boys say to me, "it will mean that my education is at an end, and that my father will have nothing to do with me further." I have had fathers and mothers tell me that if their son were dismissed, they would disown him, and though this may sometimes happen, I have never yet known a parent who, when the actual crisis arrived, did not come to the support of his child. A short time ago I thought I had found an exception, but the later details proved that I was mistaken. A father and mother sat in my office and talked to an only son who was about to be dismissed for irregularity of conduct. Both said to him firmly that if he were sent home, he need never appeal to them for help or support; they were through with him for all time. He was finally dismissed, but I was interested to learn very shortly that he was sent to a neighboring state university, and that he was receiving generous monthly allowances from home.

I recall another student dismissed for hazing. His case appealed to me at the time because of the peculiar circumstances at home. His parents were both dead, and an older brother with whom, he had many difficulties, was his guardian. This added trouble the boy thought would estrange them completely. I shall not soon forget his downcast and hopeless face when he came to say good-by to me. A year later he told me that his dismissal from college was the best thing that had ever happened to him. It awakened him to seriousness of life; and more strangely than that it awakened the sympathy of his brother and brought them more closely together than they had ever before been. He came back to the University at the end of his period of suspension, a happy boy and a serious student, and as I am writing these paragraphs, a letter comes to me from him written from a western city where he is now a successful business man, stronger, perhaps, from the experiences through which he has gone.

Another instance is characteristic. When a boy is disciplined, his father is, of course, written. A young fellow this year disciplined, but not dismissed, for some minor divergence from the straight path, showed me a letter which he had just received from his father relative to the notice which the latter had received from me. It was an angry, cruel note, written on the impulse when the chagrined and disappointed parent was smarting under the sting of his son's disgrace. In it he said that he was through with the boy, who if he wanted any further education must himself earn it. He need not come home, he need not ask further for money. The boy was stirred and determined to stay in college; I offered to help him, to lend him money until he could get work, and suggested that I write his father. It was only a few days after I had written until the father came to see me. He was ashamed of his letter, but too proud to take back his statements at once, but before he left me he gave me a sum of money adequate to meet his son's expenses until the close of the year, which I was to lend to him with the statement that it came from a friend who was interested in his welfare, and who wanted to help him out. A little later the two were reconciled, and the story ended happily. My first conclusion, therefore, is that whatever happens to a boy, the folks at home can be counted on to stand by him.

My experience has also led me to the conclusion that the fellow who violates a college regulation or a moral principle and who is not detected in it, or who, though detected, is allowed to go without penalty, is usually weakened in character by the experience or confirmed in his bad habits. I stumbled upon the fact one day, early in my experience as a disciplinary officer, that a young fellow just entering his junior year was dissipating his energies and squandering his time and money by gambling. When I called him to the office he was very much agitated and begged for "one more chance." It wag the old story of his "first offense." There was the sick mother at home believing in her only son, there was the probable ruin of his college career, there were all the stage effects which I have since come to recognize, and there was the strong assurance that he had learned his lesson, and would give up the habit. Since no other students were concerned, I accepted his word, and dropped the matter. I have since learned that he kept up the practice at irregular intervals through his college course, safe in the feeling that if he were caught again he could work upon my feelings to let him go unpunished. Another case is that of a young man caught in the act of cribbing in an examination. He seemed very penitent, the offense was committed in an environment which made the temptation strong, and he gave his word of honor that such an offense would not be committed by him again. It was not a month before he was again detected, and his only excuse was that since his error had before been condoned, he thought it would be again. The man who escapes punishment, who gets away, does not have his tendencies to error inhibited. There is for him no deterrent.

Men ultimately see this fact and admit it. "The best thing you ever did for me," one of our graduates said to me not long ago, "was to send me away from college a year. I thought at the time that it was severe, that it would ruin my chances of finishing my course, that it would break off all friendly relations between myself and my parents, but it braced me up; it gave me the determination to make good; it made a man of me."

I remember one Christmas morning, years ago, when a young freshman and his broken, tearful mother sat at my fireside trying to gather up the fragments of what seemed to them a ruined life and trying to gain courage to face the world. The boy had had very meager resources; he had been hard pressed not only for the comfortable, pleasure-giving things which most boys have, but often even for the necessities of life. Opportunity presented itself, and he had yielded to the temptation to steal from the gymnasium lockers of other students. He had been detected, arrested, lodged in jail, and fined. Now he was out of college and was going home. It was a sad hour we spent together trying to look facts in the face and to plan a sane future, and it seemed, somehow, a pretty hopeless hour. I urged him to go somewhere else and start again, and he promised to try. A few years later I received an invitation to the Commencement exercises of a reputable western college, and within it a card bearing his name. Two years ago he came to see me at home-coming time. He had done well in college, he was married, and he was doing what he could to make the world wiser and better as principal of a reputable high school. The discipline of which I had unhappily at the time been the main cause, he came to thank me for. It had been, he said, the turning point in his life; it had stimulated his will and his ambition to overcome obstacles. He shook hands with me as we parted with tears in his eyes.