seniors are but remnants of the old time caste; the cruel practical
jokes, 4ompulsory treats, and the smoke outs of the present, are
but degenerate symbols of a fictitious superiority maintained by
unjust laws. But they are rapidly disappearing from our better
colleges. Harvard, which is ever the first to mark any advance,
abolished hazing—for such is the term —in 1872. At the open
ing of that college year the Faculty proposed an agreement, for
the Sophomore and Freshman classes, that they would refrain
frOm indulging in all thoSe disagreeable annoyances commonly
termed hazing. Every member of the two classes, over three
hundred in number, signed the agreement. This simple process
ended hazing at Harvard. The Sophomores of '72-3 did not haze
while the Sophomores of the next year, bound by their agreement
and not having any injured honor to vindicate, let the succeeding.
Freshmen go unmolested.
Yale followed in 1878. The college authorities passed a.law,'
punishing hazing by dropping the guilty man to the class below..
T l l#4 , 3rq4r several Sophomores were compelled to enter Freshmen,
but there has been since then no occasion for further enforcement
of the law.
What is true of Harvard and of Yale is true of the Western
colleges and of all the larger colleges in the East, with the excep
tion of Princeton, which is notorious for her antiquated rulings
and for her espionage.
This year, however, owing to peculiar circumstances, the
students, at a mass meeting decided to abolish the practice of
hazing. Whether the decision so reached the decision of a
majority will carry sufficient weight with individual students
is in this case yet to be observed. Usually it does not. College
spirit, though it be strong, is tot sufficiently strong to impel a
man to do that for which he did not vote. Individual promises,
as exemplified by the affair at Harvard and by numerous other
affairs of different nature, are much more to be depended upon,
for no student regards his name so lightly as to attach it to that
whiell he in his heart doe's not intend to keep. His signature is
hiSonly security.
EDITORIALS