SEVERAL items have appeared in these columns in regard to the difficulty the faculty of Stanford University is having with its students; and now there comes a threatened strike in the New York University. A certain "freshman" has violated some unwritten student law, and a mass meeting of the students ordered him to leave the institution. He refused to do it, and so was "ducked" in the university horse-trough. He entered a complaint to the faculty against this treatment, and its student affairs committee suspended the leader of the "ducking" ceremony. Then followed the threatened strike, and the school is practically doing nothing and the affair is still unsettled.
The unwritten law that the student has violated is rather interesting because of its absurdity, and is summarized in the press despatches as follows:
First—Would not rub down the members of the varsity teams, as all good freshmen are supposed to do.
Second—Wore violet-colored ties, same being the college color and a privilege no freshman is allowed.
Third—Sat on the steps of the library, where no "freshies" are supposed to rest.
People who like rules such as the foregoing should be allowed to have them, no matter how much we may disapprove of their bad taste. And if there are those who desire to have their children given these rudimentary degrees in the notions of aristocracy, they should be allowed the privilege; but at the same time there should be schools where the useful branches of knowledge are the all important thing, and where a "strike" would be very promptly and vigorously handled among students who were in rebellion over such absurd matters.
The public schools have aped all this nonsense that has come into the universities, and we have come to the place where it is next to impossible to send our children to school without subjecting them to many indignities that are altogether out of harmony with true manly and womanly education.
Young people, and older ones as well, need pleasure and recreation; but real pleasures are mutual all around. There is no one in such games who is getting a "ducking," or some other thing that is not only very disagreeable, but in many instances, positively dangerous. There needs to be a strong reversal of the whole plan of government in the schools, and the students need to be taught the difference between pleasure and the violent riotings of hoodlums.
"Horse-trough duckings" and similar things have been winked at in the schools, until government in many of these institutions of learning is giving way to a spirit of lawlessness that is bordering onto anarchy, one of the worse curses of the race.