The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Professors should not be responsible for the manners of students, beyond
the legitimate operation of their personal influence. Academic
jurisdiction should have no criminal code, should inflict no penalty
but that of expulsion, and that only in the way of self-defence against
positively noxious and dangerous members. Let the civil law take care of
civil offences. The American citizen should early learn to govern
himself, and to re-enact the civil law by free consent. Let easy and
familiar relations be established between teachers and taught, and
personal influence will do more for the maintenance of order than the
most elaborate code. Experience has shown that great reliance may be
placed on the sense of honor in young men, when properly appealed to and
fairly brought into play. Raumer, in his "History of German
Universities," testifies that the Burschenschaften abolished there the
last vestige of that system of hazing practised on new-comers, which
seems to be an indigenous weed of the college soil. It infested the
ancient universities of Athens, Berytus, Carthage,[C] as well as the
mediaeval and the modern. Our ancestors provided a natural outlet for it
when they ordained that the Freshmen should be subject to the Seniors,
should take off their hats in their presence, and run of their errands.
This system, under the name of "Pennalism," had developed, in the German
universities, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a degree of
oppression and tyrannous abuse of the new-comer unknown to American
colleges, and altogether incredible were it not sufficiently vouched by
contemporary writers, and by the acts of the various governments which
labored to suppress it. A certain German worthy writes to his son, who
is about to enter the university: "You think, perhaps, that in the
universities they sup pure wisdom by spoonfuls,... but when you are
arrived there, you will find that you must be made a fool of for the
first year.... Consent to be a fool for this one year; let yourself be
plagued and abused; and when an old veteran steps up to you and tweaks
your nose, let it not appear singular; endure it, harden yourself to it.
_Olim meminisse juvabit._"[D] The universities legislated against this
barbarism; all the governments of Germany conspired to crush it; but in
spite of all their efforts, which were only partially successful, traces
of it still lingered in the early years of this century. It was not
completely abolished until, in 1818, there was formed at Jena by
delegates from fourteen universities a voluntary association of students
on a moral basis, known as "The General German Burschenschaft," the
first principle in whose constitution was, "Unity, freedom, and equality
of all students among themselves,--equality of all rights and
duties,"--and whose second principle was "Christian German education of
every mental and bodily faculty for the service of the Fatherland."
This, according to Raumer, was the end of Pennalism in Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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