legalistic quibble. Some of the students expelled went to other institutions, some eventually returned to the University, while others ended their college days. This action naturally caused an uproar; neither the Faculty nor the Regents were unanimous in approval of these measures; while the citizens of Ann Arbor held an indignation meeting and appointed a committee to ask the Legislature for a change in the administration of the University. The Faculty prepared a report to the Regents stating their case strongly and even bitterly, characterizing the whole history of these three societies as "a detail of obliquities," and their "extended affiliations as a great irresponsible authority, a monster power, which lays its hand upon every College Faculty in our country"; they were also fearful of the "debauchery, drunkenness, pugilism, and duelling, ... and the despotic power of disorder and ravagism, rife among their German prototypes." This report was signed by all the Faculty, though the opinion was not unanimous, nor had all the actions of individual members been consistent. The Regents also made a report sustaining the Faculty, and both were submitted to the Legislature, accompanied by a reply made by the seven reinstated students, who denied the charges. They even maintained that Rule 20 was a dead letter and that one of the Professors, when consulted at the time one of the fraternities was founded, did not disapprove, or quote this law. A memorial was also submitted by fifteen "neutral" students sustaining the Faculty and suggesting that the threatened legislation, which was advocated by the committee of Ann Arbor citizens, was the greatest obstacle to harmony. Unfortunately this legislative action was just what seemed inevitable for some time. The Ann Arbor citizens represented that the University was failing, and that the only way to save it was by an entire change in its organic law, the appointment of a new Faculty, and the recognition of that natural right of man--to form secret societies if he so elects. Their case before the Legislature, however, had been weakened by the action of two students who had circulated a week or so in advance a garbled and caricatured form of the Faculty report, which had been submitted honorably to the students to enable them to make a reply if they so desired. This undoubtedly prejudiced the student case when the truth became known, and the net result was no action by the Legislature on any of the memorials. With the withdrawal of the bill, the Faculty and the Regents were left to handle the question as seemed best to them. In the meantime, however, the opposition to the suppression of the societies had become so widespread and aggressive that one by one the fraternities were "conditionally" reinstated in October, 1850.