detail. The faculty in loco parentis undertook to promote piety, morals and health by personal contact and “seasonable counsel and admonition.” Any student who violated any of the regulations, or showed an indifference to “practical religion,” or exposed himself to censure “by any indiscreet or improper conduct” was to be “tenderly and faithfully admonished.” If this proved insufficient he Was to be suspended for three months, after which, if still recalcitrant, he was to be “separated from the Institution.” In cases of “aggravated offenses,” the faculty was to remove the offender without delay, either privately, or by public expulsion, as their judgment dictated. Whenever a youth was dismissed for misconduct, his church was to be furnished a statement of the case.
The increasing number of students between 1833 and 1846 and the presence of some not preparing for the ministry, naturally caused the faculty to devote greater attention to disciplinary matters than heretofore. The committee on discipline made frequent reports to the whole faculty, and from time to time one of the professors, often Taylor, was chosen to communicate admonitions or reprimands in chapel. In general, the faculty seems to have been enthusiastic about the quality of their charges. Dr. Kendrick in 1836 commended them highly for their moral behavior. By 1845 fears that the lay element would be an unruly and harmful influence had abated. Their presence was said to have contributed to the development of a “watchful, practical, and manly piety” among the theologues who had assumed a responsibility for their Christian behavior.
William C. Richards, one of the ministerial students in 1839, humorously recalled three decades later that when
The College doors more wide began to grow;
And embryo lawyers, doctors, merchant-men,
With preachers mixed in incubation then;
Then college tricks, unknown here in the past,
From single germs grew up and burgeoned fast.*
Such “tricks” included burning a haycock on the Education So-
*William C. Richards, Jubilee Poem-“Retrorsum” in The First Half Century of Madison University (N.Y., 1872), 125-126.
