ciety’s farm, moving an “outhouse,” and making off with the Institution’s bell. Students also released pent-up energies by cutting classes to attend political meetings in the campaign of 1844 and by singing political songs in the evenings while their fellows tried to study. A unique variety of college prank is suggested by the appointment of Dr. Kendrick and Professors Maginnis and Eaton as a committee “to converse with certain students charged with disturbing the repose of others by loud prayers at unseasonable hours.” Repeated violations of the rule prohibiting smoking indoors came to the faculty’s notice. The son of Deacon Seneca B. Burchard appeared before the discipline committee for reading a newspaper in chapel. One young man was dismissed for ignoring the rule forbidding a student’s getting married, while another was forced to leave because he made and broke “matrimonial engagements.”
Faculty concern for proper conduct even extended to vacations, during which students were directed to “regard themselves as members of the Institution, and as amenable to its authority for their behavior.” This attempt at extracurricular control probably stems from the realization that the Institution’s good name depended largely on the impressions made by everyone connected with it. One student noted in his diary that on the last day of the 1838 spring term the young men had been assembled in chapel and “read the advice and prayers of the faculty” before departing for home.
Students were expected, as the Laws of 1840 stated, to make “the cultivation of personal piety” their primary duty. For this object they were “to spend a portion of each day in private reading of the scriptures, self-examination and prayer” and to meet by classes or in groups for “religious exercises.” They were enjoined also “to refrain from light and trifling· conversation” and “to maintain a deportment becoming to those who profess godliness.” Though these regulations were fashioned primarily for theologues, no exceptions were made.
All students were required to be present at morning and evening prayers. The exercises consisted of Scripture reading, singing, and prayer; members of the theological classes officiated in the morning and the professors in the evening. On Sunday morning all students met for worship in the chapel and attendance was as rigidly enforced as at classes. Afterward they usually went to service at the Baptist meeting house in the village until the Seminary Church was established in 1845;
