New-York tribune., 1882-04-21
THE UyDERGRADUATE HOODLUM

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spirits finds vent and expression in the deep
delights of pulling door-bells, breaking win
dows, unhinglng gates, stealing signs, hazing
his fellow student and making life burden to
ouiet citizens-the undergraduate hoodlum,
contrary to his own confident belief, is neither
an attractive nor interesting person. He is
tolerated not because he is pretty or bright-he
! has not even the attractions of Artemus
| Wards kangaroo, who was an amoozln little
| cuss but because sOciety-Of which he thinks
| himself an ornament but by which he is con-
sidcred nuisance looks upon the under
| graduate period rs a sort of fool fever when the
very highest possibilities of idOcy in a boys
nature become cuticular, eruptive, cOnfluent.
It is time of intellectual measles. Some boys
live through it, get fairly over it, and have
sense enough to be ever afterward ashamed of
1t. Others, with whom hoodlumism is not so
much the horse-play of animal spirits as tho
natural expression of innate brutality, never
recover, but keep right on, u2til thoy are fully
developed in various directions into grown men
whom decent people shun.
The uppermost delusion in the mind of the
undergraduate hoodlum is that he is looked
upon in his university town always with ad-
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truth is lie is only tolerated a necessary evil
by the citizens, whose joy at his graduation and
departure is alloyed only by the thought that
the line does not end with him, but more are
coming Always at war with the college fac
ulty-that being the essential feature of under
graduate hOOdlumism-it is necessity of his
nature to violate every regulation and override
every law of the university; and that in no
| hesitating or doubtful way, but in the large,
loud manner of being superior to law.
! Turned over, however, to the municipal au-
thorities and the police for discipline, he is
shocked beyond measure at the interference of
mere civil authority with the playful deviltries
of young gentlemen who are educating them
selves for honorable professions and are re-
| sponsible only to their teachers for their con-
! duct. This delusion concerning their irrespon
sibity extends sometimes to their instructors,
who rescue them from the clutches of the law,
with the understanding that the college author
tiles will deal with them with proper severity,
and then discipline them under a code in which
expulsion is capital punishment and all other
penalties are included in suspension for periods
that vary according to the grade of the offence.
Like his fellow of the slums, the undergraduate
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alone, but in gang he is loud, audacous,
| overbearing and insolent; n swaggerer and
bully. lie rises to his highest if not his best
estate when having fired his thin brain with
whskey, he avaiS himself of the cover of night
| TO haze his fellow student or torture the quiet
citizen with his song
But it is when the undergraduate hoOdlum
undertakes to justify himself and vindicate his
| stark imbecitles and witless bIutallties that
he best illustrates himself and his mcasly
period. And this is what the members of the
senior class of Trinity College at Hartford
have just been doing in connection with the
case of brutal hazng in that institution the cir
cumstances of which have recently been pub
! liShed. Thirteen members of this class took
three sophomores-the hoodlum never hazes eX
cept with the heaviest battalons-into the
country, where they padded them, branded
them, and after perpctrating other indignities
upon them left them to walk home. The thir-
teen seniors were subjected to college discipline
suspended for a brief period-and there their
| punishment ended. But the newspapers have
commented unfayorably upon the transaction,
| and the remaining members of the class have
issued a card explaining the affair and justify
| ing the performance. 1t seems from this that
| the three sOphOmOres were supposed to have
| been connected with n college publication
which the seniors deemed offensive, and the
! latter say in their card that thirteen seniors,
considering that their position entitled them
to protect the dignity of the college, under
took to nfict upon the sophomores punish
ment which their offence merited." This is
hoodumism assuming the functions of a vigi-
/ N 70 To
seriously as though it was not the blue-ribbon
idiocy of undergraduate hoodlumsm: Here
{" lie; it be observed that the action of the seniors
{" was not undertaken as piece of hazng, but
as punishment" Could anything be more
absurd
And these young men are undergoing the
process of being "educatcd"! Indeed, being
seniors. are almost educated" In a month or
two they will have finished the process and will
come out into world of sensible folk bring
ing parchment proof, written in dead Ian
guage, that they arc educated men" Literally
educated" Well, are these young persons
gentlemen or hOOdlums Great numbers of
young persons are graduated each year from
our colleges most of whom are in the highest
| sense gentlemen and scholars most of whom,
too, have enjoyed i'll rational degree all the
! innocent and boyish fun of college life. But
there are always hoodums, and 1t is what the
| hoodums do that gets to the public and gives
the public its idea of college III Guences and
college life. Who is to blame for the hood
| lums Is 1t the public or the college faculties
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| New-Hampshire boasts of q conservative citizen
whose travels during the last forty-one years have
been confined to his daily walks between his homo