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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE As each College term wore on, it became clear anew that boys will be boys. The crescendo of their youthful activity was often reached at term's end, especially in the spring. The last burst of energy had to be released before they parted and went their separate ways for the summer. The faculty after 1868 proved as determined as were their predecessors to respond to the boys by enforcing the rules, as best they could. The number of discipline cases which the faculty considered between 1868 and 1904 ran into the hundreds. Among the violations arising from residence in the dormitories were these: rolling stones or bowling balls through the halls (1870 and later); blowing horns, especially af night (1872 and later); stealing coal (1875 and later); "misusing the lower story of the building" (1876); stealing the key to the belfry (1880); dropping a heavy block from a fourth story window (1888); throwing water on passersby (1890 and later); fighting (1891); destroying a water closet (we have now progressed beyond the privy) (1896); and not having the required slop pail (1897).169 A fairly continuous procession of students sought permission to leave town, and they offered a wide variety of reasons to support their request. It was easy to get approval to go home to vote, to attend the 1876 centennial exhibition, to attend a presidential inauguration, to participate in a Young Men's Christian Association meeting, or to join a Sunday school convention. It was much more difficult to go to a fair or circus with the proper blessing. Sometimes the faculty approved going hunting, but at other times they did not. For years the professors flatly refused their leave to anyone suspected of wanting to participate in an off-campus fraternity gathering. They found it difficult to countenance anyone's attending an intercollegiate athletic contest other than the team members themselves. Some students left town either without having sought the required permission or after their request had been denied. A few seemed to delight in getting approval to go to one place, then actually going to another, and finally, upon their return, lying about where they had been. The trustees demonstrated how important they thought the permission rule was by specifically instructing the faculty as late as January 1896 to enforce it "by such punishment as will prevent its violation."170 169One of the passersby was a telegraph boy (1890). The student who threw the water on him was fined and the boy got the money. 170By the 1890s a few students were securing blanket permission to go home every weekend, for reasons acceptable to the faculty. One cannot help having some sympathy for the four young men charged in November 1894 with going hunting without permission, shooting only a chicken, and then getting drunk. 32