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A SALUTARY INFLUENCE College officials that something needed to be done. In 1927 they persuaded the congregation to adopt what was called the university system, under which the pastor would continue performing his other duties, but relinquish his pulpit during the academic year to outside preachers who presumably would give sermons more attuned to the needs of current College students. If this arrangement was intended to preserve the old requirement, neither it nor the coming of a new and much younger pastor early in 1930 was able to overcome the growing student resistance to the status quo. At some point, about 1929, the administration simply stopped enforcing the church rule. In December 1931 President Hanson told the trustees what had been done and asked them to make it official. Placing the best possible interpretation on the matter, he stated that many students were going home over the weekends and that, in his opinion, the time spent with their families was "on the whole sufficiently beneficial to outweigh other items which are lost by this arrangement." More accurately, he told the trustees bluntly that "for the last two years it has been found impossible to enforce the rule." The trustees accepted what they took to be inevitable and the 1932 catalogue enunciated the College belief that "regular church attendance is an essential part of the life of any young man," especially when he is "away from the incentives and restraints of the home." Consequently, the College was now urging students to attend Sunday services and assured them that all of the churches of Gettysburg would welcome them into their sanctuaries. One looks in vain to the pages of the Gettysburgian for evidence that the church rule was not being enforced in 1929-1931 and that the trustees repealed it in the latter year. This obligation, which was on the books for almost exactly a century, ended in an inaudible whimper rather than even a modest bang.287 Soon after College opened in September 1931, the first in a long series of annual communion services for students and faculty was held in the College church. These were completely voluntary events, and in the early years several hundred persons attended them. For some time the College also conducted an Ash Wednesday communion service in the church. The third obligation of a religious character resting upon the student in 1904 was the daily service in Brua Chapel. Penalties for excessive absences changed over time. At first there were demerits, followed by suspension. Beginning in 1920, there was suspension 287See the Gettysburgian for October 6, 1926 and April 27, 1927. Alumni disposed to criticize what happens on the campus long after they have been graduated and prone to argue that in the good old days rules were enforced and tolerably well obeyed should ponder carefully how the administration yielded to the students and abandoned this ancient requirement. 61