Contra: In Loco Parentis

...Thus in American universities an anti-educational system of social control is ratified by narrow analogies to family and commerce...

...They can be forbidden certain associations...

...Linked to this theory that college life is a preparation for democratic life is the administrative creed that attendance at a university is "a privilege, not a right...

...It means living under threat of punishment for "conduct unbecoming a student" or "inability to adjust to the university pattern...

...In either case the student is treated like a dependent child...

...How many students in America share the mood of the student journalist's last brief paragraph: Rather makes the whole thing a farce...

...The Senate "can thus vote only to uphold University rules...

...Incredibly, the government of laws coincides with the government of men...

...To go to college involves a partial surrender of the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, and often the freedom of privacy...

...But does a student really learn from making decisions that can have no certain consequences, that are posed and controlled and subject to veto by the dean of students acting in loco parentis...

...Preparation" means involving the students in a make-believe laboratory world of student activities where they can safely practice being a citizen...

...The court said that the authority of the master extended beyond the limits of the classroom, a legal theory still relevant to the university and social action...

...There is some evidence that statefinanced universities are not necessarily responsible for the libelous material printed by their student editors...

...Several years ago, a number of students at Southern University in Baton Rouge were expelled for demonstrating against local segregation practices...

...It is the moral guardian of the young...

...This does not mean that students are shackled completely at the University of Wisconsin...

...they can participate, but not in the actual governance of the community...

...It is a convenient means of preserving the university status quo, maintaining harmony with legislators, rich alumni, and worried parents...

...This follows the narrow line of argument that the student chooses to attend such-and-such a university, pays his tuition, enters a contractual relation, and must leave at the University's insistence...

...Is this a serious educational philosophy...

...The University reserves the right to sever a student's connection with the University for general inability to adjust himself to the pattern of the institution...

...Clark's actions are symptomatic of an educational philosophy and practice quite as undemocratic as, though less brutal and spectacular than, the philosophy and practice of racial superiority...

...Surely not...

...One student of higher educa tion, Professor Gordon Klopf, ac knowledges that while most legal prec edent established the right of universities to serve in loco parentis "the real testing of this issue would vary from case to case and court to court...

...they can inquire, but not into everything...

...Indeed, the attack on Negro college presidents generally has increased since student direct action began in 1960...

...The Negro college president, a recipient of state funds and an agent of the racial status quo, is loudly attacked by integrationists as a tyrant, a moral weakling, and an enemy of the hopes of a struggling generation...

...The historical origins of in loco parentis are ambiguous...

...It simply means that they violate the constitution every time they do something creative...

...According to the volume College Law, published by the American Council on Education: The power which the officers of a college may lawfully exert to restrict and control the actions of its students is based upon the fact that, in law, the college stands in the same position to its students as that of a parent—in loco parentis (in lieu of parents)—and it can therefore direct and control their conduct to the same extent that a parent can...

...When a dean dismisses anti-in loco parentis crusades by legalisms, he is evading the moral and educational issues...

...What has "general inability to adjust to the pattern of the institutions" to do with acquiring a higher education in a democratic system...

...No part of the American university system is revealed more clearly by the Southern incident than the doctrine of in loco parentis, the key to an understanding of student extracurricular life...

...It means arbitrary hours for women students and compulsory functions for both sexes...

...The element of "let's pretend" has some value as a way of teaching...

...There are plausible grounds, furthermore, for claiming that first amendment restrictions, such as speaker bans, are not constitutional...

...In America, of course, ownership is removed from the hands of students and faculty, and the university is either a state agency or a private corporation...

...Curiously, the attack on Negro college presidents is concentrated upon the issue of racial integration alone, and not on the issue of education that is also involved in Rule 16...

...Perhaps the doctrine evolved partly from the early English universities where faculty ownership was customary...

...In his letter of expulsion, President Feltin Clark invoked Rule 16 in the Southern University Student Handbook...

...And some decisions must affect the local status quo if decision-making is to be distinguished from the boredom of perpetual rehearsal...

...Margaret Mead had commented forcefully on the distinction between the work force and student force in the same age range: A handful of tugboat employees or flight engineers, because of their admitted rights in a complex system in which they are working members, can hold up a city or a country until their demands are met, but in some states students are not even allowed to vote...

...legislate on any matter aiding in the planning, supervision, and coordination of student activities in accordance with University regulations...

...The fact that in loco parentis has any legal base at all is not so much an index of its innate virtue as of university and community approval of the doctrine...

...this violation gives the administration a "constitutional" excuse for veto every time an "unconstitutional" act is not to their liking...

...They can be suspended, or expelled, for at any moment they might find themselves "unable to adjust to the pattern of the institution...

...He is confusing the legally founded "right" of the university to act in loco parentis with the legally unfounded "responsibility" to do so...

...This process is affirmed by one dean of students in these terms: I propose a system whereby we use our decision-making processes as teaching tools, allowing students the opportunity to observe, criticize, and question, but not actually to exert direct control...

...And, nicely enough, all in the name of building democracy...

...It neatly sterilizes the content of debate and controversy...

...The philosophy of student activities is articulated by most universities as either the "preparation" theory or the "privilege" theory...

...And, unlike parents of students not in college, parents of studying children must both support them and, correlatively, retain control of their conduct or delegate comparable control to some quasi-parental educational institution...

...Or again, a recent Supreme Court decision involving Alabama State sit-in leaders indicated that due process is a right every student can demand: and if due process, what other constitutional rights...

...The ideal, and the only ultimately practical, university is composed of a host of scholars, each of them students and each of them teachers to some degree, finding unity in the common task of leading the examined life...

...Whatever historical events gave rise to the doctrine, it is by now deeply rooted in the American educational system...

...In fact, this means the university— that is, the incorporated institution run by the regents or trustees—circumscribes the form and content of student social life and academic pursuit...

...If this tends to divest students and teachers alike of autonomy, certain other developments have led to the ascendency of in loco parentis...

...The rule reads: Lack of University Adjustment...

...The student is essentially an outsider, some• one who takes what he gets, or else...

...Moral and educational decisions must be made prior to invocation of in loco parentis...

...However warmly he is treated by the Administration, the student nevertheless is conditioned for continued subservience to the university and other bureaucratic organizations which will shape his life...

...It means the supervision and regulation of privacy...

...The first and most important of these goes like this: college is a "preparatory" period when the student, through incubation, is equipped with the skills he will need later in life...

...This form of control, as Dean Kathryn Hopwood of Hunter College suggests, is "quite at variance with the genesis of the European universities, such as the ones at Bologna or Paris, where the students employed visiting scholars to teach them...

...Their academic life habits can be regulated without explanation...

...For any decision to constitute a useful learning experience, the individual must accept the responsibility for its consequences...

...To designate some as members by "privilege" and some as members by "right" means that the former group has only a submissive role in the general search for knowledge and values...

...The fact that many early American colleges were dominated by religious orthodoxies and dedicated to specific religious ends is probably relevant, too, in considering in loco parentis...

...Needless to say, student extracurricular activities are organized with this dependent status clearly in mind...

...Educationally, the ends are thwarted by analogizing the university to a corporation of any form of business enterprise which produces "college graduates...

...It means tolerating personal dossiers and students who spy for the dean of men or congressional investigating committees...

...A devastating example of the "pretend" theory of learning can be found in an article in the University of Wisconsin Daily Cardinal (11/17/61...

...The doctrine of in loco parentis, however, is not a closed issue legally, as many deans would like us to be lieve...

...For expelling these students whose fervor for freedom was inadjustable to the university pattern, President Clark was sharply criticized...

...It is paradoxically discriminating that our vaunted "educational elite," the people that society places its best hopes upon, are subjected to greater social restrictions than most any persons of comparable age, save imprisoned convicts...

...They can search, but not too boldly...

...The author, in analyzing the student government constitution, finds that "Student Senate shall...

...It is constitutionally mandated to maintain the status quo...

...What exactly is this Latin phrase...

...It is certainly a feasible way to remove substance from politics...

...One of these, perhaps, was the decentralization of educational control and the establishment of a close relationship between home and school...

...Why are our stylish social reformers, many of them college presidents and professors, not as critical of the paternalistic educational habits as they are of the "Uncle Tom" racial practices of President Clark...

...Socially, the ends will be thwarted by the segregation of the student population (a population of children) from an educational community which should be whole and integrated...

...But if this be one's conception of the relation of the student to his academic community, then the academic corn munity will hardly obtain certain of its social and educational ends...

...In one of the early colleges, for example, a master beat a student with a cane and the courts were asked to decide whether canings could go on outside the school buildings as well as within...

...These trends help to perforate the solid legal justification of in loco parentis...

...It means the "double jeopardy" of receiving punishments from the university for crimes committed in and adjudicated by the city...