A Case in Point

1. Student Insubordination Act of 1901 A Case in Point

2. A Fitting Punishment • “That said students be suspended for the following periods. Textile students till 9 A.M. March 30th. 1901, that at said hour said students will report to the President’s office and shall be reinstated on their promise to obey all requirements of the authorities hereafter.” • “That the diplomas of said students shall be withheld till said students shall have regularly attended the school and classes from March 10th. till Dec. 31st.1901.”

3. A Fitting Punishment • “The above penalty was not awarded to [Name Censored], one of the students in the senior textile class because he was not engaged in the original offence alluded to. His punishment was the same as that given to the students of the mechanical and electrical engineering seniors. This is as follows:” • “That they be suspended till the first Saturday in February, and that their degrees be withheld till the first Saturday in November.” • From Faculty Minutes 1901

4. Communication between Captain Gay and Lyman Hall • “The next day, January 1st, being a legal holiday, which had always heretofore been observed by the school, and which is so declared by law, none of the members of the class reported at the school for duty on that day.” • “No rule of the school places legal holidays at the disposal of the students…some questions had been asked by members of the class before the holidays as to whether New Year’s Day would be a holiday. No member of the faculty had answered them affirmatively.”

5. Communication between Captain Gay and Lyman Hall • “First and more important, this movement of the Senior Class was not a sedition, as no one had the slightest intention of doing anything contrary to the regulations.” • “It is difficult to understand how the senior class could stay away from duty two days and say: ‘No one had the slightest intention of doing anything contrary to the regulations.’ “

6. Communication between Captain Gay and Lyman Hall • “Therefore, many of the students decided individually to take the consequences of an unexcused absence for Monday.” • “The class would have received at least three unexcused absences for being away Monday instead of ‘an unexcused absence,’ as there were as many as three separate duties from which the students would have been absent.”

7. Communication between Captain Gay and Lyman Hall • “Secondly, we wish it to be distinctly understood that there was no written agreement on the subject. The word was simply passed among the various classes, and the members decided individually and personally to stay away on the day designated.” • “This is confession of combined action against authority.”

8. Communication between Captain Gay and Lyman Hall • “Said absence being the action of each separate individual of the class, there had been no class action binding them or any of them to be absent on said dates, except the voluntary individual statements of such of them, as were absent, had made.” • “When I asked one of them if he would not have considered himself a traitor to his class if he had returned before the time agreed upon, he failed to reply.”

9. Communication between Captain Gay and Lyman Hall • “There were nearly four hundred younger students watching this action of the senior class. The very foundation of discipline was threatened. The faculty took prompt action, making the penalty light as they thought the demands of discipline would allow.” • President Lyman Hall

10. Hall’s Statement to His Students • “We believe that some of you have persisted in your positions through a false notion of the obligations of class unity and pride. To those we say: hereafter let no unwise schemer persuade you into any movement against your convictions and sense of duty.”