The Riot at the Agricultural College
A call for police intervention after students mobbed the incoming college president and a regent.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The outrageous assault committed by certain riotous students of the agricultural college upon President-elect Heston and Regent Smith can only be effectively answered by the trial and punishment of these rioters. College students are encouraged to be riotous and law-breaking because, as a rule, they are seldom punished in the police court for their offenses like other violators of public peace and order. No more wholesome lesson in the fundamental training necessary to good citizenship can be taught college boys than the one which teaches them that they cannot break the laws of the land with impunity. The reason why college boys often rob orchards, break windows, burn, or grossly deface buildings and commit gross acts of violence upon the persons of their fellow men, is because they are seldom subjected to legal arrest and trial. They are left to the discipline of the faculty. This is all wrong. Riotous students care little for suspension or even expulsion from college, but few of them like to be placed on trial in a police court as are all other young hoodlums. Run these young ruffians into the police court, fine them and give the full punishment of the law a few times, and we will engage that the college hoodlum will not be so numerous or quite so ruthless as he is at present.
“The quickest way to make a college boy into a decent man and citizen is to treat him like a man and to hold him as strictly responsible for his conduct as any other member of the community.”
This editorial reflects a deep-seated 19th-century tension between 'town and gown.' It suggests that the university's internal discipline was failing to prepare students for the real-world consequences of their actions, a debate that still surfaces in how we address student conduct and institutional accountability today.
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