A Collection of College Words and Customs Part 58

NUMBER FIFTY, NUMBER FORTY-NINE. At Trinity College, Hartford, the privies are known by these names. Jarvis Hall contains forty-eight rooms, and the numbers forty-nine and fifty follow in numerical continuation, but with a different application.

NUMBER TEN. At the Wesleyan University, the names "No. 10, and, as a sort of derivative, No. 1001, are applied to the privy." The former t.i.tle is used also at the University of Vermont, and at Dartmouth College.

NUTS. A correspondent from Williams College says, "We speak of a person whom we despise as being a _nuts_." This word is used in the Yorks.h.i.+re dialect with the meaning of a "silly fellow." Mr.

Halliwell, in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, remarks: "It is not applied to an idiot, but to one who has been doing a foolish action."

_O_.

OAK. In the English universities, the outer door of a student's room.

No man has a right to attack the rooms of one with whom he is not in the habit of intimacy. From ignorance of this axiom I had near got a horse-whipping, and was kicked down stairs for going to a wrong _oak_, whose tenant was not in the habit of taking jokes of this kind.--_The Etonian_, Vol. II. p. 287.

A p.e.c.k.e.r, I must explain, is a heavy pointed hammer for splitting large coals; an instrument often put into requisition to force open an _oak_ (an outer door), when the key of the spring latch happens to be left inside, and the scout has gone away.--_The Collegian's Guide_, p. 119.

Every set of rooms is provided with an _oak_ or outer door, with a spring lock, of which the master has one latch-key, and the servant another.--_Ibid._, p. 141.

"To _sport oak_, or a door," says the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, "is, in the modern phrase, to exclude duns, or other unpleasant intruders." It generally signifies, however, nothing more than locking or fastening one's door for safety or convenience.

I always "_sported my oak_" whenever I went out; and if ever I found any article removed from its usual place, I inquired for it; and thus showed I knew where everything was last placed.--_Collegian's Guide_, p. 141.

If you persist, and say you cannot join them, you must _sport your oak_, and shut yourself into your room, and all intruders out.--_Ibid._, p. 340.

Used also in some American colleges.

And little did they dream who knocked hard and often at his _oak_ in vain, &c.--_Yale Lit. Mag._, Vol. X. p. 47.

OATHS. At Yale College, those who were engaged in the government were formerly required to take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration appointed by the Parliament of England. In his Discourse before the Graduates of Yale College, President Woolsey gives the following account of this obligation:--

"The charter of 1745 imposed another test in the form of a political oath upon all governing officers in the College. They were required before they undertook the execution of their trusts, or within three months after, 'publicly in the College hall [to]

take the oaths, and subscribe the declaration, appointed by an act of Parliament made in the first year of George the First, ent.i.tled, An Act for the further security of his Majesty's person and government, and the succession of the Crown in the heirs of the late Princess Sophia, being Protestants, and for extinguis.h.i.+ng the hopes of the pretended Prince of Wales, and his open and secret abettors.' We cannot find the motive for prescribing this oath of allegiance and abjuration in the Protestant zeal which was enkindled by the second Pretender's movements in England,--for, although belonging to this same year 1745, these movements were subsequent to the charter,--but rather in the desire of removing suspicion of disloyalty, and conforming the practice in the College to that required by the law in the English universities.

This oath was taken until it became an unlawful one, when the State a.s.sumed complete sovereignty at the Revolution. For some years afterwards, the officers took the oath of fidelity to the State of Connecticut, and I believe that the last instance of this occurred at the very end of the eighteenth century."--p. 40.

In the Diary of President Stiles, under the date of July 8, 1778, is the annexed entry, in which is given the formula of the oath required by the State:--

"The oath of fidelity administered to me by the Hon. Col. Hamlin, one of the Council of the State of Connecticut, at my inauguration.

"'You, Ezra Stiles, do swear by the name of the ever-living G.o.d, that you will be true and faithful to the State of Connecticut, as a free and independent State, and in all things do your duty as a good and faithful subject of the said State, in supporting the rights, liberties, and privileges of the same. So help you G.o.d.'

"This oath, subst.i.tuted instead of that of allegiance to the King by the a.s.sembly of Connecticut, May, 1777, to be taken by all in this State; and so it comes into use in Yale College."--_Woolsey's Hist. Discourse_, Appendix, p. 117.

[Greek: Hoi Aristoi.] Greek; literally, _the bravest_. At Princeton College, the aristocrats, or would-be aristocrats, are so called.

[Greek: Hoi Polloi.] Greek; literally, _the many_.

See POLLOI.

OLD BURSCH. A name given in the German universities to a student during his fourth term. Students of this term are also designated _Old Ones_.

As they came forward, they were obliged to pa.s.s under a pair of naked swords, held crosswise by two _Old Ones_.--_Longfellow's Hyperion_, p. 110.

OLD HOUSE. A name given in the German universities to a student during his fifth term.

OPPONENCY. The opening of an academical disputation; the proposition of objections to a tenet; an exercise for a degree.--_Todd_.

Mr. Webster remarks, "I believe not used in America."

In the old times, the university discharged this duty [teaching]

by means of the public readings or lectures,... and by the keeping of acts and _opponencies_--being certain _viva voce_ disputations --by the students.--_The English Universities and their Reforms_, in _Blackwood's Magazine_, Feb. 1849.

OPPONENT. In universities and colleges, where disputations are carried on, the opponent is, in technical application, the person who begins the dispute by raising objections to some tenet or doctrine.

OPTIME. The t.i.tle of those who stand in the second and third ranks of honors, immediately after the Wranglers, in the University of Cambridge, Eng. They are called respectively _Senior_ and _Junior Optimes_.

See JUNIOR OPTIME, POLLOI, and SENIOR OPTIME.

OPTIONAL. At some American colleges, the student is obliged to pursue during a part of the course such studies as are prescribed.

During another portion of the course, he is allowed to select from certain branches those which he desires to follow. The latter are called _optional_ studies. In familiar conversation and writing, the word _optional_ is used alone.

For _optional_ will come our way, And lectures furnish time to play, 'Neath elm-tree shade to smoke all day.

_Songs, Biennial Jubilee_, Yale Coll., 1855.

ORIGINAL COMPOSITION. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., an essay or theme written by a student in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, is termed _original_ composition.

Composition there is of course, but more Latin than Greek, and some _original Composition_.--_Bristed's Five Years in an Eng.

Univ._, Ed. 2d, p. 137.

_Original Composition_--that is, Composition in the true sense of the word--in the dead languages is not much practised.--_Ibid._, p. 185.

OVERSEER. The general government of the colleges in the United States is vested in some instances in a Corporation, in others in a Board of Trustees or Overseers, or, as in the case of Harvard College, in the two combined. The duties of the Overseers are, generally, to pa.s.s such orders and statutes as seem to them necessary for the prosperity of the college whose affairs they oversee, to dispose of its funds in such a manner as will be most advantageous, to appoint committees to visit it and examine the students connected with it, to ratify the appointment of instructors, and to hear such reports of the proceedings of the college government as require their concurrence.