DEAN SCHOLAR.  The person who received the money appropriated by Dean Berkeley was called the Dean scholar.

This premium was formerly called the Dean’s bounty, and the person who received it the Dean scholar.—­Sketches of Yale Coll., p. 87.

DECENT.  Tolerable; pretty good.  He is a decent scholar; a decent writer; he is nothing more than decent.  “This word,” says Mr. Pickering, in his Vocabulary, “has been in common use at some of our colleges, but only in the language of conversation.  The adverb decently (and possibly the adjective also) is sometimes used in a similar manner in some parts of Great Britain.”

The greater part of the pieces it contains may be said to be very decently written.—­Edinb.  Rev., Vol.  I. p. 426.

DECLAMATION.  The word is applied especially to the public speaking and speeches of students in colleges, practised for exercises in oratory.—­Webster.

It would appear by the following extract from the old laws of Harvard College, that original declamations were formerly required of the students.  “The Undergraduates shall in their course declaim publicly in the hall, in one of the three learned languages; and in no other without leave or direction from the President, and immediately give up their declamations fairly written to the President.  And he that neglects this exercise shall be punished by the President or Tutor that calls over the weekly bill, not exceeding five shillings.  And such delinquent shall within one week after give in to the President a written declamation subscribed by himself.”—­Laws 1734, in Peirce’s Hist.  Harv.  Univ., App., p. 129.

2.  At the University of Cambridge, Eng., an essay upon a given subject, written in view of a prize, and publicly recited in the chapel of the college to which the writer belongs.

DECLAMATION BOARDS.  At Bowdoin College, small establishments in the rear of each building, for urinary purposes.

DEDUCTION.  In some of the American colleges, one of the minor punishments for non-conformity with laws and regulations is deducting from the marks which a student receives for recitations and other exercises, and by which his standing in the class is determined.

Soften down the intense feeling with which he relates heroic Rapid’s deductions.—­Harv.  Mag., Vol.  I. p. 267.

2.  At the University of Cambridge, Eng., an original proposition in geometry.

“How much Euclid did you do?  Fifteen?”

“No, fourteen; one of them was a deduction.”—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 75.

With a mathematical tutor, the hour of tuition is a sort of familiar examination, working out examples, deductions, &c.—­Ibid., pp. 18, 19.

DEGRADATION.  In the older American colleges, it was formerly customary to arrange the members of each class in an order determined by the rank of the parent.  “Degradation consisted in placing a student on the list, in consequence of some offence, below the level to which his father’s condition would assign him; and thus declared that he had disgraced his family.”