Of Yale College, President Woolsey in his Historical Discourse says:  “The old system of discipline may be described in general as consisting of a series of minor punishments for various petty offences, while the more extreme measure of separating a student from College seems not to have been usually adopted until long forbearance had been found fruitless, even in cases which would now be visited in all American colleges with speedy dismission.  The chief of these punishments named in the laws are imposition of school exercises,—­of which we find little notice after the first foundation of the College, but which we believe yet exists in the colleges of England;[20] deprivation of the privilege of sending Freshmen upon errands, or extension of the period during which this servitude should be required beyond the end of the Freshman year; fines either specified, of which there are a very great number in the earlier laws, or arbitrarily imposed by the officers; admonition and degradation.  For the offence of mischievously ringing the bell, which was very common whilst the bell was in an exposed situation over an entry of a college building, students were sometimes required to act as the butler’s waiters in ringing the bell for a certain time.”—­pp. 46, 47.

See under titles ADMONITION, CONFESSION, CORPORAL PUNISHMENT, DEGRADATION, FINES, LETTER HOME, SUSPENSION, &c.

DISCOMMUNE.  At the University of Cambridge, Eng., to prohibit an undergraduate from dealing with any tradesman or inhabitant of the town who has violated the University privileges or regulations.  The right to exercise this power is vested in the Vice-Chancellor.

Any tradesman who allows a student to run in debt with him to an amount exceeding $25, without informing his college tutor, or to incur any debt for wine or spirituous liquors without giving notice of it to the same functionary during the current quarter, or who shall take any promissory note from a student without his tutor’s knowledge, is liable to be discommuned.—­Lit.  World, Vol.  XII. p. 283.

In the following extracts, this word appears under a different orthography.

There is always a great demand for the rooms in college.  Those at lodging-houses are not so good, while the rules are equally strict, the owners being solemnly bound to report all their lodgers who stay out at night, under pain of being “discommonsed,” a species of college excommunication.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 81.

Any tradesman bringing a suit against an Undergraduate shall be “discommonsed”; i.e. all the Undergraduates are forbidden to deal with him.—­Ibid., p. 83.

This word is allied to the law term “discommon,” to deprive of the privileges of a place.

DISMISS.  To separate from college, for an indefinite or limited time.

DISMISSION.  In college government, dismission is the separation of a student from a college, for an indefinite or for a limited time, at the discretion of the Faculty.  It is required of the dismissed student, on applying for readmittance to his own or any other class, to furnish satisfactory testimonials of good conduct during his separation, and to appear, on examination, to be well qualified for such readmission.—­College Laws.