“The Freshman Class was, in my day at college, usually placed (as it was termed) within six or nine months after their admission.  The official notice of this was given by having their names written in a large German text, in a handsome style, and placed in a conspicuous part of the College Buttery, where the names of the four classes of undergraduates were kept suspended until they left College.  If a scholar was expelled, his name was taken from its place; or if he was degraded (which was considered the next highest punishment to expulsion), it was moved accordingly.  As soon as the Freshmen were apprised of their places, each one took his station according to the new arrangement at recitation, and at Commons, and in the Chapel, and on all other occasions.  And this arrangement was never afterward altered, either in College or in the Catalogue, however the rank of their parents might be varied.  Considering how much dissatisfaction was often excited by placing the classes (and I believe all other colleges had laid aside the practice), I think that it was a judicious expedient in Harvard to conform to the custom of putting the names in alphabetical order, and they have accordingly so remained since the year 1772.”—­Peirce’s Hist. of Harv.  Univ., pp. 308-811.

In his “Annals of Yale College,” Ebenezer Baldwin observes on the subject:  “Doctor Dwight, soon after his election to the Presidency [1795], effected various important alterations in the collegiate laws.  The statutes of the institution had been chiefly adopted from those of European universities, where the footsteps of monarchical regulation were discerned even in the walks of science.  So difficult was it to divest the minds of wise men of the influence of venerable follies, that the printed catalogues of students, until the year 1768, were arranged according to respectability of parentage.”—­p. 147.

See DEGRADATION.

PLACET.  Latin; literally, it is pleasing.  In the University of Cambridge, Eng., the term in which an affirmative vote is given in the Senate-House.

PLUCK.  In the English universities, a refusal of testimonials for a degree.

The origin of this word is thus stated in the Collegian’s Guide:  “At the time of conferring a degree, just as the name of each man to be presented to the Vice-Chancellor is read out, a proctor walks once up and down, to give any person who can object to the degree an opportunity of signifying his dissent, which is done by plucking or pulling the proctor’s gown.  Hence another and more common mode of stopping a degree, by refusing the testamur, or certificate of proficiency, is also called plucking.”—­p. 203.

On the same word, the author in another place remarks as follows:  “As long back as my memory will carry me, down to the present day, there has been scarcely a monosyllable in our language which seemed to convey so stinging a reproach, or to let a man down in the general estimation half as much, as this one word PLUCK.”—­p. 288.