I can say as well as the best on them sheepskins, if you don’t get religion and be saved, you’ll be lost, teetotally and for ever.—­(Sermon of an Itinerant Preacher at a Camp Meeting.)—­Ibid.

As for John Prescot, he not only lost the valedictory, but barely escaped with his “sheepskin.”—­Yale Lit.  Mag., Vol.  X. p. 74.

That handsome Senior ... receives his sheepskin from the dispensing hand of our worthy Prex.—­Ibid., Vol.  XIX. p. 355.

  When first I saw a “Sheepskin,”
    In Prex’s hand I spied it.
    Yale Coll.  Song.

  We came to college fresh and green,—­
  We go back home with a huge sheepskin.
    Songs of Yale, 1853, p. 43.

SHIN.  To tease or hector a person by kicking his shins.  In some colleges this is one of the means which the Sophomores adopt to torment the Freshmen, especially when playing at football, or other similar games.

We have been shinned, smoked, ducked, and accelerated by the encouraging shouts of our generous friends.—­Yale Banger, Nov. 10, 1846.

SHINE.  At Harvard College this word was formerly used to designate a good recitation.  Used in the phrase, “to make a shine.”

SHINNY.  At Princeton College, the game of Shinny, known also by the names of Hawky and Hurly, is as great a favorite with the students as is football at other colleges.  “The players,” says a correspondent, “are each furnished with a stick four or five feet in length and one and a half or two inches in diameter, curved at one end, the object of which is to give the ball a surer blow.  The ball is about three inches in diameter, bound with thick leather.  The players are divided into two parties, arranged along from one goal to the other.  The ball is then ‘bucked’ by two players, one from each side, which is done by one of these two taking the ball and asking his opponent which he will have, ‘high or low’; if he says ‘high,’ the ball is thrown up midway between them; if he says ‘low,’ the ball is thrown on the ground.  The game is opened by a scuffle between these two for the ball.  The other players then join in, one party knocking towards North College, which is one ‘home’ (as it is termed), and the other towards the fence bounding the south side of the Campus, the other home.  Whichever party first gets the ball home wins the game.  A grand contest takes place annually between the Juniors and Sophomores, in this game.”

SHIP.  Among collegians, one expelled from college is said to be shipped.

  For I, you know, am but a college minion,
  But still, you’ll all be shipped, in my opinion,
    When brought before Conventus Facultatis.
    Yale Tomahawk, May, 1852.

He may be overhauled, warned, admonished, dismissed, shipped, rusticated, sent off, suspended.—­Burlesque Catalogue, Yale Coll., 1852-53, p. 25.