In the early years of Wheaton College, one could say in the earlydecadesearly decades, as well, the college relied heavily upon the enrollment oflocal of local students. Though it broadly drew students from the region, it wasthe was the Wheaton community that served as the "bread and butter" of itstuition its tuition dollars.
In 1860 the transition of leadership from Lucius Matlack to JonathanBlanchardJonathan Blanchard, from the full control of Wesleyan Methodists to theinclusion the inclusion of Congregationalists, brought new energy and resources. Italso It also brought a different perspective. For over one hundred years amember a member of the Wheaton College community could not be a member of asecret a secret oath-bound society. Of any sort. The Illinois Institute and, afterward, Wheaton College were founded on several principles: abolition, temperance and anti-secretism. It was these last two, intension, that brought forth Wheaton College's encounter with theIllinois the Illinois legal system.
Edwin Hartley Pratt (1849-1930), a local student, was enrolled inthe in the Academic program at Wheaton. He and several other students joined alocal a local Good Templar's lodge. Known officially as the Independent Orderof Order of Good Templars, this fraternal organization stood for many of theprinciples the principles that Wheaton, and Jonathan Blanchard, held dear: equalityfor equality for men and women, racial non-discrimination and temperance. It's mottosounded Its motto sounded very good and biblical — "Friendship, Hope and Charity." However, it was still a secret society and Jonathan Blanchard wouldhave would have none of it (having believed that the slave system was the work ofsecret of secret societies).
So, the administration of Wheaton College (i.e., Jonathan Blanchard), tossed out Pratt and his co-secretists.
In response Pratt's father sued Wheaton College under the belief andassumption and assumption that his son had done nothing illegal and therefore couldnot could not be expelled. A legal battle (Pratt v. Wheaton College) ensued thatmade that made its way to the Illinois Supreme Court. In a precedent-settingdecision setting decision the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the right of WheatonCollegeWheaton College, and any other school, to establish rules to govern the livesand lives and discipline of its students, much in the same way that a parentwouldparent would. As the ruling stated, "A discretionary power has been given, …[and] we have no more authority to interfere than we have to controlthe control the domestic discipline of a father in his family." This firmlyestablished firmly established the principle of in loco parentis.
In loco parentis is the legal doctrine that outlines a relationshipthat relationship that is similar to that of a parent to a child. The concept goes backhundreds back hundreds of year and was embedded in English common-law that wasborrowed was borrowed from by American colonists. The Puritans put this idea to useand use and it found its way into American elementary and high schools, colleges, and universities. The legal system in the nineteenth centurywas century was unwilling to interfere when students brought grievances, particularly in the area of rules, discipline, and expulsion. However, this would change in the 1960s as all forms of authority werechallengedwere challenged.
One may wonder what ever happened to Pratt. After leaving Wheaton, he became a noted homeopathic physician and surgeon in Chicago and wasknown was known for his professional writing and work. He wrote Orificial Surgery And Its Application To The Treatment Of Chronic Diseases (1891 and dedicated to his father) and The composite man as comprehended in fourteen anatomical impersonationsimpersonations (1901 and published in several editions). He served as President of theIllinois the Illinois Homoeopathic Medical Association and served on several medicalboards medical boards and commissions. In 1877 he married Isadore M. Bailey (a Wheatonstudent Wheaton student from 1875-1877) with the Rev. C. P. Mercer of the CentralSwedenborgen Central Swedenborgen Society officiating. Pratt joined the Chicago Society ofthe New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) in 1881.
Oddly enough, Pratt v. Wheaton College wasn't the only time thatPratt that Pratt was before the Illinois Supreme Court. In 1903 Pratt was sued fornot for not gaining consent before conducting a hysterectomy on a mentally-illpatientill patient. Pratt lost the case and was fined $3,000. He fought the rulingseeking ruling seeking redress before the Supreme Court. Yet, again, the court failedto failed to rule in his favor.
---------------------
People ex rel. Pratt v. Wheaton College
40 Ill. 186
April 1866
Mr. JUSTICE LAWRENCE delivered the opinion of the Court:
E. Hartley Pratt, a student in Wheaton college, joined asecret a secret society known as the Good Templars, in violation of the college rules. For this the faculty "suspended him from the privileges of the institutionuntil institution until he should express a purpose to conform to its rules." His fatherthereupon father thereupon applied for a mandamus to compel the college to reinstate him as astudenta student. The mandamus was refused, and the relator has brought the case here.
Wheaton college is an incorporated institution, resting uponprivate upon private endowments, and deriving no aid whatever from the State or fromtaxationfrom taxation. Its charter gives to the trustees and faculty the power "to adopt andenforce and enforce such rules as may be deemed expedient for the government of theinstitutionthe institution," a power which they would have possessed without such expressgrantexpress grant, because incident to the very object of their incorporation, andindispensable and indispensable to the successful management of the college. Among the rules theyhave they have deemed it expedient to adopt, is one forbidding the students to becomemembers become members of secret societies. We perceive nothing unreasonable in the ruleitselfrule itself, since all persons familiar with college life know that the tendency ofsecret of secret societies is to withdraw students from the control of the faculty, andimpair and impair to some extent the discipline of the institution. Such may not always betheir effect, but such is their general tendency. But whether the rule bejudicious be judicious or not, it violates neither good morals nor the law of the land, andis and is therefore clearly within the power of the college authorities to make andenforceand enforce. A discretionary power has been given them to regulate the disciplineof discipline of their college in such manner as they deem proper and so long as their rulesviolate rules violate neither divine nor human law we have no more authority to interferethan interfere than we have to control the domestic discipline of a father in his family. Itis It is urged that the Good Templars are a society established for the promotion oftemperanceof temperance, and incorporated by the legislature, and that any citizen has aright a right to join it. We do not doubt the beneficent objects of the society, and weadmit we admit that any citizen has a right to join it if the society consents. But thisright this right is not of so high and solemn a character that it cannot be surrendered, and the son of the relator did voluntarily surrender it when he became astudent a student of Wheaton college, for he knew, or must be taken to have known, thatby that by the rules of the institution which he was voluntarily entering, he would beprecluded be precluded from joining any secret society. When it is said that a person has alegal a legal right to do certain things, all that the phrase means is, that the lawdoes law does not forbid these things to be done. It does not mean that the lawguarantees law guarantees the right to do them at all possible times and under all possiblecircumstancespossible circumstances. A person in his capacity as a citizen may have the right to domany do many things which a student of Wheaton college cannot do without incurring thepenalty the penalty of college laws. A person as a citizen has a legal right to marry, orto or to walk the streets at midnight, or to board at a public hotel, and yet itwould it would be absurd to say that a college cannot forbid its students to do any ofthese of these things. So a citizen, as such, can attend church on Sunday or not, as hemay he may think proper, but it could hardly be contended that a college would nothave not have the right to make attendance upon religious services a condition ofremaining of remaining within its walls. The son of the relator has an undoubted legal rightto right to join either Wheaton college or the Good Templars, and they have both anundoubted an undoubted right to expel him if he refuses to abide by such regulations as theyestablishthey establish, not inconsistent with law or good morals.
Judgment affirmed.
|