receiving the usual degrees; to
clergymen who are licensed to exercise the ministerial functions;
to physicians who are licensed to practise their profession; and
to agents who are authorized to transact business for their
principals. A diploma, then, is a writing or instrument, usually
under seal, and signed by the proper person or officer, conferring
merely honor, as in the case of graduates, or authority, as in the
case of physicians, agents, &c.--_Webster_.

DISCIPLINE. The punishments which are at present generally adopted
in American colleges are warning, admonition, the letter home,
suspension, rustication, and expulsion. Formerly they were more
numerous, and their execution was attended with great solemnity.
"The discipline of the College," says President Quincy, in his
History of Harvard University, "was enforced and sanctioned by
daily visits of the tutors to the chambers of the students, fines,
admonitions, confession in the hall, publicly asking pardon,
degradation to the bottom of the class, striking the name from the
College list, and expulsion, according to the nature and
aggravation of the offence."--Vol. I. p. 442.

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, CONFE