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A VICTORY FOR STUDENTS.

[SPECIAL CORRESPONDENCE FROM CINCINNATI UNIVERSITY.]

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED

CINCINNATI, Jan. 25, 1882. The editors of the Academica, who were suspended from their classes in that institution some weeks ago by the faculty, because of a publication in the Academica that gave offense to the head of the faculty, were reinstated last Monday.

The causes leading up to this, date back as far as July, 1881, when the Academica published an article entitled "The Rector's Case," setting forth nineteen causes of complaint against Thomas Vickers, any one of which, if established, was sufficient to show his unfitness for the rectorship. In alarm Vickers rushed into contemporaneous print, and accused students, alumni, directors, members of the faculty, and citizens, of conspiring to break down his reputation and destroy the university. Receiving an intimation that the beseigers were about to lay certain petitions before the directorate, asking for an investigation into the consul's management of affairs, he determined to be precedent, and himself demanded an investigation, appealing to the fair-minded men and women of the city, and challenging to the proof any one who had any charge to make against the consul, touching his fitness for the consulship. The directorate appointed a committee of investigation. But at this point the consul seemed to retreat from the unfamiliar field of open contest, into the haze of secret sessions, and did all he could, through friends, to stifle an investigation.

Foiled in this, as he had been in an attempt to have the editors expelled, he seems to have cast about for some other means of upholding his course, for the best of the students in whom his actions have stirred hostility were the ones he would crush by expelling them from the university.

He waited patiently for the appearance of the October number of the Academica, but it contained nothing that could afford him a pretext for expelling the editors. He then issued a number of the University, which purported to be the official sheet, and provoked the editors of the Academica, who fell into the trap prepared for them, and published in the December number of the Academica certain comments on the administration of the university, as represented by Vickers. In a secret session of the faculty, without affording the editors the opportunity of a full and impartial defence, Vickers succeeded in having them suspended. The editors at once disclaimed any intention to slight the faculty, behind whom Vickers was shielding himself, and demanded a hearing of their complaint by the board of directors.

This hearing occupied the time of several special meetings, and then it was developed that, with but one or two exceptions, the faculty desired to have the students back in the university; that Vickers was arbitrary in his conduct; that he was accountable for the trouble, and was greatly censured for having abused the students in his paper. The directors recommended the reinstatement of the students. The faculty, in recognition of the action of the directors, returned the students to their former standing in the university. Vickers, in attempting to vent his spite on undergraduates, has overreached himself, and is having an unpleasant experience. This morning the Cincinnati Gazette said concerning Vickers: "Rebuked by the directors, unsupported by the faculty, disliked by undergraduates, dispised by the alumni, looked upon with aversion by the teachers of Woodward, Hughes and other preparatory schools, obnoxious to a large number of the patrons of the school, his hold on the rectorship is certainly feeble. Like Tantalus, he reached out after fruit which has constantly cluded his grasp. Like the Samian king, he left a cup untasted to pursue game he failed to secure, and has verified the proverb, 'There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.'" The return of the editors of the Academica is hailed with delight by the whole college.

C. U., '83,

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