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student take-over bid in European history.
8
Although the teaching doctors had to accept the reality of student power they never conceded its
100 legality: that is to say, they contested the alleged right of the students to organise themselves into guilds
with elected officers, statutes and legal independence. It was argued that the students by themselves did not
constitute a profession: students were merely the pupils of the doctors, the academic equivalents of trade
105 apprentices and, as such, were devoid of professional status. But the reluctance to give a legal recognition
to the student guild could not check student militancy and the teaching doctors were forced to acquiesce in
a university situation wherein they were very obviously employed as the functionaries of the students.
110 9 It needs to be stated that a fair number of the Bologna law students were older than the majority of
students in northern Europe. It has been reckoned that their average age lay between eighteen and twenty-
five, and some were on the borders of thirty upon entry to the university. And it is established that a
115 sizeable proportion held ecclesiastical benefices or offices upon their enrolment as law students, and that a
significant number of them were laymen from easy social backgrounds. It is clear, then, that many of the
120 Bologna law students were young men of substance with experience of the world and accustomed to
administering responsible offices in society, all of which makes the fact of students controlling power in a
university more intelligible.
10 Under the student governmental system at Bologna the teaching doctors were excluded from voting
125 in the university assemblies, although they may have been allowed as a concession, to attend as observers.
Yet all lecturers had to obey the statutory wisdom emanating from these student congregations. The
students seem to have elected their prospective teachers several months in advance of the beginning of the
130 academic session in October. Upon election the successful doctors took an oath to submit to the student
rector in all matters affecting the life of the university. Student controls over the lecturing system were
impressive. The lecturer's life proceeded in an anxious atmosphere of impending fines. A lecturer was fined
135 if he started his lecture a minute late or if he continued after the prescribed time: indeed, if the latter
occurred the students were required to leave the room without delay. At the opening of the academic
session the students and the teaching doctors elected by the students reached agreement on how the
140 material of the lecture course was to be distributed over the year. The harassed lecturer had to reach
stipulated points in the set texts by certain dates in the session. Failure to do so resulted in a heavy fine. It
145 would hardly be an exaggeration to say that lecturing performance in thirteenth-century Bologna was
continuously assessed by the students on both a qualitative and quantitative basis. A doctor who glossed
over a difficulty or who failed to assign an equal emphasis to all parts of the syllabus would incur financial
150 penalties. As a surety for his lecturing performance the lecturer, at the beginning of the session, had to
deposit a specified sum with a city banker, acting for the students. From this deposit, a student review court
would authorise the deduction of fines incurred by the lecturer for infringements of the statutes. If the fines
155 were of such an order of magnitude that the first deposit was used up, the lecturer was required to make a
second deposit. Refusal to comply was pointless: no lecturer with fines outstanding was permitted to
collect student fees for his teaching and thus his source of university income would be cut off. In any event,
160 a recalcitrant doctor could be rendered less obstinate by means of the student boycotting machinery which
was fundamental to the workings of the student-university. Even in normal circumstances a lecturer had to
have an audience of at least five students at every ordinary lecture: if he failed to attract that number he
165 himself was deemed to be absent and incurred the stipulated fine. This whole gamut of student controls
was underpinned by a system of denunciations by secretly elected students who spied on the doctors.
Controls extended even into private areas: for example, if a lecturer got married the students allowed him
only one day and one night for his honeymoon.
From: History Today, Vol. 30, February 1980.
ARE CRIMINALS MADE OR BORN?
by Richard J.Herrnstein and James Q. Wilson
Richard J. Hermstein is a professor of psychology and James Q. Wilson a professor of government
at Harvard. This article is adapted from their book «Crime and Human Nature»
1 A revolution in our understanding of crime is quietly overthrowing some established doctrines. Until
recently, criminolo-gists looked for the causes of crime almost entirely in the offenders' social