Institutionalizing in Loco Parentis after Gott v. Berea College (1913)

Abstract

Background/Context The institutionalization of in loco parentis in the wake of Gott v. Berea College (1913) marked a major turning point in the evolution of student management theory and practice. Focusing on the crucial decade of the 1920s, when American higher education first became a mass enterprise, this study explores the interaction of ideas and institutions by retracing the constitutive relationship between in loco parentis and the development of student services and programs targeted to keeping students in school. Purpose/Objective Scholars have tended to think of in loco parentis as primarily a tool of social control used to discipline misbehaving students. This study offers a different interpretation by taking seriously the doctrine's basic terms—namely, administrators’ and faculties’ role as “parents” and students’ role as “children”—and by highlighting the enduring institutional transformations created in the 1920s to help reduce student attrition. Research Design This study offers a historical analysis of the changing meanings and widening jurisdiction of in loco parentis during the 1920s. Conclusions/Recommendations This study finds that changes in the legal definition of in loco parentis following Gott v. Berea College (1913) triggered a revolution in student services that helped lay the foundation for the creation of the modern undergraduate experience and for the education of the whole student.

Expulsion Litigation and the Limits of in Loco Parentis, 1860-1960

“…Although this increase in institutional authority did not apply with quite the same force to suits filed by students dismissed because of misconduct, courts also exhibited greater deference to colleges in these cases (Rabban, 1973). As Christopher Loss (2014) demonstrates in the next article in this special section, colleges were able to make more credible arguments for authority over student behavior because of a rebirth of administrative attention to student life during the 1920s and 1930s. Previously, the principle of in loco parentis had been invoked by colleges seeking immunity from lawsuits but was rarely interpreted as the source of any particular reciprocal duties with regard to student well-being (Bickel & Lake, 1999;"Private Government on the Campus," 1963).…”

The Case of Dixon v. Alabama: From Civil Rights to Students’ Rights and Back Again

“…For the student activists, the outcome of the litigation was not the most important thing; instead, it was the very process of their resistance in the face of such brutal hostility that was meaningful. Christopher P. Loss (2014) argues in the second article of this special section that in loco parentis had a caring, nurturing side. This was true perhaps everywhere but the segregated South, where in loco parentis melded with Jim Crow policies to strengthen white supremacist ideology.…”