The students who wish to go home apply for an "Exeat," which is a paper signed by the Tutor, Master, and Dean.—Alma Mater, Vol. I. p. 162.
[At King's College], exeats, or permission to go down during term, were never granted but in cases of life and death.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 140.
EXERCISE. A task or lesson; that which is appointed for one to perform. In colleges, all the literary duties are called exercises.
It may be inquired, whether a great part of the exercises be not at best but serious follies.—Cotton Mather's Suggestions, in Quincy's Hist. Harv. Univ., Vol. I. p. 558.
In the English universities, certain exercises, as acts, opponencies, &c., are required to be performed for particular degrees.
EXHIBIT. To take part in an exhibition; to speak in public at an exhibition or commencement.
No student who shall receive any appointment to exhibit before the class, the College, or the public, shall give any treat or entertainment to his class, or any part thereof, for or on account of those appointments.—Laws Yale Coll., 1837, p. 29.
If any student shall fail to perform the exercise assigned him, or shall exhibit anything not allowed by the Faculty, he may be sent home.—Ibid., 1837, p. 16.
2. To provide for poor students by an exhibition. (See EXHIBITION, second meaning.) An instance of this use is given in the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam, where one Antony Wood says of Bishop Longland, "He was a special friend to the University, in maintaining its privileges and in exhibiting to the wants of certain scholars." In Mr. Peirce's History of Harvard University occurs this passage, in an account of the will of the Hon. William Stoughton: "He bequeathed a pasture in Dorchester, containing twenty-three acres and four acres of marsh, 'the income of both to be exhibited, in the first place, to a scholar of the town of Dorchester, and if there be none such, to one of the town of Milton, and in want of such, then to any other well deserving that shall be most needy.'" —p. 77.
EXHIBITION. In colleges, a public literary and oratorical display. The exercises at exhibitions are original compositions, prose translations from the English into Greek and Latin, and from other languages into the English, metrical versions, dialogues, &c.