College exercises involving the recitation of original compositions in Latin (or, occasionally, Greek) before the assembled Fellows. Sometimes imposed as a punishment, in which case the culprit would be required to declaim against the appropriate vice, often drunkenness. declaration : a formal statement of intent, including that made by fellows of colleges that they intended to occupy a non-clerical fellowship by ‘declaring for law or medicine’; a milder substitute for an oath. The term is used of the promise made by all matriculands to observe university discipline.
