How to Behave at School, 1479

Hortus sanitatis (1497), Darmstadt

"We order and decree that teachers and students who are wearers of indecent garments, brawlers, drunks, nighttime ramblers, pimps, thieves, frequenters of taverns and other filthy places, players of dice, scoffers or trespassers of the statutes and commands of the Rector and the University, arrogant abusers of privileges, and especially aggravators of the citizens and committers of other scandalous misdeeds, if they do not desist after fair warning... shall be entirely excluded from the community of the University.”  

Copenhagen University Statutes, 1479

Fall: when teachers and students sharpen their pencils, crack open their books, and try to cut back on their filthy drunken brawling.

How Not to Get Expelled, 1484

British Library, Royal 10 D IV, f. 1r (14th c.)

"It is commanded to all students that none of them henceforth in the streets or ways of this town wield swords, knives, daggers, or any other arms, or wander about in costume or with faces covered in these aforementioned places, or stir up horrible clamors at nighttime in the manner of wild asses, or participate in forbidden games either in the taverns of this city or the outlying areas or villages around the city, or attempt to perpretrate there any ill deeds at all, or dare to disturb or injure the inhabitants of this city or any others, either bodily or in property, or dare to afflict them with any other injuries." 

Leipzig University statute, 1484

Pro tip: your extracurricular activities should not involve daggers.

How to Succeed at University, 1471

Laurentius de Voltolina, The Classroom of Henricus de Alemannia
Liber ethicorum (c. 1360-90), Kupferstichkabinett Berlin

"Anyone attending any lecture must... have his own copy of the reading or a borrowed copy for the time of the lecture (two or three students at most may share the same copy) and, without a reasonable cause, except in the case of a legitimate impediment, he must miss no lecture that he was supposed to hear, or exercise which he was supposed to attend, from the third lecture or exercise after the beginning of the book, and as much as he is able, he must remain from the beginning to the end of the lecture or exercise, nor may he schedule two lectures or exercises at the same hour. 

However many times he has missed an exercise or lecture, or has not remained from the beginning to the end, and all his other failings, he must note down in the outline of his acts, to be presented at the time of the dispensation, along with the excuse (if he has any), and he must write and explain and seek a dispensation, so that according to the greater or smaller number of his negligences and failings, and excuses (if he has any), the professors will be able to deliberate and decide whether he deserves a dispensation." 

Leipzig university statute, 1471

Whatever the excuse (if he has any), I guarantee those profs have heard it before.

(Also, don't torment the freshmen.)

How to Treat the Freshmen, 1495

They get smaller every year.
Codex Manesse (c. 1304)

"Statute Forbidding Any One to Annoy or Unduly Injure the Freshmen. Each and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with insult, torment, harass, drench with water or urine, throw on or defile with dust or any filth, mock by whistling, cry at them with a terrifying voice, or dare to molest in any way whatsoever physically or severely, any, who are called freshmen, in the market, streets, courts, colleges and living houses, or any place whatsoever, and particularly in the present college, when they have entered in order to matriculate or are leaving after matriculation."

Leipzig University Statute (1495)

A friendly reminder for the new academic year: please resist the temptation to terrify the freshmen with spooky voices, at least for the first few weeks.