See JUNIOR OPTIME, POLLOI, and SENIOR OPTIME.

OPTIONAL.  At some American colleges, the student is obliged to pursue during a part of the course such studies as are prescribed.  During another portion of the course, he is allowed to select from certain branches those which he desires to follow.  The latter are called optional studies.  In familiar conversation and writing, the word optional is used alone.

  For optional will come our way,
  And lectures furnish time to play,
  ’Neath elm-tree shade to smoke all day.
    Songs, Biennial Jubilee, Yale Coll., 1855.

ORIGINAL COMPOSITION.  At the University of Cambridge, Eng., an essay or theme written by a student in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, is termed original composition.

Composition there is of course, but more Latin than Greek, and some original Composition.—­Bristed’s Five Years in an Eng.  Univ., Ed. 2d, p. 137.

Original Composition—­that is, Composition in the true sense of the word—­in the dead languages is not much practised.—­Ibid., p. 185.

OVERSEER.  The general government of the colleges in the United States is vested in some instances in a Corporation, in others in a Board of Trustees or Overseers, or, as in the case of Harvard College, in the two combined.  The duties of the Overseers are, generally, to pass such orders and statutes as seem to them necessary for the prosperity of the college whose affairs they oversee, to dispose of its funds in such a manner as will be most advantageous, to appoint committees to visit it and examine the students connected with it, to ratify the appointment of instructors, and to hear such reports of the proceedings of the college government as require their concurrence.

OXFORD.  The cap worn by the members of the University of Oxford, England, is called an Oxford or Oxford cap.  The same is worn at some American colleges on Exhibition and Commencement Days.  In shape, it is square and flat, covered with black cloth; from the centre depends a tassel of black cord.  It is further described in the following passage.

  My back equipped, it was not fair
  My head should ’scape, and so, as square
          As chessboard,
  A cap I bought, my skull to screen,
  Of cloth without, and all within
          Of pasteboard.
    Terrae-Filius, Vol.  II. p. 225.

  Thunders of clapping!—­As he bows, on high
  “Praeses” his “Oxford” doffs, and bows reply.
    Childe Harvard, p. 36.

It is sometimes called a trencher cap, from its shape.

See CAP.

OXFORD-MIXED. Cloth such as is worn at the University of Oxford, England.  The students in Harvard College were formerly required to wear this kind of cloth as their uniform.  The color is given in the following passage:  “By black-mixed (called also Oxford-mixed) is understood, black with a mixture of not more than one twentieth, nor less than one twenty-fifth, part of white.”—­Laws of Harv.  Coll., 1826, p. 25.