“You have JUG!”  A dreaded sentence that is directed to a Jesuit High School student consists of a simple three syllable phrase. However, despite JUG being a central facet of student life that is joked about, talked about, and given every day, one would be surprised at how little of its true meaning is fully understood.

The concept of detention is, of course, not new nor exclusive, but detention at Jesuit is marked by the Christian values that the school is founded upon.

“JUG does not stand for ‘Justice Under God’ as many believe. The term is from the Latin noun ‘iugum’ (as in [an] oxen[‘s] yoke or burden), and the full term was ‘sub iugum‘…roughly translated as ‘under the burden.’” Dean of Students Tim Warren said.

Sub iugum is modeled after the principle that appropriate consequences follow an infraction. Fittingly enough, any Jesuit student who finds himself in JUG is subjected to the burden of picking up trash in an otherwise free time, namely after school or at lunch.

Jesuit is not the only school where this takes place. JUG is practiced at the majority of Jesuit institutions in the California and Oregon provinces, as well as those on the East Coast.

There are two types of JUG that a student may encounter in their time at Jesuit: Procedural and Behavioral. When given JUG, an email notification is sent to one’s school email account within the hour, providing information on the task to be undertaken.

Procedural JUG is given due as a result of minor or routine infractions, such as arriving late, and requires the JUG-ee to report outside the Dean’s Office at the beginning of lunch. There, each student receives a bag and is delegated a part of the campus for the remainder of the break period,  where they must put any trash they find into the given bag.

Unsatisfactory performance, such as shirking one’s assigned area, will be met with Behavioral JUG .

Behavioral JUG is similar to Procedural in that attendees are required to pick up trash, but differs in that it is attended for one hour after school and requires participants to arrive at Lalemant 103.

Behavioral JUG is normally given as a result of intentional or repeated disregard for rules, such as playing on iPads or talking during a lecture. Subpar performance will also result in further Behavioral Detention.

Many students may recall that Academic JUG (which mandated that students stay after school and work on homework for one hour) has been removed from Jesuit.

“Academic Detention was abolished in favor of academic consequences for academic behaviors,” Dean Warren said.

In any case, sub iugum has been in practice for as long as Jesuit has been open and will continue into the foreseeable future. JUG remains in every current and former student’s memory as the subject of inside jokes, experiences, and most of all, burdens, that is distinctly Jesuit.