In the early seventeenth century, Dutch and foreign students in the Republic had many traits in common. For one, they knew how to get drunk. In their inebriated state, students would disturb the peace and cause social mayhem. If a Dutch student was regularly arrested for drunken behavior, he risked ruining his family's reputation. On the night of Thursday 7 March 1624, Petrus Robertus, together with ten other students in Leiden, caused so much disturbance and destruction of private property that he was arrested by the municipal bailiff. The University of Leiden's academic court recommended that Robertus’ father keep him at home until he learned how to behave himself. If the young man were to return to the university before that time he would be disgraced, and this would permanently tarnish the family's reputation.

Students who were enrolled at a university were well aware of the risk they were taking when they participated in violence. For the ruling families of the Dutch Republic, who all knew each other, a dent in the family's reputation could be especially detrimental for their future. A decent name and reputation were essential preconditions for maintaining an individual's economic and social position, as well as that of an entire family and the family's extended network. Ruining one's reputation meant squandering one's chances of obtaining a political office, closing commercial deals, and even finding the right marriage partner, which was of strategic importance for the entire family. Often a family's name was most at risk when a young man was under the influence of alcohol.

Students did anything and everything to maintain their good reputation and honor their family name. In 1623, Reinier van Leeuwenhuijzen, a Swedish law student in Leiden, petitioned the academic court to erase his name from the ledger of student transgressions, after he had agreed to compensate a local innkeeper for his outstanding bar tab. Although he was not necessarily concerned about his reputation in the Dutch Republic, he was worried that one of his fellow Swedish students in Leiden, also from the nobility, would tell of his wrongdoings once he returned to Sweden. For the elite of the Dutch Republic, gossip about immoral behavior spread like wildfire, and there was much at stake for a young man from a noble family.