Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.

At Scone College in Oxford, the annual dinner of the Bollinger Club ends with the breaking of glass. Reeling out of Sir Alastair Digby-Vaine-Trumpington’s rooms, the drunken aristocrats run to earth the inoffensive divinity student Paul Pennyfeather and forcibly leave him trouserless before they go roaring off into the night. Bollinger members can be fined, but the college authorities feel that Paul deserves more severe punishment for running across the quadrangle in his shorts. As a result, he is sent down for indecent behavior. After informing him that under his father’s will his legacy could be withheld for unsatisfactory behavior, his unsympathetic guardian virtuously announces his intention to cut off Paul’s allowance.