Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/141



as well frankly confess at the outset of this paper that I have seen a good deal of cribbing from the time I entered college to the present day, and I have been told of a great deal more than I have seen. As an undergraduate I knew men who never pretended to get through an examination without relying upon some subterfuge or trick or dishonest aid, and who would put more time twice over upon the devising of a cunning complicated crib, than it would have taken to learn by heart the whole text upon which they were preparing to be examined. I have known other men, keen-brained and studious, who could have written with high credit any reasonable examination which the instructor might have set, and yet who regularly and foolishly carried a crib to the examination and used it.

I remember asking a young sophomore once who had been caught in the act of using a crib in a final examination, and who was dismissed from college for his dishonesty, why he had done so. He was an intelligent fellow, and was easily in the highest ten per cent. of his class.

"It was a case of making ninety per cent. without the crib or ninety-five per cent. with it," he said, "and I was anxious to win preliminary honors."

His manner was as cold-blooded and matter of fact in the discussion of the situation as a careful house-