Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/142

 wife might assume in swatting a persistent fly. I had had no experience with cribbing until I came to college. If the seekers after knowledge in the little rural community in which I lived were addicted to trickery and mental larceny I was happily never aware of it. It was something of a shock to me and rather a doubtful compliment when in my first college examination the man sitting next to me asked me for the solution of the third problem. When I hesitated not quite understanding what he really meant, he turned disgustedly to his nearest neighbor and copied the problem verbatim. I do not know that our college is worse than others in this respect; I have talked to instructors from neighboring institutions who claim that there is no cribbing in their classes, and I have visited other colleges where such careful precautions are taken that cribbing is almost a physical impossibility, but in institutions in the Middle West organized as ours is, I am of the opinion that conditions do not materially differ.

The most surprising thing to me about the man who cribs is the attitude which his fellow students assume toward him. Those of his friends who acquire their college credits in a manner similar to his own look upon him with real admiration. If he is not detected in his dishonesty, and so does not come to grief, he is regarded as a good sport and a shrewd fellow. If he is caught in his irregularity, he is looked on in somewhat the light of a martyr, whom ill-deserved misfortune has overtaken. Even the honest man, who minds his own affairs, writes his own examinations, and keeps himself absolutely within the bounds of integrity, is seldom affected by