Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/145

 structor, he argues, it is in the same class of virtue as beating a corporation or evading taxes, an overt act which any one admits is to be winked at.

By cribbing, the student argues, he is simply beating the college, which stands to him as a sort of unfeeling, overbearing despot like the railroad corporation to the traveler. If on the other hand a fellow student is involved the whole situation changes. The cribber will usually suffer indefinitely rather than have a pal come to grief through his error or his carelessness or crudeness of work. In such an instance he is usually quite willing to suffer anything in order that another undergraduate may get off.

Just a few weeks ago I had before me two sophomores who had been detected cribbing in a final examination. They were equally guilty, and in accordance with our regular custom where there are no extenuating circumstances, they were dismissed. The older of the two waited after our interview was over to say to me that he felt himself more to blame than his companion. He was older, he alleged; he should have set a better example. Besides the younger man, who was by the way in no sense a personal friend of his I knew, was a promising athlete. The college could not afford to lose him. He was anxious then, he said, to bear the whole punishment of the misdeed if by any arrangement the younger boy might go free. It was a generous offer which, perhaps, showed more truly the boy's real character than his error in conduct had done, but it was one which I did not feel at liberty to accept.

Another instance, also, shows the attitude which the cribber takes towards his fellow students. Two