Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/155

 be dismissed from college than to be prohibited for any length of time from participation in activities.

"Abolishing specific numerical grades," one man suggests, "would take away from many students a strong temptation to crib. Those who desire to excel are, under a system of numerical grades, often influenced to crib in order that they may take intellectual precedence of their classmates. If specific grades were done away with, this condition would not exist."

Another man writes, "I do not believe that a university is a place to begin the primary teaching of honesty. A man's habits and principles are formed when he comes to college. A young fellow should be educated in principles of honesty in the home and in the graded schools. If he has not learned these before he comes to college he is entitled to no leniency. No one should be given a degree from a university who has grossly cribbed."

The attitude toward the practice in most of the papers was one of indifference or of justification. Especially in discussing the subject of giving help to a classmate in trouble was the moral sense of the writers dull. Instead of looking upon such a practice as objectionable there was the almost universal tendency to condone it or even to recognize it is a virtue. The fellow who would not help a classmate in need of information in an examination when he was politely asked for it was without heart a great number felt, and lacking in the proper brotherly spirit.

No other problem of student life has given me so