Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/158

 more likely to do so. If you are tricky and shifty and dishonest with one man, even if he happens to be only your instructor, the chances are that you will find it more difficult to be entirely above board with other men even though the relationship which you stand in to them is a different one."

The cribber is, then, not quite so safe a man to trust, his principles of integrity are not so solidly grounded, his standards of honesty are somewhat more flexible; he does not quite ring true. He would pick up a needed umbrella with fewer compunctions of conscience than others of his mates; he would repay a small loan with more reluctance; he would borrow your clothing, or your stationery, or your stamps with less elaborate ceremonies than the really honest man and would be among the last to return them. He has a treacherous memory with reference to other things than dates and formulae and details. The irregularity of which he is guilty is in many cases, I am quite willing to admit, a venial one, but it leaves his character a little soiled. The lowering influence, also, which such an act on the part of an upper-classman or of a leading man in college has upon a student just entering is incalculable.

"How can you expect us to be honest?" a freshman asked me last year. "It is true the upper-classmen in our house warn us constantly against cribbing, but it is not because they feel that it is wrong. They simply think that we are not yet wise and clever enough to get by with it; they are afraid we shall be caught and that they will be annoyed by the disgrace of the exposure. We know all the time that they crib