Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/162

 "I shall never report a man again for dishonesty," an instructor old enough to have more sense, said to me not long ago.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because I reported Hanley last year, and the committee let him go."

"But there was no convincing evidence that he had cribbed," I protested.

"Perhaps not," he admitted, "but the whole affair put me into a very embarrassing position, and such a position as I don't propose to get into again soon. If my men want to crib I'll flunk them or ignore the fact."

Another class of instructors refuses to take any responsibility for the cribber because they allege that when he is caught the penalty imposed is not to their liking. One man says that he will report no more men who are dishonest because the penalty of dismissal for half a year or longer, which we ordinarily impose upon men above the freshmen year, is too severe. He prefers, he says, to handle his own cases, which means that it pleases him best to pay no attention to them, or to delude himself into the belief that there are none. Another instructor refuses to take the subject of cribbing seriously because from his point of view the penalty imposed upon the guilty ones is a joke. He would expel or behead every man guilty of the slightest deviation from the path of integrity. Thus both the conservative and the radical indirectly helps to confirm the student in his habit of irregularity.

The type of instructor who by his manner virtually gives a challenge to his students to crib regu-