Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/71

 irregular and hidden processes which he hesitates to discuss. We are, however, in most of our colleges at least, working under a different system, looking at the business of undergraduate affairs from a different viewpoint, and shall have to take things as I find them.

If I may answer my own question as to what really—constitutes graft in college I should say that it is receiving payment or profit without having the proper authority or sanction from those who actually pay the money or are responsible for its disposal; or without having rendered an equivalent service If the junior class votes to give fobs to the men who were in charge of the Prom, their acceptance of such a gift under this definition cannot be considered as graft because the class has a right to distribute its own money. If, however, the committee votes itself fobs without the approval or consent of the class, and buys them out of the proceeds of the dance, the case is different. The man who was in charge of the senior invitations, for example, if he should have accepted one hundred dollars might quite legitimately have been accused of graft, for no matter under what felicitous name the transfer of currency might have taken place, no one is foolish enough to think that any one was really paying this amount excepting those who are paying for the invitations and they are doing so without their knowledge or consent. The firm that offered such a bonus made itself safe by adding an equal or a larger amount to the regular selling price of the goods. The fellow who helped to land the contract with the firm that had previously done a second class business with him, in addition