Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/182

 178 may be the gains that we have made otherwise, the obligation to avoid cheating in the college examination room was certainly more insisted upon by southern students prior to the civil war than it is to-day in the country at large. Custom and tradition had established a standard that every son of a gentleman felt it his privilege and duty to maintain. To violate this unwritten law was perilous for the young man whose home training had been defective. The temptation to cheat might be strong, but to incur the contempt of his fellow students was a risk that could not be lightly undertaken.

The firm establishment of such a code of college honor at the south was undoubtedly an outcome and manifestation of the extreme conservatism characteristic of that section during the period when communication with other parts of the world was very limited. It antedates the railroad and telegraph. Travel was restricted, and local customs were correspondingly fixed. Similar restriction existed, perhaps to a less extent, at the north; but at the south the institution of slavery had established class distinctions in society which were more sharply defined than was possible where the population was almost confined to a single race. The southern college was completely dominated by a single social class. The upheaval and confusion, the impoverishment and chaos due to political destruction and reconstruction, were not sufficient to extinguish at once the college traditions established by an aristocracy that retained its pride after its wealth had been annihilated. The honor system was cherished as a heritage to be proud of, one that was inseparably linked with the traditions of the lost cause.

Forty years have not been enough to efface the influence of these college traditions at the south. At the north they had never been established. This statement does not imply that the ethical code customarily in force among northern students was inferior to that at the south. It means that certain actions were forbidden by student opinion in the one section and deemed permissible by student opinion in the other, such opinion being in each case determined chiefly by local precedent. Political fealty and church affiliation are well known to be determined more frequently by prescription rather than by argument. It would be remarkable if student opinion were more judicial. The differences of opinion between a democrat by inheritance and a republican by inheritance are certainly no greater than between southern and northern students in their traditional views about the honor system. Neither side has a monopoly of virtue.

The present writer was reared amid influences where the honor system was dominant, receiving his baccalaureate degree in South Carolina. During college days on one occasion he took part in a mass meeting of students held for the investigation of a supposed breach of the honor system. The questions to be used in a written