# Discipline and the Derelict (collection)/The Cribber

I might as well frankly confess at the outset of this paper that I have seen a good deal of cribbing from the time I entered college to the present day, and I have been told of a great deal more than I have seen. As an undergraduate I knew men who never pretended to get through an examination without relying upon some subterfuge or trick or dishonest aid, and who would put more time twice over upon the devising of a cunning complicated crib, than it would have taken to learn by heart the whole text upon which they were preparing to be examined. I have known other men, keen-brained and studious, who could have written with high credit any reasonable examination which the instructor might have set, and yet who regularly and foolishly carried a crib to the examination and used it.
I remember asking a young sophomore once who had been caught in the act of using a crib in a final examination, and who was dismissed from college for his dishonesty, why he had done so. He was an intelligent fellow, and was easily in the highest ten per cent. of his class.
"It was a case of making ninety per cent. without the crib or ninety-five per cent. with it," he said, "and I was anxious to win preliminary honors."
His manner was as cold-blooded and matter of fact in the discussion of the situation as a careful house​wife might assume in swatting a persistent fly. I had had no experience with cribbing until I came to college. If the seekers after knowledge in the little rural community in which I lived were addicted to trickery and mental larceny I was happily never aware of it. It was something of a shock to me and rather a doubtful compliment when in my first college examination the man sitting next to me asked me for the solution of the third problem. When I hesitated not quite understanding what he really meant, he turned disgustedly to his nearest neighbor and copied the problem verbatim. I do not know that our college is worse than others in this respect; I have talked to instructors from neighboring institutions who claim that there is no cribbing in their classes, and I have visited other colleges where such careful precautions are taken that cribbing is almost a physical impossibility, but in institutions in the Middle West organized as ours is, I am of the opinion that conditions do not materially differ.
The most surprising thing to me about the man who cribs is the attitude which his fellow students assume toward him. Those of his friends who acquire their college credits in a manner similar to his own look upon him with real admiration. If he is not detected in his dishonesty, and so does not come to grief, he is regarded as a good sport and a shrewd fellow. If he is caught in his irregularity, he is looked on in somewhat the light of a martyr, whom ill-deserved misfortune has overtaken. Even the honest man, who minds his own affairs, writes his own examinations, and keeps himself absolutely within the bounds of integrity, is seldom affected by ​the dishonesty around him. He thinks no less of the cribber; the dishonest man is in no sense a pariah in his eyes. It is not his funeral, he says. If the man wants to crib, that is his business. It is a personal right, like chewing tobacco, or eating frogs' legs which no one should interfere with. If the modern undergraduate should have propounded to him the question that Cain tried to dodge in the Garden, he would unquestionably refuse to accept any responsibility as to his brother's conduct; it is up to every man to look out for himself, he would maintain. Even with girls the case is not different. I have known the most popular and the most influential girls in college to crib their way through an examination without apparent shame, who seemed to lose by the act nothing of their influence or of their popularity. If cribbing is common one does not lose caste by being guilty of it.
I used to have the feeling that the man who cribbed in an examination did so because he felt that he had to do so—he was in a corner from which he could not extricate himself without resorting to some illegitimate means—I thought it was usually a matter of a sudden overwhelming temptation to which the man yielded because the pressure was more than he could resist. Quite the contrary is usually true—nine-tenths of the people whom I have known to crib did not need to do so at all so far as passing the course in question was concerned. They cribbed because they thought it was easier, because they did not like the instructor, because other people were doing it, because they thought the examination was unfair, because they were pressed for time, because they ​thought they were being watched and they felt that it would be a good joke to outwit the proctor; and even when they were not caught, very few of them ever profited through a higher grade from the cribbing. Most men who are detected in the act of cribbing and who are facing discipline as a result aver that the time in question is the first time they have ever been guilty of the act. This may be from the fact that the man not caught the first time develops so much adroitness as never to be caught, or it may be that he has forgotten his past record.
A man when brought face to face with the facts will usually admit his guilt, especially if the facts are presented by a single individual. Most young women will at first plead innocence. The explanation lies probably in the fact that the man feels that he has less to lose by admitting guilt than does the woman, for, as things now are, a man's damaged reputation is far more easily repaired than is a woman's.
The cribber, unless he is detected, suffers very little remorse. I am familiar with the class of melodrama in fiction which pictures the young fellow guilty of crime or dishonesty racked and torn by the tortures of an accusing conscience; but in fact it is usually only when he is in doubt as to the success of his subterfuge, or when he knows that he has been detected and that public disgrace is staring him in the face, that he begins to think and to suffer, It is wrong only if you are caught, is his philosophy. He excuses himself largely on the ground that the examination is a game, like love and war, and that anything one does is fair and unobjectionable which circumvents the instructor. When you cheat an in​structor, he argues, it is in the same class of virtue as beating a corporation or evading taxes, an overt act which any one admits is to be winked at.
By cribbing, the student argues, he is simply beating the college, which stands to him as a sort of unfeeling, overbearing despot like the railroad corporation to the traveler. If on the other hand a fellow student is involved the whole situation changes. The cribber will usually suffer indefinitely rather than have a pal come to grief through his error or his carelessness or crudeness of work. In such an instance he is usually quite willing to suffer anything in order that another undergraduate may get off.
Just a few weeks ago I had before me two sophomores who had been detected cribbing in a final examination. They were equally guilty, and in accordance with our regular custom where there are no extenuating circumstances, they were dismissed. The older of the two waited after our interview was over to say to me that he felt himself more to blame than his companion. He was older, he alleged; he should have set a better example. Besides the younger man, who was by the way in no sense a personal friend of his I knew, was a promising athlete. The college could not afford to lose him. He was anxious then, he said, to bear the whole punishment of the misdeed if by any arrangement the younger boy might go free. It was a generous offer which, perhaps, showed more truly the boy's real character than his error in conduct had done, but it was one which I did not feel at liberty to accept.
Another instance, also, shows the attitude which the cribber takes towards his fellow students. Two ​juniors had been suspected of dishonesty in an examination and had been reported to me. One was without prominence in student affairs, the other the captain of an athletic team counted upon to win. An examination of the evidence showed beyond doubt that one of the two men had copied from the other, though it was not clear which one. I discussed the situation with each separately, and with apparent frankness they told me the facts. The athlete was innocent, he said. The older man confessed that he had been the dishonest one, and was dismissed. Years afterward I learned that the men had talked the matter over before coming in to see me and had agreed to lie, the man of little prominence being the willing sacrifice in order that the craven coward athlete might be saved. It makes me angry still when I think of it, distorted sense of honor though it was.
A short time ago, in order that I might better understand the student viewpoint with respect to cribbing, I prepared and sent to a selected list of four hundred undergraduate men, a questionnaire. The queries were as follows:
1. What percentage of the members of your classes do you think sometimes crib?
2. Is this percentage larger in some kinds of courses than in others, as for instance, mathematics, rhetoric, chemistry, etc., and if so, in what kinds?
3. Under some kinds of instructors than under others, and if so, under what kinds?
4. What form of cribbing is most common?
5. What seems to be the most common reason or defense given?
6. If you have ever cribbed what was the situation?
​7. If you were charged with cribbing by what kind of committee would you prefer to be heard,—a committee of older members of the faculty, a committee of younger members of the faculty chosen by the students, or a committee of students? Please state the reason of your answer.
8. Do you think it more objectionable to receive information than to give it?
9. Would you volunteer information to a committee of the faculty concerning a fellow student who to your knowledge had cribbed?
10. To a student committee?
11. Would you give information in either case if asked to do so?
12. What kind of punishment or procedure if any do you think is likely to be most effective in curbing the practice of cribbing?
The list to whom the questionnaire was sent was a carefully selected one comprising members of all classes, representatives of all organizations, and men of all types and affiliations. I explained that by cribbing I meant to include the using of text books or other written helps, the receiving of help of any sort from other students, or the giving of help of any kind to such other students. Students were not asked to sign their names to the papers returned, and it was indicated that the information obtained would not be used in any way to the detriment of individual students. A large percentage of the papers were returned, and every one, so far as I remember, seemed to answer the questions seriously and frankly. The papers were "keyed" in such a way as to make it possible to tell which came from men living in fra​ternity houses and which ones from men not so affiliated; other than this there was no mark upon the papers to identify the writers. In almost every case the fraternity man was more radical or more pessimistic than his independent college mate, a situation explainable, perhaps, from the fact that fraternity men, living in a somewhat more congested way than other men, are likely to have closer associations, to know more about what is actually going on among each other and, because of their close personal friendly relations, to be franker and more open in confessing their derelictions.
Naturally the replies to the questions varied widely in specific instances, but it was interesting to see how closely in the main the majority of the students agreed. Seventy per cent. of the men admitted that they had cribbed at one time or another, and fifteen per cent. of those who sent in replies ignored the question. Those who affirmed that they had never themselves cribbed were more optimistic with reference to the universality of the practice than were the others, though not more rigid in their suggestion as to discipline. One man said that in attempting to discover how widespread the practice of cribbing was he had made inquiry of twenty of his class-mates and friends, and that nineteen of the twenty admitted that at one time or another they had used some illegitimate method in an examination. Some of the men said they had never given the practice any consideration or attention, they had paid attention solely to their own business, had seen no one engaged in dishonest methods, and so had no opinion to offer. More than fifty per cent. of those answering, how​ever, were of the opinion that the practice of cribbing is quite general.
The majority were agreed that in courses, examinations in which require the memorization of a considerable number of dates, or formulae, or isolated facts, cribbing is more prevalent than in courses which admit more readily of the discussion of general principles. In descriptive geometry, one man said, he thought everybody cribbed. History, mathematics, some courses in economics, and chemistry, it was said, are the courses in which most dishonesty is practiced because in examinations in these courses it is easier to prepare material that can be readily and advantageously used.
It was generally agreed, also, that certain types of instructors stimulate the students to crib more than do others. Very little cribbing is done under the instructor who treats his students fairly, who seems to look upon them as honest gentlemen, and who is interested in the success and progress of those he is teaching.
"The most cribbing is done," one student wrote, "under instructors who do not play the game fairly with the class, who would rather than not ask questions on an examination which they feel sure their students can not answer. There is more cheating under inexperienced instructors who are working for a higher degree, and who feel that they must fail a certain percentage of their students in order to give the impression that they are deep and efficient."
Another man said, "The instructor who places confidence in his students gains their respect, and as a rule they treat him squarely. Students are ​proud of the fact that they have cribbed successfully under a man who is always watching for cribbers."
The following quotations, also, were interesting: "Cribbing will be carried on more under an instructor who does not get into personal touch with his students. The instructor who is human will have little trouble with cribbing." "I have heard it said that the sarcastic instructor who by his manner virtually says to his students, 'cheat if you dare, I bet I catch you,' is the one the student delights in beating at his own game." "Cribbing is most common under a very strict or a very lenient instructor." "Any instructor who is specially sarcastic or who does not deal with his students in an open and friendly way is sure to have those in his classes who will try to get through in any conceivable manner."
In reply to the question, as to the form of cribbing most common there was little agreement, the consulting of notes carried to class, looking on another student's paper, and verbal communication between students sitting crowded together being thought most common.
More than thirty per cent. of those who replied to the questionnaire held that the main excuse offered for cribbing lay in the fact that the specific examination in question was unfair and that examinations in general are in no sense an adequate test of a student's knowledge. If the instructor knows in the main what the individual student will be likely to know before he gives him the test, why, the student asks, should he give him the test at all; but in asking this question he fails to realize that unless the examination were given the student will not make the mental ​effort to gather together the body of facts and information which the instructor knows he will possess if the examination is given. In addition to the allegation that unfair examinations induce cribbing, the justification of the practice, in order of frequency presented, are fear of failing the course, ignorance of the points in question, and the fact that other people do the same thing I once heard a man claim that the reason he had never honestly scheduled his property with the tax collector was because his neighbors never did. If he scheduled his property honestly, he claimed, when his neighbors withheld a large part of their possessions, he would pay more than his just share of taxes. The cribber argues similarly: he can not afford to be honest, for when his companion cheats the honest man suffers in comparison for his honesty, and that he is not willing to do. Besides evading the responsibility for personal integrity, he argues from a false premise in taking for granted that the man who cribs by so doing increases his scholastic average. I believe it could be proved, if it were possible to get at the real facts, that the cribber very seldom profits scholastically from his trickery. The excuses which the men offer for their delinquencies, were varied, but I think no one really tried to justify himself. The excuses were all simply subterfuges to ease their consciences and in no case deceived even the men who offered them.
With reference to the tribunal before which they were to be heard if charged with cribbing, by far the larger number were in favor of a committee com posed of older members of the faculty, the reasons given being that the judgment of such a committee ​would be saner, the experience of the men broader, and that their decisions would be tempered with a finer quality of mercy. Those who preferred to be judged by the younger men were of the opinion that such men, whether students or members of the faculty, would be more lenient and, because they were still concerned with undergraduate problems or were so slightly removed from them, would understand and sympathize more fully with the student in trouble than would the older man. So far as actual justice was concerned they were nearly all convinced that the older men would the more completely attain this end in their decisions, but they thought the guilty would get off with a lighter penalty the younger the judges were. This last conclusion was the more interesting to me in view of the fact that through my personal associations with various men on disciplinary committees over a period of several years, I have found almost invariably that the undergraduate and the younger member of the faculty is likely to be harsher and more severe in his judgments of men found guilty of dishonesty when it is put'up to them to impose a penalty than is the older and more experienced man.
Seventy per cent. of those answering the questions thought it more objectionable to receive help than to give it, though the arguments advanced to justify this point of view were few and frail. Seven per cent. did not answer the question. One man asserted that it was impossible to refuse to give help when asked without being more of a martyr to honorable ideals than most college men are willing to be. "Under our present moral code," another man says, "a ​man who is asked for aid has to run the risk of popular dislike if he refuses to give it. This a student does not feel like taking upon himself." On the other side a third student says, "There is no difference between receiving and giving aid. If I give opium to a dope fiend, I am no better than he; if I am a servant and give a burglar the key to my employer's house, I am no better than the burglar; if I supply a fellow student with information to copy, I am as bad as he is, because I help him to be dishonest."
There was little difference expressed by the men in their willingness to volunteer information with reference to cribbing, whether the committee in charge of discipline were composed of students or members of the faculty. In each case about eighty-five per cent. of the men said they would not volunteer information under any circumstances, three per cent. did not answer the question, and the remainder were willing to give information if the conditions under which it were given were made sufficiently innocuous. There was a pretty general lack of feeling of responsibility suggested by the replies The condition of affairs was possibly to be regretted, they admitted, but when at the end of the semester a student is pushed into a corner by a heartless instructor who endangers his intellectual life, what is to be done? It is hardly to be thought of that the suffering undergraduate should be still further set upon by his classmates in an attempt to beat the truth out of him, but rather, if opportunity is afforded, that they should run to his assistance. So strongly are some of the illogical arguments presented that one is al​most persuaded for the moment that not only is honesty not the best policy, but that in reality it is no policy at all.
The most frequently emphasized suggestion for improving conditions was to do away with final examinations entirely and depend upon weekly quizzes, or to make the questions asked so general as to render a crib useless or unnecessary. In making these suggestions the writers ignored the fact that there is quite as much cribbing done on daily work and weekly quizzes as there is on final examinations, and that by laying the emphasis upon these methods of testing a student's work they simply shift the danger point or get from the frying pan into the fire. The honor system, more careful proctoring, and the separation of students so widely at examination time that communication is practically impossible were also suggested as methods of cutting down cribbing, though the opinion was expressed by many that no method could be devised which would wholly banish the practice. Expulsion, suspension, failure of the course, public confession, and reprimand, loss of general college credit, and the giving of the widest publicity to the offense and the offender were among the remedies suggested for reducing the amount of cribbing. Perhaps one of the most sensible suggestions was that students known to be guilty of cribbing should be permanently barred from participation in college activities. From my experience with students and from my knowledge of the importance which they attribute to participation in college activities, I am sure that many a student would prefer to ​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 ​much concern as the problem of cribbing and the cribber. I believe sincerely, as one young fellow said, that if the freshman entering college could come into an atmosphere where cribbing was not tolerated and where the man who was seen to crib or was known to crib lost caste and was looked upon with disfavor he would be given a respect for truth and honesty which would be of incalculable value to him throughout life. If a man could live for four years among students who looked down upon dishonesty—of every sort, the experience and the training would be of as great value to him as anything the college could teach him.
The man who cribs is lacking a true sense of honesty, and the companion who helps him is impelled by a false sense of honor. Leaving out of consideration the questions of the morality of the practice, which is perhaps the main question, but which unfortunately will be likely last to appeal to the undergraduate, the question of expediency comes in. By cribbing the student weakens himself, robs himself of training, lessens his self-reliance, and so reduces the probability of his success. The cribber comes in most cases not to depend upon his own strength and judgment. When he strikes a hard problem, when he gets into a corner, when he meets intellectual difficulty, his courage fails him, and he calls at once lustily for help. And it is the self-reliant man, who can marshall all his powers and be sure of them, not the man who is always looking for help, who is wanted in every business. If a student in mathematics allows some one to work his home problems for him and then cribs from his neighbor in the final examina​tion, what does he expect to do after he leaves college when the questions which involve such mathematical computations are before him for solution? There very likely will be no one to work them out for him and no friendly neighbor engaged with the same difficulties from whom he may crib. He has followed a practice in college which has left him helpless after he is out.
A young chemist whom I once knew, whose college work required the analysis of a rather large number of unknowns, by chance happened upon the table of results which had been worked out by the instructor and by skillfully changing his own results slightly so that they might be within the percentage of variation and error allowed, was able to meet the requirements of the course without really going through any of the work. He was detected and dismissed, but even if he had been clever enough to carry out his intentions he would ultimately have been the loser, because he would have lacked the training and the experience to pursue the calling for which he was preparing. The cribber does not think of the future; he is concerned wholly with the present safety of his skin.
"But one has to get through some way," a cribber said to me by way of excuse for the dereliction in which he had been detected.
"How about the influence of this upon your general character?" I asked.
"You don't think that because I wasn't square on this measley little examination I would lie or steal or cheat my employer, do you?"
"Why, yes," I replied; "I think you are much ​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 ​even while they are warning us against the dangers of it, and we are stimulated to try it ourselves, rather than restrained by their warnings."
The cribber, if he is successful, is likely to be a grafter. Having managed to get something for nothing, or to suppose that he has done so in his intellectual relationshpis, he is not satisfied until he takes a hand in activities, and when he gets into activities he is not there for his health alone, nor for the public recognition, or honor which may accrue. He is out for the loot. It is easy for him to argue that since he is entitled to some compensation for the services, real or imagined, which he has performed, it is quite unobjectionable for him to pay himself, since the red tape to be unwound, if he should seek remuneration in the regular way, is often tiresomely complicated, and the possibility of his getting anything at all is distressingly remote. He is an advocate of efficiency and uses a short-cut method by appropriating what he considers himself entitled to and salves his conscience, if it gives any indication of activity, by saying that they all do it anyway, and if he doesn't take the money some one else will.
All this is a sad preparation for good citizenship. If a young man can be depended upon to do the honest thing only when it is easy, only when all other men are known to be honest, only when it is to his personal and financial advantage to be so, he is little fitted for responsibility and service, and yet such conditions are quite in accord with the doctrines of the man who cribs.
I was in conversation, not long ago, with a business man who held a position of the greatest promi​nence and trust in one of the largest corporations of the Middle West. He confessed to me that he had had little education and training as a boy before he became a part of the business. What he knew he had acquired through practical experience, through hard knocks, through willingness to work, and what he had accomplished he had done without influence or pull.
"How does it come, then," I asked, "that you have been placed in so prominent a position at so early an age?" for he was still a comparatively young man.
"There is but one reason," he replied. "I have a single virtue. I proved myself to the company by many tests to be absolutely honest. It is that quality which gave me my position, and it is through that quality that I hold it." I told the story later to a cribber.
There is one solution, it seems to me, to the difficulty, one cure for the evil of cribbing,—the creation of a strong healthy student sentiment against it. Rigid discipline will help, but it will not wipe out the evil. Whatever discipline is enforced must appeal to the good judgment of the better class of students as just. Whenever in the minds of the body of undergraduates the character of the discipline enforced by the faculty seems cruel or over-severe, one of the main purposes of discipline, the deterring of misdeeds, is lost; for the student who is thought to have been disciplined too severely becomes at once, in the minds of his friends and companions, a martyr to be sympathized with and pitied and made a hero of. When such a condition arises the evil is rather likely to increase than to lessen.
​The evil of cribbing would be far more easily controlled and the cribber more rapidly eliminated if the members of the faculty were as a whole alert and helpful. In fact many of them are indifferent, and many more are asleep. They are in most cases, I am sorry to say, as indifferent to the situation as is the undergraduate himself.
"If my students want to crib in my classes," I often hear an instructor say, "they may; it isn't up to me to act as a spy and a policeman over them. If they do crib, I should rather not see them, and even when I might be led to suspect that they were doing so, I prefer to think well of them, and to treat them as if they were gentlemen." And no one better than the student knows exactly how the individual instructor feels about these matters, and no one thing is more potent in helping to confirm him in the habit of cribbing than this same indifference on the part of his instructors.
"You can't tell me that 'Bobby' doesn't know about that cribbing that goes on in his class," a junior said. "He's too sly a dog not to get onto a practice that is as open as cribbing in his class. He doesn't want the trouble or the unpopularity that would result if he reported the men, and so he prefers not to see what is going on." But in refusing to see it he lost the respect even of those who were cribbing under him, and indirectly encouraged one of the most vicious practices in college. A good many members of the faculty feel that their honor has been compromised when they report a man suspected of cribbing and those in charge of disciplinary matters do not find him guilty.
​"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​larly helps in the practice. When you tell a student that you are so clever that you will be quite willing to have him fool you if he can, you have given him a dare, and his brain at once begins to work in a determination to outwit you. The instructor in whose classes there are more cribbers than in any other I know is the one who alleges that he takes nobody's word, and who announces that if any undergraduate cribs in his class he will find it necessary to get up pretty early in the morning. If instructors would be less indifferent, if they would use more common sense, and if they would report for discipline all students who are detected cribbing, the number of cribbers would be materially lessened.
The cribber could be discouraged if more precautions were taken in the conduct of examinations. No one can deny that, when we take into consideration what hangs upon the result of the test, the temptation to dishonesty in final examinations is not small. No faculty, therefore, it seems to me, can possibly justify itself until it makes the conditions under which examinations are given as thoroughly as possible conducive to honesty. With a little care in any institution the student undergoing examination could be so situated that even if it were not impossible for him to cheat, it would at least be difficult. As it is now in many institutions, the undergraduates at examination time are so crowded together that it is almost impossible for them to be honest if they desire to be. Students using the same questions are sitting elbow to elbow. If they look around it is easy to see what the man on each side and in front of them is writing, and communication by word of mouth or by ​means of notes passed is as easy and free as talk at an afternoon tea. The instructor usually looks on indifferently, engaged in reading the newspaper or in the solution of some of his own intellectual or domestice difficulties, or he quite as likely strolls out of the room entirely to do an errand for his wife, or to get a breath of air for his health. There is no adequate supervision, no adequate proctoring. The students are not on their honor, and they know they are not, and even if the instructor announced that they were, they would seldom accept the announcement as authentic since it had been made without discussion with them and without their consent.
The honor system would help, but it would be worse than useless unless it were backed strongly by student sentiment. If three-fourths of the student body were of the opinion that the practice of cribbing is wronz, that it should go, and that they are not only willing not to crib themselves but that they will report every man who is known to crib, the practice would soon be upon its last legs. It is not so difficult to interest a considerable number of students to the extent that they will agree to honesty of procedure themselves, but it is altogether another matter when it comes to their assuming responsibility for the conduct of others. "I would myself agree not to crib," students say to me over and over again, "but I would not report a man whom I saw crib or even talk to him about the matter." But this, it seems to me, is the logical solution of the whole matter—student sentiment and student responsibility. So long as cribbing is an affair between faculty and students it may be ameliorated, but it will never be fully cured. It ​is only when the student loses favor or standing or caste with his mates through dishonesty that he will take the matter of cribbing seriously. A student can stand anything else better than to be distrusted or disliked by his own undergraduate associates.
Not long ago we had in control of our student paper one who could find little to approve of in our university organization and control. Everything was wrong: the system of teaching, the development of research, the construction of buildings, the supervision of student activities, the general attitude and composition of the faculty, were all hopelessly and irrevocably wrong. He stirred a good deal of feeling among the authorities, he irritated and offended scores of our faculty, but the more opposition he aroused the better he liked it, for it gave him the feeling of a reformer. He had a considerable following of undergraduate sympathizers, he won the approval of a certain number of instructors who were glad to have him voice the sentiments that they might have been afraid themselves to utter, and he did not care a picayune what the administration thought of him. But one day he entered upon another field. Delighted with his success as a stirrer up of trouble among the faculty, he began a heavy onslaught upon a disreputable student practice. He was somewhat surprised on the day following the appearance of his editorial to find that his old friends were not so cordial; his former acquaintances looked at him coldly as they passed him or crossed to the other side of the street to avoid meeting him; the cold shoulder was given him wherever he went. It was all right to criticize the faculty; the criticism of their own personal ​derelictions and evasions of duty did not take so kindly with his undergraduate friends. He never wrote another editorial on the tabooed subject, for he could not stand the unpopularity which such writing brought him; he did not have the courage to go against public sentiment as expressed by his associates.
So cribbing and the cribber will go when the cribber losing social standing, is not looked upon with favor, is not regarded as a gentleman. So long as undergraduate sentiment toward this sort of dishonesty is indifferent or tends to condone it, the practice will continue. General student sentiment against the man who practices dishonesty in his college work would cause him to disappear over night.