The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-10

distinctly dishonorable, however, when
 used to make a pretense of high scilol-
 arship. The moral standard sould
 seem to be that a man must play fair
 with his fellows and not sail under false
 colors and build up an undeserved repu-
 tation, while deceptive strategy is tol-
 erable in dealing with the authorities.
 4 suggestion of the same standard oc-
 CUTS in recent incident at one of the
 New England colleges where self-gov-
 ernment prevails. The faculty handed
 down to the students, who were the cor
 porate body of the Phi Beta Kappa. the
 list of men whose standing entitled
 them to admission to that society. Or dinarily the election is mere form. In
 this case, however, the students refused
 to elect one of the number, for the req son that he had been a notorious
 "cribber," and they did not think it right to give an honor which meant
 high scholarship to one whose scholar
 ship was known to all his companions to be sham. Yet so far as his ordin- ary relations went, this student was in
 good standing among his classmates.
 Even those who rejected his claims held OuL LIlC pIOIIIIoC LSldL lIG tllOGE1t
 at the second drawing in the following
 year, if he would thenceforth earn his high marks honestly, and he would probably have won the honors had not | an unwise champion-and, curiously enough, member of the faculty-made public scandal of the matter by in- sisting that the "cribber" be accepted
 on his marks, notwithstanding their
 confessed dishonesty.
 A West Point cadet until recently
 would have taken pleasure in breaking
 rules against hazing, but would have
 cut his dearest friend if that friend had failed, through favoritism, to report him for any dereliction in the line of
 military duty. That was his conven-
 tional code. Undoubtedly "cribbing'' is serious evil, and the student code | ought to forbid it as in a high degree
 mean and dishonorable. In some schools it is so regarded, and we think that in that respect conditions are improving, just as they are undoubtedly improving with regard to student standards of sobriety and moral cleanliness. Crib ] ping" certainly should not be tolerated, | and perhaps teachers give too much
 leeway to boys, trusting to the honor of uniformed natures, which easily adopt the bad standards of stronger persons about them. The "cribber" may be an essentially mean and dishonora- ble boy, or may simply be acting with | in the limits of what he foolishly re- gards as a permissible code.
 The discovery of wholesale "crib- hi1cP S thorAfnpn Inap
 mean that community of boys are lost
 to all sense of right and decency. It
 may mean that their code is wrong,
 their, community standard low. That fault comes back to the door of the | school itself. The public sentiment of | a school, the character of the ideals | which students absorb, is as important as the character of the teaching. It
 seems as if putting boys on their honor
 ought to make them fair and straight forward in the matter Of recitation and examination, just as it has led them to discontinue the rowdyism which 30 years ago was a student institution. Probably 1t has to some extent had that effect Perhaps, on the other hand, too
 much trust has been placed in boys | who have not had proper preliminary | discipline. A senese of honor can be
 appealed to when it is firmly establish ed, but it needs to be established first.
 It is not entirely reasonable to turn boys out to make their own moral standards with temptations to wrong and no compulsion to start them right, and then expect good results. Any boys character Is severely tried when he is first thrown from home into a
 large school community, and there is
 some danger that the lf-governnent
 idea will lead to his being put on his
 own resources and treated as a man when he is at the most critically im-
 questionable stage of childhood.-New York Tribune,