HONOR AMONG UNDERGRADUATES

One of the strangest of the many strange conditions at Harvard is the slack attitude of the ordinary undergraduate toward cribbing in outside written work. Public sentiment condemns cheating in examinations or in the classroom; it does not condemn the copying of reports, theses etc. Men are continually doing such copying to a greater or less degree, and they escape (just as in a noted case of the kind within the last year or two) not only punishment by the authorities, but all censure from friends who would be quick to frown upon cheating in other forms. Public opinion alone can deal with this practice and can reduce it to a very small minimum, just as it has reduced cheating in examinations; to arouse public opinion in regard to the matter, several fundamental conceptions must be impressed on the minds of undergraduates. The first of these is that they are on their honor, as far as outside work is concerned, quite as much as though they had signed a written pledge, for on some such tacit understanding all our work in Cambridge is necessarily based. There is much annual insistence that outside work should be original, but that it is a matter of honor, quite as much as under a recognized honor system, and that strict adherence to the understanding is a necessary preliminary to even the consideration of an Honor system here, as at Princeton, are ideas which apparently few undergraduates grasp. A great step toward the elimination of cheating in outside work would be taken if undergraduates were brought to the realization that they are tacitly pledged, as gentlemen, to do that work honorably.