Cribbing in College Examinations.

During the past summer, the New York Evening Post published a series of very interesting letters on the subject of college cribbing. These letters have now been collected and republished in a pamphlet entitled "The Ethics of the marking System." They are from college men of all descriptions, - graduates, undergraduates, professors, and students. They all agree that a great amount of cribbing is practised in nearly every American college. One writer even affirms that 75 per cent. of the college graduates owe their degree in part to this system of outside help in the examination room. This writer, however, is one of the most extreme, and does not receive general support. Allowing, however, for all exaggerations, it must be confessed that this questionable practice is prevalent to a far greater extent than many realize. As anything to be dishonest must arise from some dishonest motive, it is hardly fair to charge every student with dishonesty who finds himself guilty of cribbing. Probably but very few of the cribbing class hope thereby to obtain an unfair advantage over their classmates. College honor would surely condemn a man who cribs so as to obtain a scholarship, or to gain a position on the Phi Beta Kappa. Such a motive would mark a man in the estimation of everyone, a thief and hypocrite. Cribbing cannot be prevalent among men who desire to become scholars. The very earnestness of their efforts, and the nobility of their ambition would war against such methods.

The cribbers as a class are found among those who are seeking the minimum mark requisite for passing. They reason that they are gaining no false glory, and are depriving no one of deserved prizes, by a few tricks which are regarded as shrewd rather than dishonest. They take no pains to conceal their method of gaining forty or fifty per cent., and even boast among their companions, of the cunning way in which they hood-winked the proctor.

While a state of feeling exists at colleges, that will stamp this practice under the above conditions as respectable, there is no remedy. Volumes of mandates from faculties, armies of proctors will not stop it, if students themselves do not come to the rescue. Indeed, severe measures and elaborate plans for watching the students in examination rooms will only increase the evil by causing a wider breach between examiners and the examined. When college authorities realize that the true student is working for his own good, is his own agent in a life work, and try to urge him on by inciting nobler ambitions, and do not regard him as a machine which has no motive power of its own, but must be watched and managed, then the evils attending college discipline will very readily disappear. The true way in which to meet this problem is to urge students to look at the subject in a clearer light, for students themselves to raise the student sentiment and discourage cribbing as unfair and unprofitable. Let the proctors be removed from examination rooms, make every man responsible to himself and college for honesty in examinations, let college sentiment be strongly impressed on everyone as to what honesty means, and then every cribber will feel that he is out of place, and the coolness with which he will meet, will lead him to think soberly of what he is doing.