"Cribbing" a Crime.

All friends of "Fair Harvard" - all manly and honorable men amongst the undergraduates - and such one is fain to believe form the great majority, must rejoice at the high tone which has characterized the much greater part of the communications which have appeared in the columns of the CRIMSON during the recent discussion of "cribbing." One late writer indeed seems to be of opinion that not a few men who are recognized as manly and honorable in their principles and conduct in all other matters, yet regard this as a venial one, not to be judged and condemned by the same rule of honor and justice, as the offences of falsehood and cheating are and must ever be regarded in all the conduct and dealings of private life and of business among men - especially among "gentlemen" as we all claim, and ought, to be. All must agree with the correspondent, J. M. M. (in CRIMSON of 9th) that the zeal with which the discussion has been taken up indicates "an earnest desire on the part of many students to rid college life of all underhanded methods and thereby render impossible the slurs cast upon us by outsiders, and to place the college student in his true position, that of a conscientious seeker after an education that has meaning in it"; and we also endorse his assertion that "this agitation does not indicate, as some public papers have inferred, that cribbing is present in an alarming degree at Harvard." That "the manliness evident in all departments of college life and the maturity of Harvard men are strong evidences that the vast majority of students would utterly scorn to make use of unfair means to gain an end which is valuable only so far as it is genuine." That this practice, however, which is both "conduct unbecoming a gentleman" and a crime in no degree of less guilt that lying or cheating to gain profit or to defraud another of his property, does prevail to a certain extent in Harvard, as well as in other colleges, cannot be denied, and it is meaner than the acts of a swindler, in proportion as it is not amenable to the laws of the police courts.

It must be put down and exterminated by the public and social opinion of undergraduates as men and gentlemen, determined to maintain free of spot or blemish their own honor and that of their "alma mater."

The Rev. E. E. Hale in a recent letter on the "prayer petition" question, against the tone and tenor of some parts of which one was compelled to protest, dwelt strongly on the fact that "Harvard" expects her sons to be "gentlemen" - not to be guilty of dishonest or dishonorable acts. Harvard men surely do not need, as a body of students, to be reminded of that fact, though the writer is to be thanked for his manliness in boldly stating it.

The president and the authorities of the university have now for several years evinced an increasing desire to rely less upon rigid rules and more upon undergraduate good feeling and good sense in all matters pertaining to the good character of the undergraduates and that of the university. Let Harvard men, one and all, prove their worthiness of this confidence by combining to put the law of social contempt and condemnation upon a practice, which has more than once been eagerly caught up by those jealous of the increasing reputation of Harvard to vent their spleen against the university. All would doubtless be indignant were the question made that there is a lower standard of manly honor and truth at Harvard, than at Oxford and Cambridge in England. Yet, unless this practice of "cribbing" or anything at all approaching to it, is promptly crushed out, Harvard will be justly liable to that offensive charge. It is a well known fact that, for a time extending far back of the present or previous generation, any student guilty of this mean and criminal act in the great English universities, has not only been subject to dismissal by the authorities, but has been "dropped," or in the English phrase, "put into Coventry" by his friends. But very few cases have occurred in a very long time, but those few have afforded stern and sad lessons in lives blighted by this unmanly dishonesty at college, and the social condemnation with which it was visited. One of the most successful of Canon Farrar's works - a novel that rivalled "Tom Brown at Oxford" - drew its interest and power from one of those cases, and did much to confirm the manly, public opinion of the students of Cambridge on the subject.