1 82 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ability is limited, but who is conspicuous in athletics and personally 

 popular, yields to temptation in the examination room, or otherwise 

 resorts to fraud in order to win scholastic credit. He is shielded by 

 the members of his fraternity, and their influence is such as to prevent 

 his indictment before the college court even if his offense is repeated 

 several times. At last he is caught by some professor through internal 

 evidence in an examination paper. He denies his guilt and his friends 

 join him in the effort to make conviction impossible. The evidence is 

 overwhelming and he must go. The loss of a leader on the athletic 

 field is bewailed as a calamity to the athletic interests of the college, 

 and a stay is secured on some technicality by which the dishonest 

 athlete is retained until the close of the football or baseball season. 

 He then goes, not in disgrace, but with every manifestation of regret 

 on the part of admiring friends. Eesentment is felt and openly ex- 

 pressed against the tactless professor whose abnormal conscience has 

 made him expose the athlete's moral weakness. Of what importance 

 is scholastic accuracy in comparison with victory in athletics? Why 

 can not professors exercise more common sense and overlook the short- 

 comings of those whose athletic success advertises the college among 

 young men more in one day than the professors can do in a year? 

 Is college spirit to be disregarded in deference to out-of-date aphorisms 

 about telling the truth ? Has a student no right of mental reservation 

 in signing an examination pledge when he has been unselfishly giving 

 to athletics most of the time needed to prepare for examination? It 

 is all well enough to insist upon the honor system when competing for 

 honors, but why not give a chance to the fellow who wants merely to 

 stay in college, to shine in young society and to help support all college 

 enterprises ? 



The dominance of athletics as a factor in college life constitutes 

 to-day one of the most serious obstacles to the maintenance of the 

 honor system in colleges. The difficulty of maintaining clean athletics 

 is notorious. So strenuous is the demand for victory that honor must 

 go if it is accompanied with the clanger of defeat. The Jesuitic claim 

 that the end justifies the means is continually made under various 

 forms of disguise, and its reacting influence on the ethics of the class- 

 room is inevitable. In an institution where the honor system is in 

 force the football team is made up of young men whose examination 

 pledges are respected. But in an intercollegiate match this team is 

 called upon to meet competitors from a distance, and the code of ethics 

 is changed to provide for the trickery and disguised professionalism 

 in which the strangers are known to indulge. The honor system is 

 reserved for application at home, but elsewhere the athletic organism 

 must adapt itself to its environment. Cheating becomes allowable 

 because it has been found impossible to exclude it from athletic con- 

 tests. If the devil must be fought it is soon agreed that he shall be 



