Page:Discipline and the Derelict (1921).pdf/32

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

to deal with those students, I should expel every one of them, but when later I saw that my son had been caught, I said, 'Why, poor Victor, he is a good boy. They surely will not punish Victor.'" He brought every sort of influence to bear upon us, and even tried to persuade his son to falsify as to the facts; but Victor was guilty, and had to go. The disciplining of the parents and friends of students is a far more difficult and trying task than meting out justice to undergraduates, but it comes in as a part of the day's work.

It has never seemed wise to me to convict a student of dishonesty or of any other misdemeanor wholly upon circumstantial evidence, no matter how complete or convincing the evidence may have been. If it has been done we have usually lived to regret it. I should rather let a guilty man go than to convict an innocent one. Not long ago we had reported from one of the courses in civil engineering a case of alleged cribbing. The young fellow accused denied all guilt and did so in such a straightforward way that I was convinced he was telling the truth. He had used in one of his answers, and had used it incorrectly, a table so long and so complicated that it seemed quite impossible that he could have obtained it anywhere excepting by consulting a book. The instructor in the course felt that it was inconceivable that a man before going to a quiz could commit to memory such a long list of figures. There were six columns, twelve items in a column, and seven figures in each item—a total of five hundred and four digits to be remembered in order. We deliberated a long time; the student's previous record had not been good, and