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In that part of the President's Report devoted to the College, Dean Briggs discusses in a very interesting manner dishonesty in written work and the efforts of the Administrative Board to suppress it. The Dean points out the failure of the former ruling of the Board concerning the mere separation from the University of students who hand in written work not their own, and enumerates the reasons which led up to the adoption of the new rule of publicly posting the names of such offenders.
The Dean states the case the case for the student who has cribbed with the utmost fairness. It is impossible to deny that the action of the board in posting the names of these culprits is, in the strictest sense, justifiable. It is vain to try to find excuses for such conduct. But, nevertheless, we believe that the punishment is too harsh. A man can never outgrow the stigma attached to his name for an act of dishonesty widely known. However hard he may try to be upright in after life, however far removed from his true character deceit may be, this one heedless act will expose him to the scorn of all the world and will prevent his becoming a useful man. Finding no man who trusts him, his career is doomed in advance to failure. The publishing of his name has branded him for life.
For the rogue pure and simple such a punishment is deserved. But for the man who is honest at heart, a good fellow in every way, who, by the accumulation of work or the natural inability to write a theme, succumbs to the temptation of copying, the punishment is too severe. The Administrative Board should weigh a man's case with the utmost care before proceeding to this extreme remedy. A distinction should be made between the purely vicious man and the weak man, naturally honest, who has succumbed to a powerful temptation.
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