XXXIV. The Honor System
The apprehension was felt by many, that, as the number
of students should increase,—with its attendant decline
in homogeneity, and its diminished opportunities for
a general intercourse,—the Honor System would develop
a tendency to languish, if not to fall entirely into a condition
of desuetude. Although it was spoken of as a system,
it was, in reality, less a system than a spirit; and for
that reason, some persons anticipated that it would undergo
a perceptible change as new circumstances arose
with their accompanying new atmosphere. But the very
fact that it was a spirit, and not a system, offered the
soundest assurance that it would be preserved.
The tone of the University was the tone of the Southern
States. The South had recently emerged from a conflict
with a record for courage and fortitude unsurpassed
in the history of any people, ancient or modern. The
chivalrous sentiment that had always flourished in its most
refined communities had been tested by the hardships of
the camp and the march, and by the supreme sacrifices of
the battlefield. Never were the high qualities of the
Southern people, men and women alike, more vigorous
than during the harsh trials that followed the war. The
impulse which had caused them, while the fighting lasted,
to throw upon the altar of their country everything that
was precious to them, continued to sustain them long
after that conflict had ended. The young men who were
admitted to the University of Virginia during the Seventh
Period, 1865–95, were the sons of parents who had
passed through the ordeal of fire; they had been reared in
homes which still valued the recollections of the old regime
as the most blessed of inheritances; and unconsciously,
from their earliest boyhood, they had learned to
revere those principles of honor and chivalry which had
been inculcated in their forefathers as the indispensable
characteristics of a gentleman. At no time since the establishment
of the Honor System at the University of
Virginia, had it ever been maintained there with such
fidelity, such jealousy, such just intolerance, as during the
first thirty years that followed the birth of the new era.
And the explanation of this fact was to be found in that
singularly fine atmosphere of manly sentiment and high
impulse which still lingered in the South, not in spite of
its misfortunes, but largely on account of those very misfortunes
themselves.
If there was a possibility that an increase in the enrolment,
would, by lessening the points of contact, weaken
the force of the Honor System, this contingency did not
at once arise, because, as the years passed, the attendance
at the University was inclined, during a long interval,
to fall off; and it was only towards the close of the
Seventh Period, 1865–95, that the annual number of
matriculates began to approximate the number admitted
anterior to the War of Secession.
That the sentiment condemning cheating at examinations
was as strong at the end as at the beginning of this
period, was demonstrated by the indignant astonishment
which was expressed by the editors of College Topics, in
1895, when they learned that one of the students, detected
in this crime, had had the effrontery to remain within the
precincts longer than twenty-four hours after his exposure.
So threatening, in consequence of this fact, became
the attitude of the other young men, that he, in a state
of unconcealed alarm for his own skin, shook the dust
of the arcades from his feet. This reprobate, being of a
pugnacious temper, had, at first, endeavored to escape
the penalty for his dishonest conduct by fighting for
every inch of ground that would enable him to stay on in
college; but the only result of this persistence was that, in
the end, he was literally drummed out of bounds by his
fellow students, who felt that they had been trifled with
in his delay in taking his departure. He was even compelled
to surrender the diplomas which he had won during
the previous year, as they were presumed to be tainted by
his subsequent rascality.
The keeper of the boarding-house where the cheating
student had lodged had imprudently advised him to defy
the hostile sentiment that had been aroused. When the
editors of College Topics were informed of this fact, they
administered to the officious counsellor the following emphatic
rebuke: "It would be well for such as he to
learn right now that any interference with their action will
not be brooked by the students." These darkly significant
words, no doubt, made that rash and very thoughtless
boarding house-keeper quite tremulous about the
knees.
How far did the Honor System go? Did it embrace
every kind of misdemeanor that might be committed by a
student? It certainly included cheating at examinations.
Did it also include cheating at a private game of cards?
There was a good deal of fine-spun metaphysical discussion
on this point. Ought students who did not play
poker to insist that a player of that game, discovered
with an ace up his sleeve by his companions at the table,
should be driven out of college? or should their condemnation
only take the form of social ostracism? The
editors of College Topics, always the exponents of the
loftiest public sentiment among the young men, declared
emphatically in April, 1894, that those of their number
who had amused themselves with the wanton destruction
of the University's electric globes should be brought to
trial by their follow-students, and compelled to leave the
precincts. The culprits, in the opinion of these editors,
were just as discredited as if they had been detected in
obtaining aid from books in an examination. The Honor
System does not appear to have been ever pressed so far
as this; but it at least created a feeling so hostile to a
young man guilty of a serious delinquency other than
cheating that it brought about his complete isolation,—
a condition that, in the end, always forced him to withdraw.
Frequently, it led to his immediate expulsion.
[35]
At the beginning of the enthusiasm aroused by athletic
sports, there was a keen apprehension that it would
have a tendency to debilitate the Honor System.
"There is an impression," said the editors of College
Topics in January, 1895, "that the rise of the athletic
spirit has been accompanied by a proportionate decline
from an ethical point of view." And why? "Because,"
they asserted, "the introduction of dirty ball has encouraged
the habit of taking the utmost advantage of an
opponent by all sorts of tricks and stratagems." It was,
however, admitted that the vices of drinking and gambling
had fallen off with the increase in the interest taken
in athletic games, and there was, in reality, no tangible
evidence that the strength of the Honor System had, in
the slightest degree, been weakened by it.
Before the close of the Seventh Priod, 1865–1895, a
few of the more prominent seats of learning in the Northern
States had adopted the Honor System, which had,
during so many years, and with so much success, formed
one of the main pillars of the social polity of the University
of Virginia. Amherst College and Wesleyan
University led the way. Princeton University followed.
As Brown University, in turning to an elective course of
studies before the War of Secession, was held out by
its president, trustees, and friends, as the pioneer, the
forerunner, in bringing about so great an innovation,—
although the University of Virginia had already been
governed by that unwritten law for a generation,—so
now the Honor System introduced at Princeton, largely,
it was reported, at the suggestion of an alumnus of the
sister Southern university, was acclaimed by that institution
as the New Princeton System, as if its adoption
there was entirely without precedent in the annals of
American colleges!
