PAGE FOUR lablished Twesday through Sat relay mornings staring the University year. the Daily Collegian is a student operated newspaper. Entered so aecuad-clan matter Jab . 5. 1534 at Ms Stat. College. Pa. Post 011ie* ander Ow act ar Nardi 2. 1515 MIKE PEINSILBER, Editor MIKE ►TILLER. Associate Editor STAFF THIS ISSUE: Night Editor, Evie Onsa; Copy Editors, Sue Conklin, Rog Alexander; Assist ants, Thom Shiels, Joe Boehret, Joe Cheddar, Barb Martino, Jane Klein. Something Else We Can Do About Cheating Twelve thousand students are interested enough in a degree to come to State College every fall, but unfortunately and probably naturally, all 12,000 of them cannot be expect ed to want to learn. A diploma will help them get a job, but an honestly gotten diploma has little more apparent value to many of them than one stolen from a set of crib notes. So, students cheat. This, also may be natural. but it is hardly desirable unless the school's rating can stand an academic jolt. It's a common belief that the size of Penn State and the fact that it is a state university are responsible for the high degree of cheating. "The school's too big," ls the most frequent reason student give when they say, never work here" and "Some students are always going to cheat." But this pessimistic thinking is not valid. The University teaches calculus. Some people learn it and others do not. The University does not teach honesty. If it did, some people would learn it and others would not, but this is not reason enough to abandon efforts to install some kind of course in honesty? In an article for the April, 1956 McCall's Elizabeth Pope said a poll conducted by New Jersey's Fairleigh Dickinson College among 3500 students in 40 high schools and colleges showed less than a third of the students regard ed cheating as an act of delinquency. People making the study were confronted with com ments like, "How else are you supposed to get ahead?" and "It's okay if you get away with it," and "It can't be so bad when everyone I know does it." Mrs. Pope elaborated upon the many reasons why students cheat, other than that they could see little harm in it. She mentioned home pres sure and average requirements for graduate school. But there is no sense going into these causes since the University can do little to cor rect them. Parents will always want their chil dren to do well in class: there will probably always be some conflict because of it, but the University's concern is to educate students and not appease mothers and fathers. The University must be equipped to educate its students to be honest right along with edu cating them to be informed. Its methods must be so geared as to reach all students regardless Kneecaps: Naughty? Bermuda shorts are respectable on the ground floor of the HUB. But they're indecent and un lawful on the first and second floors. Isn't that amazing? Isn't it startling that in 1956. 36 years after the adoption of the wom an's suffrage amendment and the same year that women own some 80 per cent of the nation's capi tal wealth, Penn State's coeds have to battle for the right to wear Ber muda shorts on the golf course or above the ground level of a build ing constructed for stu dent recreation? Isn't it a sorry corn mentary that these ar chaic, Victorian age rules on the books? Isn't it silly that Penn State's Women's Student Government Association has to concern itself with where Bermuda shorts shall and shall not be worn' Isn't it paradoxical that in sociology classes in Sparks we learn that only society itself can dictate its folkways while in Old Main we deny this? In fact. isn't it all conduct detrimental to the good sense of the student body? What you should know about— SENIOR BALL Music by Billy Butterfield , Time: FRIDAY, MAY 4; 9-1 Price: $5.00 per Couple Dress: Semi-Formal Ask her now to SENIOR BALL May 4 011 r BAB eatirgian 5.«..... a• THE FREE LANCE. est 1861 , - . - ... • ."' • 1- * Nti" • . • Shocking? —The Editor Spring arrived So Did Our 'NEW' CARD ASSORTMENT Want a card (greeting, get well, congrats) that's different? Want 01/1114h to say something special to someone. Well, our new selec *ol • tion gives jou the chance to vc e Akio; , P.S. Also remember to get your Mother's Day cards early while there's still a good supply. 0 0 TREASURE HOUSE (The Store With "The" Window) 114 E DAILY COLLEGIAN. STATE COLLEGE. PENNSYLVANIA ROGER VOGELSINGER. Badness btanaett of their pre-college cheating habits, their home background, and their "set" ways. Regardless of the form a future honor system might take or the scope it might eventually take in, concrete plans must be made now to change student attitude and pave the way for honesty at the University. In a school the size of Penn State, endoctri nation certainly presents a problem. The tools of implementation are many. but the most prac tical seems to be the utilization of advisors for the task. Of course, the relationship between advisor and advisee varies from curricula to curricula, but he usually knows his advisees by name by the end of their freshman year and should enjoy a better level of communica tion among them than he does among the stu dents in his classes in general. For this reason and due to the fact that he is in a position to gain the student's respect as a leader in the student's field or profession, he is the person to introduce the student to a system of academic honesty. Naturally the advisor will have to undergo a period of training before he is equipped to instruct his students, so this is where the al ready established Academic Honesty Commit tee can be usefuL Since these committeemen are supposed to be familiar with honesty poli cies and principles effective at other schools. they should be in a position to set standards of procedure for the advisor to follow in the hon esty indoctrination. This training should cultivate such an attitude in the students' mind that they would realize the necessity and certainly the desirability of being honest, especially in academic work. They should be shown the results of cheating on a level that will be understandable to them. This suggestion may sound ridiculous, but Penn State is on the bottom rung in honesty understanding, and to get through to the aver age cheater is to take this first, very practical step. The indoctrination the advisor would give his students should open their minds to the possi bility of establishing small-scale class and de partmental honor systems. Systems in workable condition should be referred to, perhaps in the hope of inciting a feeling of rivalry among the members of these individual groups. But no where should coercion be used, for if the stu dents don't really want to work on their honor, success on any level is almost impossible. In classes where students prefer close proctor ing to the honor system, now-existing Univer sity regulations for classroom discipline should be followed. It is conceivable that classes might even be divided when tests are administered, with one group under rigid supervision and the other on its honor. Many details are yet to be worked out, but it is with these details that the Academic Honesty Committee should concern itself and not so much with how to catch and punish students who are "expected" to cheat. The committee has definitely started out on the wrong foot in its rigid classification of degrees of dishonesty and vigorous attempts to stop cheating at all costs. Because this is Penn State, education for the masses, we must not be discouraged in our at tempt to teach honesty to the masses by a flood of below grades. Of course there's nothing that says we Can't toss the failures out of school, but right now we must begin to teach these 12,000 students something about honesty. Apparently they know - very little. —Jackie Hudgins Safety Valve Grace's Figure (of Speech) TO THE EDITOR: In Miss Conklin's article on the Matrix Banquet, she reported Mrs. Crist as saying, (quoting from the article) "—a well known figure like Grace Kelly." We should like to know who told Mrs. Crist that Grace Kelly has a figure. Editorials represent the viewpoints of the writers. sot necessarily the policy of the paper, the student body. or the University. —John Newlin Bruce Batdorf Ed Stoker Joseph Stecker Little Man on Campus r l4 I SEE 'THEY'VE PATCHED 'THINGS UF:'l' What's Our Ultimate Aim? Foreign Policy To Be Reappraised By J. M. Roberts Associated Press News Analyst In his promised reappraisal of America's foreign aid policy, one of the first things Secretary Dulles will need is a recapitulation of just what the nation is trying to do. For nearly 10 years now the chief emphasis of American foreign policy has been on development of a system of :Alliances, political, economic and military, with which to insure that the post-war tide of Russian expansion will rise no higher. The nation is now carrying global commitments, through the Western Hemisphere Pact, NATO. SEATO, and bilateral agreements. It has become un active participant in the eco nomic phases of the Baghdad Pact. Hardly a nation anywhere has not received some form of American aid since World War Yet a number of nations remain uncomitted in the cold war, ei ther by treaty or by sentiment, and some of them, like India, are of great importance. In the beginning, American aid was extended through the United Nations, UNRRA. It went directly to the grass,roots of postwar agony, taking care of people. Then came the Marshall Plan, the first great unilateral action by the United States designed to pre vent Communist expansion in Europe. It was offered to every one, but the Communist bloc turned it down in one of its first open declarations - of cold war. The four years of the Mar shall Plan were not over when developments in Europe and Asia, particularly the Korean war, shifted American aid em phasis from the economic to the military. And there it has stayed until Russia.. taking a page from the American book, des Nt , , ;~ ~.... ~t. Where University Park, Pa. When April 28th - May 3id But What FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1956 By Bibler /> 1 I adopted the lessons of the Mar• shall Plan to her own use. Through all these meanderings there has been a tendency in the United Statea—a tendency fre quently criticized by foreigners who have not been heard very well amid the din of the Amer• ican-Russian quarrel—to let fund. amental objectives drift into the background. Froth to Stay on Sale Froth will continue on sale to day at the Corner Room, Mall bulletin board, and the Hetzel Union desk. Gazette INTERLANDIA FOLK DANCERS Bal. kan-Slovak Party. 7:45 p.m.. S White Hall INTER-VARSITY CHRISTIAN FEL. LOWSHIP. 7:30 p.m.. 405 Old Main NEWMAN CLUB Spring Fling. 9 p.m.. Church Hall University Hospital Robert Brandt, Samuel Feinstein, Thomas Foster, Harry Fuehrer„ Erwin Masson, James Spongier. Richard Sut. ton. Lynnwood Sweigard. Student Employment Camp Sinking Creek, Pennsylvania—. April 21? Camp Echo Trail, Pennsylvania+ April 24 Indian Lake Camp, Pennsylvania—.. April 27-28 Tonight on WDFM ILI OtEGACYCLES 6:45 _ Sign OR 6:50-- New's, Sports 7:00 _ ------- Jan:. 7:30 8:00 ______- 9:15 Fl Open House 11:00 Sign Off Panorama ==i Marathon Special Events
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers