The recent vote of the Administrative Board, imposing a heavy punishment on any man found guilty of handing in written work not his own, emphasizes a very serious flaw in our college morals. It is of course inevitable that there should be a few men in an institution as large as Harvard who will be dishonorable enough to cheat or hand in work not their own. But these offences against truthfulness and honor are not confined to a few, and the undergraduate sentiment concerning them is not sufficiently condemnatory. Why this vital defect in the college morals should exist is hard to decide; but we believe the men who represent another's work as their own, fall into the evil through carelessness and thoughtlessness of its dishonorable character, if a man can commit an act of deliberate dishonesty through thoughtlessness.

But whatever the cause of the evil it is a very serious one and the Administrative Board does well in attempting to crush it out by severe measures.

With some hesitation, however, on account of the long and thorough deliberation which the Faculty and Administrative Board have given the question, the CRIMSON asserts that the punishment for the offence of handing in another's work is much too severe. The Administrative board may have the legal right to publish to the world the names of those who break its rules, but it has not, we believe, the moral right. The man who is thus punished will have his college life ruined and may have the first few years of his life after leaving college severely injured. If the authorities wish to weed out from the list of its members those who are dishonest the best way, the just way, is to expel the offenders at once and for all, but not to thrust their faults upon the whole University and upon the outside world into which they must enter.