Two hundred heads were bowed, two hundred pencils making brisk, black marks in blue booklets: it was a typical examination day at Princeton. Suddenly from the back of the room came a growing clamor. Three young men were asking questions out loud about the test. They flagrantly pulled-out notes on the reading from their pockets.

The Princetonians were scandalized. The honor system on exams had been violated only occasionally and never so determinedly. As the noise continued, Princetonians could not control themselves. The three offenders were forcibly removed.

This incident of three years ago was the one large infraction on Princeton's sixty-year old honor system, and, as anyone acquainted with Princeton's system might guess, the cheaters were not even enrolled in the College.

They were Yale men, sent down by the Yale Daily News to decide whether the Princeton system was effective. As they limped back to New Haven, the editors professed only praise for the system.

Turnover

But Yalie Daily men come and go, and last March the new crop of yale editors still seemed highly skeptical of examination honor and any system which relied on it. In an editorial titled "Honor at Smith," the Daily said, "We think that any honor system is either unnecessary or doomed to failure."

To Layman E. Allen, Princeton '52 and member of the board of freshman advisors at Harvard last year, these words more arousing than an attack on the Tiger backfield.

To prove the Daily generality incorrect, Allen distributed polls to fellow graduates of Princeton who were also exiled in Cambridge graduate schools. He asked their opinions on eight topics, beginning with the worthwhileness of the honor system through to whether a similar system could be made to work at Harvard.

Allen sent out 165 polls and received 91 answers. Many of these answers revealed information about Princeton's system; all of the replies revealed a good deal about their authors.

Ruined Career

One Princetonian, describing the beneficial effect the system had upon his character, told of the summer he held a job as proctor for a D. C. bar examination. Out of 600 students, he caught one man cheating. As the Princetonian puts it:

"Now it's pretty important that lawyers be honest, but this guy had put in three hard years preparing for the exams, and I was wondering just how justified I was in ruining the guy's career. Recalling my Princeton experience with the honor system, I realized how necessary it was to give the guy the shaft.

"It was not a pleasant thing to do," he concludes, "and if it hadn't been for the Princeton system I don't think I could have turned him in."

If this graduate's experience was unique his views were not. On the first four of Allen's questions, there is singular agreement among all graduates.

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