Discipline and the Derelict (collection)/The Undergraduate and Graft
One spring morning not long ago when I came to my office to begin the work of the day I found, as it is quite common to do, a young man waiting to see me. He was flushed and embarrassed as he entered my private office, and he asked me if I would consider what he should tell me in the interview which was to follow as entirely confidential. He begged that whatever facts and names he might divulge to me should be held strictly between ourselves. I gave him my assurance, and he continued with his story. He was the manager of an important undergraduate enterprise which necessitated his handling during the year some thousands of dollars. One of his duties at the outset had been to make a contract for supplies for the year. A friend of his, an upper classman, had come to him in the fall and had presented a proposition by which each was to receive a bonus of one hundred dollars in cash, if the contract should go to a definite local firm. He weakly and thoughtlessly yielded, hoping to get out of it or in some way to justify his action to himself, and now the contract had been fulfilled, and his friend was urging him to collect and divide the bonus.
"I have never consciously done a dishonest thing in my life," he said to me, "and I some way can not bring myself now to profit in this irregular way. If I take the money, I shall feel myself a crook all my life; if I tell my friend that I have changed my mind and do not think it right that we should take this money, he will be sure that I am not playing the game fairly with him, that I am joking, and am intending to collect the money and use it all for my own benefit."
I suggested to him a way out of the difficulty which was quite satisfactory, and he went off relieved and resolved for the future to keep in the straight path of honesty. His is only one of the many instances, which come to my attention almost daily in a large educational institution, of the business temptations which beset students, and of the close relationships between the undergraduate and graft.
The unsophisticated is likely to think of the college life as a protected, shielded life, a life which one spends in the study of books and of nature, afar off from the transactions and the temptations of the sordid business world. This may be true under certain conditions and in certain institutions, but not in the large universities of the Middle West.
In the simple life of the small college there is little opportunity, in the undergraduate activities as they are carried on, for profit or for dishonesty. No large amounts of money change hands, and the students who have charge of undergraduate affairs do not often have their characters put to the test of honesty. "In my own undergraduate days there were fewer than four hundred students in the institution in which I was doing my work. There was little money coming in from athletics, there was a deficit in our class annual, and no one was paid for working on the college paper, for the very good reason that it required labor and finesse for the business manager to meet the bills for its publication, let alone to pay any one for working upon it. We were satisfied to gain experience, though if there had been any loose money we should no doubt have shared it eagerly. Class functions and class invitations and student operas and plays and publications were either not a part of our undergraduate life or else their conduct entailed such a minor expenditure of money and was so simple in its nature that there was no thought or possibility of graft.
In an institution of eight or ten thousand students the case is very different. The student publications alone of the University of Illinois last year involved the letting of contracts and the expenditure of money to the extent of ninety thousand dollars, and practically all of this money was handled by students, and much of the profit divided among them. The expenditure of the senior class for their invitations, and ball, and breakfast, and class hats, and commencement caps and gowns would even at the most conservative estimate reach ten thousand dollars, and the contracts for all of these things were made by students, and the bills paid by students. The amounts may seem large, but when it is remembered that the number receiving degrees exceeded one thousand, the expenditure is very moderate. If one should go into it thoughtfully, he would be quite astonished to realize the thousand and one undergraduate interests which require the making of contracts, the collection of considerable sums of money often running into thousands of dollars, and the payment of bills by inexperienced careless undergraduates upon whom there is little effective check, and who themselves are unlikely if allowed to go undirected or unsupervised to keep any intelligent or intelligible account of their receipts or their expenditures. In any of the Middle West state universities the sums of money handled by students in the conduct of undergraduate affairs will run annually into tens of thousands of dollars.
The young men who make up the student body of any of our Middle West universities when they enter college are, many of them, not unfamiliar with the ways of the world. They know what it means to get or to hold a job through the influence of friends; they may not call it "pull," but it is the same thing under another name. They are not inclined to work "for their health," and if they do a piece of work, even if it be only having their names on a hat committee, they can not always see why they should not profit by it in some material way. They are strongly imbued with the commercial spirit. Much of the foolish talk which they have heard about college has been mixed with stories of graft in undergraduate affairs, and many fellows come to college with the idea that if you are anything of a wise guy you can pick up money almost anywhere about a college campus.
The editor of the summer edition of our college daily was complaining to me not long ago that he was having to do most of the work on the paper himself this summer, and that it was really more than he was able to accomplish.
"Haven't you a staff?" I inquired, with the memory of a long published list of names of editors in my mind.
"Why, yes," was his reply, "but you see they don't get anything out of it, and you can't expect a fellow to work for nothing these days." It is a significant fact that if you ask a young fellow in college now to perform any sort of service, the first question he is likely to ask is, "What's there in it?" It is the slogan of our times which our young men have learned at home from the conduct of politics and the conduct of business. We are supposed to preach higher ideals in college, but it is hard to supplant a doctrine of selfish personal interest and profit with one of altruism.
The fact that it is becoming more and more popular to go to college and that every year, with us at least, there is an increasingly larger number of undergraduates who must earn their living, has its influence, I have no doubt, upon this desire for graft. I do not mean to indicate that it is the men who have the greatest need for money to meet the daily demands for food and lodging who are most concerned in the illegitimate ways of obtaining money, and to whom these temptations come more strongly. Quite the contrary in fact; but when one-third of the men in college, as is the case with us, are concerned in some way in earning the whole or a part of their living there is bound to be a good deal of talk current relative to these matters, and when one is daily rubbing up against men who are bringing in a few dollars, it is not strange that one should look about him, even though not pressed by want or dire need, in an attempt to discover if there is not some easy money in reach which he may pick up. If no one were earning money, perhaps no one else would want to do so, but the sight or the rumor of other fellows adding to their incomes by steady work or clever financiering stimulates cupidity, just as when I go by an ice cream tefectory and see a few friends sitting in the window refreshing themselves with lemon stirs and bostons, my thirst rises.
When McIntyre came to me this spring and wanted me to help him collect a bill of fifty dollars from the freshman class for doing work which his office required him to do free of charge, I refused. "Why do you want this?" I asked, knowing that Mac got a generous check from home every month, "you have plenty of money"; not that that fact would have made any difference if he had been entitled to the money, but just to see what his reaction would be.
"Every one else in the house is making something," he explained, "and this seemed my chance. I can't see why I shouldn't make a little on the side even if I do get all I need from home." They were all in the game, and Mac didn't want to be on the side lines.
Another thing which, in a state university at least, helps to confirm students in their unwillingness to do anything unless they are paid for it, is the fact, I believe, that the fees which students pay at such an institution are so trifling as to be almost negligible. They pay little or nothing for instruction; many of their social affairs are in University buildings, their athletic sports and games are furnished at the lowest possible rate, the University offers them all sorts of entertainments free of charge, and pays a man to get the indigent a job. Since they get almost everything practically free, it is only a short step to the attitude of mind that if one does any general college service, or belongs to anything, or is a member of any committee there ought to be a generous rake-off.
With this training and tendency of students which I have discussed, with so many student enterprises so organized that they bring in relatively large sums of money, some part of which may legitimately be divided among undergraduates, it is not easy to draw the line at the point where honest remuneration ends and graft begins. An athlete may not take money for his services; if he does he becomes a professional and, if his act is discovered, he is barred from the team. General college sentiment would not now approve an athlete's being paid even indirectly for his services. It would seem out of place for a member of the glee club to be paid for singing at the regular concerts, though he may be a member of a paid choir at the same time that he belongs to the club and be subject to no comment if the manager presents each member of the club from the profits of the concert a sweater bearing an embroidered monogram, though it would stir up criticism and scandal if they received ten dollar gold pieces. The members of a committee appointed to choose a class emblem or a class hat could not receive salaries for having their names on the committee, but they feel entirely virtuous and above reproach if they accept a hat or two or a watch fob for their work; in fact they would be likely to suffer a real irritation if they did not receive such gratuities. The members of a dance committee get free admission to the dance and charge up as legitimate expenses all their regular personal expenditures for cabs and candy incident to the party, and these things are seldom looked upon as graft.
In some lines of student endeavor the undergraduate who manages the business is paid a stipulated sum or gets a definitely agreed upon percentage of the profits for his work and thought. The managers of the glee club and the student opera, and the lecture course, accept a bonus and little is thought of it; the managers and editors of all our student publications receive definite salaries and a share in the extra profits of these different publications which is often considerable, and they accept this as a right.
The question as to what constitutes graft and what constitutes legitimate payment for real services rendered, as I said at the outset, is not easy to settle. The manager of the glee club has no little responsibility. He organizes the club, he plans the trips and makes all arrangements for the entertainment of the members when they are out of town; he looks after the contracts for engagements, pays the bills, and puts in a tremendous amount of time in getting things in order and in keeping them so. If he should be paid fifty or one hundred dollars, should this be called graft? Again, the undergraduate who has charge of the commencement invitations does not always have an easy job. He is beset by solicitors, he must try to please as many members of the class as possible, he has a considerable amount of detail to look after, must read some pretty difficult proof (and usually does it badly) and be sure that the name of every member of the class is on the list. The invitations must be delivered on time and in exactly the numbers ordered by each individual. Should he get a rake-off?
Only a few years ago when the representative of a well known engraving company in the East was soliciting an order from the chairman of the senior invitations committee he presented two propositions. The invitations—five thousand of them or more—would be laid down at the college book store for thirty cents each. If a certain paper stock was accepted he would pay to the chairman of the committee for his trouble one hundred and fifty dollars in cash when the order was delivered, or if the chairman did not see his way clear to accept this offer—some chairmen do not—he would furnish a slightly superior quality of paper for the same price. There would be nothing on record or public about this transfer of the cash,—he would be handed the bonus in cash which was simply to show in a delicate way the appreciation of the company for this item of business. Was this a legitimate payment for services rendered which the young fellow was at liberty to accept without criticism, or not?
Our college daily, managed by students, does a yearly business of twenty or thirty thousands of dollars. The annual contract for the printing of this paper is let by a board of trustees composed of four students and three members of the faculty. A few years ago one of the students concerned was approached by a representative of one of the firms bidding for the contract with this proposition. His firm would agree to print the paper for a sum as low as the lowest bidder who should make application for the job; they would also make in every other detail a contract as favorable to the interests of the paper as any other contract offered. If the student concerned would use his influence and by his so doing they should secure the contract, they would hand him one hundred dollars in currency. The boy was a hard working fellow who was forced to support himself, the firm making him the offer was well qualified to carry out such a contract, and there was every probability that he could swing the business in their direction. So far as he could see he would not damage the paper nor cause any person inconvenience or loss if he should accept the proposition, and the money he was to receive would carry him easily through one of the hardest financial difficulties he had encountered during his undergraduate course. If he had taken the money, would he have been guilty of dishonesty and graft?
A former manager of one of our publications was approached by a representative of the firm that had done work on the publication when the manager referred to was in charge. "If you will help us to get this next contract," he said, "we shall be glad to pay you handsomely as a purely business proposition." The work which the firm had done had been second class, as the former manager well knew, but he volunteered to take the new manager through the work rooms of the interested firm, showed up their good points, evaded the weak ones, urged the claims of the firm to the new man's consideration and persuaded him to give them his contract. For all this he had his expenses paid and received in cash an amount of money far in excess of what he could have legitimately earned in four times the time consumed in his endeavor. Was he dishonest, and was the money which he accepted graft?
In giving these illustrations I have advisedly indicated that in each case the remuneration which these fellows accepted or that which was offered them was always cash, never a check or a draft, for when bills change hands, unless they are marked, there is no tangible record and no way for an outsider to run the matter down and get hold of it. Each one of these firms may say, as in fact most of them have said, that there was no such transaction authorized by them and nothing of this sort so far as they are aware ever occurred. The student, also, if he is uncertain as to the integrity of his conduct has no embarrassing legal witness to rise up to trouble him. If he is asked about the affair he may have forgotten, or he may evade the question entirely.
For my own part, I am convinced that we should be living under a healthier business and social régime in college if we could go back to the time when students worked in undergraduate affairs because they valued the distinction and the honor of the positions which were attainable, and because they were willing through such means to gain acquaintanceship and experience. There was stronger loyalty then, there was a keener college spirit, there was greater development of character, there was better sportsmanship, for a fellow is a poor sportsman who can not see his way to doing something for the advantage of his college or his class or his organization without receiving payment for it whether such payment be in greenbacks or gold watch fobs, whether it comes to him through the operation of regular college rules, or by irregular and hidden processes which he hesitates to discuss. We are, however, in most of our colleges at least, working under a different system, looking at the business of undergraduate affairs from a different viewpoint, and shall have to take things as I find them.
If I may answer my own question as to what really—constitutes graft in college I should say that it is receiving payment or profit without having the proper authority or sanction from those who actually pay the money or are responsible for its disposal; or without having rendered an equivalent service If the junior class votes to give fobs to the men who were in charge of the Prom, their acceptance of such a gift under this definition cannot be considered as graft because the class has a right to distribute its own money. If, however, the committee votes itself fobs without the approval or consent of the class, and buys them out of the proceeds of the dance, the case is different. The man who was in charge of the senior invitations, for example, if he should have accepted one hundred dollars might quite legitimately have been accused of graft, for no matter under what felicitous name the transfer of currency might have taken place, no one is foolish enough to think that any one was really paying this amount excepting those who are paying for the invitations and they are doing so without their knowledge or consent. The firm that offered such a bonus made itself safe by adding an equal or a larger amount to the regular selling price of the goods. The fellow who helped to land the contract with the firm that had previously done a second class business with him, in addition to perpetrating an ordinary common act of dishonesty was also a grafter, for the service which he performed even if it had been otherwise square was far less in proportion than the remuneration he received.
We have a university regulation to the effect that no organization is permitted to hold an entertainment with a view to raising money to be divided among its members. When the members of our dancing clubs, therefore, turn their cash balance into their own individual pockets they are receiving profit contrary to authority and are guilty of graft. Sometimes, perhaps, a practice like this is established so gradually and goes on so long that it loses its original significance and seems to become a legitimate commercial enterprise.
There is another sort of graft which contemplates a special privilege or looks for favors through relationship or acquaintanceship where a man has given little or nothing for what he expects in return. A student is sometimes accused of "working a graft" when all that is meant is that because of his nearness to an individual or his connection with an office or an organization he may be receiving favors to which he might otherwise not be entitled. If Jones is chairman of the Prom Committee, then Brown who is his roommate, even though he has done no work to merit preferment, expects to fall heir to some sort of soft job where the payment will at least equal if it does not exceed the labor. Fraternity men in authority or with appointing power are not at all likely to forget the needy or the eager brother when their jobs are being partitioned out. If Tom Jones is managing the student opera it is to be expected that a large percentage of the Zete's should be in the cast and in other places of emolument and honor; if Skinny Bill is in charge of the Mask and Bauble play then we are not surprised to find the whole Beta chapter taking tickets at the door. It is pretty hard when some member of the family is holding the bag for one not to try to get his fingers at least upon a few coins.
This form of graft does not always put the worst or the most incapable men into positions of trust; on the contrary the men selected frequently perform their tasks admirably, but it is simply another phase of the spoils system; it teaches a bad social principle, and is a form of graft detrimental to the best interests of the college. It is at best a weakener of the character of those who work it.
"I can not conceive," a senior recently said to me, "that any college man would ever fail to vote for a brother or for a friend if he were a candidate for office."
"Not even if there were a much better man running?" I asked.
"No fellow under those circumstances would be willing to admit that there are any better men," was his reply. But it is a rather vicious accompaniment of graft that makes it impossible for a man to recognize merit in any but his friends.
These things which I have been discussing are encouraged in college by two or three things. If we must speak the truth such practices are not at all uncommon in the business world, and students know it. The representative of one of the best known men's furnishing stores in Chicago not long ago advertised his business and attempted to increase his trade by handing out half pint bottles of whiskey to all thirsty corners. We live in a dry time, so that although these little courtesies are not universally appealing they do in some satisfy a long felt want. I do not suppose the firm whose goods were thus being advertised knew the exact methods which were being employed by their solicitor, but he was known as one of the shrewdest and most successful salesmen on the road. A young landscape gardener who has been out of college for only a few years told me a short time ago that he seldom put in an order for shrubs to carry out the work of park planting in which he is now engaged without one or more salesmen offering to split profits with him to get his order. These dishonest ways of promoting trade are not unknown to many undergraduates, and though they are not universal they are far too common to make it easy to develop healthy business principles.
As soon as the undergraduate begins to do business in college he finds that competition among local merchants and other business men is keen and that a good percentage of them are out for the business and are willing to pay to get it. It is not so strange, then, that the young inexperienced student should fall a victim to the subtle arguments which over-enthusiastic solicitors and business men are willing to present in order to get their orders. "They practically all do it in one way or another," the representative of a big business house said to me not long ago, "and if one wants to do business, one has to come across. It isn't always money, of course, which we put up, but it is the equivalent of money."
I should not want to blame this practice entirely upon business houses or their representatives. Most students are of the opinion that graft is pretty general in undergraduate activities and many fellows go out for positions with the hope of finding or making opportunity for illegitimate profit. Some men, it is true, are surprised when they are offered money to let a contract; some even are incensed; but there are others who by subtle suggestion make it quite evident to business firms that they are willing to be bribed, and others even more boldly ask at the outset how much there will be in it for them personally. A local merchant told me recently that the class officer who was in charge of the business of letting the contract for a class hat or cap came to him to ask for a bid on the proposition. When the boy had received the merchant's bid he said, "You have offered to furnish these caps for one dollar and twenty cents each. I will give you the contract if you will make it one dollar and thirty cents and turn the ten cents extra over to me for my trouble."
"I shall be very glad to do that," was the merchant's reply, "if your class will so vote or if you will have announced to the class beforehand what is being done; but otherwise I cannot." The young fellow went away to consider the proposition, but he never returned, and another firm received the order.
These practices could be stopped if they could more easily be detected; but very few people take responsibility in the matter. The students who profit by such grafting seldom boast of it or make it a matter of talk; those who know of it but who take no active part shrug their shoulders and affirm that it is none of their affairs; it may be wrong, but the responsibility is not upon them to stop it. Merchants or business firms who are implicated, most of them far away from the campus, of course have nothing to say on the subject, and those who are approached and who do not want to enter into such irregular negotiations, ordinarily content themselves with turning down the proposition and saying nothing. When there is a transfer of cash there is no record of it, no witnesses, no checks or drafts or papers of any kind to show that the undergraduate has profited. Bills are made out in regular order and checks covering the total amount of these bills are always forthcoming, so that on the surface the transaction seems entirely above board.
Notwithstanding these facts, however, I feel sure that careful supervision by the faculty of the business transactions of student activities would help materially to reduce if not in many cases to prevent undergraduate graft as it now exists. Much of the graft does not come from a definite transfer of cash from the representative of a business firm to an undergraduate manager, though there is considerable of this; it comes through thoughtlessness and carelessness on the part of the student. He collects money from various sources and gives no receipts; he pays bills and does not make a record of them; he does not keep separate the money which belongs to himself personally and that which belongs to the committee or the organization which he represents; he spends money as he is called on to do so, and by the end of a week or a month he has no remote idea how his accounts stand—how much money is his own and how much is his organization's. This spring I called to my office a young senior who had handled the accounts of a prominent university organization to insist that he make a reckoning. He had kept no records; he had taken no receipts nor given any; he did not know whether he had collected fifty dollars or two hundred and fifty. He was sure that he had not handled much money, though what had come into his keeping he had put into his pocket without record and spent as his own. The only way in which he could in any sense atone for his carelessness, he said, was to meet the bills of the organization and if these were presented to him he would pay them. I am sure he will always feel that he got the worst of the bargain, though it is not at all certain that he did not collect considerably more than the bills amounted to. Such errors as this which I have just mentioned are all too common; the student falls into them thoughtlessly at first, and then finding his affairs in a hopeless muddle, trusts to providence to get him out.
Such difficulties could be avoided by requiring all undergraduates responsible for the collecting and the expending of money to give numbered receipts for all money collected and to pay all bills by check on this money after it has been deposited in the bank. Years ago I learned through dear experience not to mix any one else's money with my own. If I were a Sunday school treasurer I should carry in a bag to the bank on Monday morning the pennies and nickels I had collected on Sunday and never let them touch the unsanctified coins in my own pocket. When all students who handle money for undergraduate organizations are required to make a business-like report of their receipts and expenditures, and have furnished them at a trifling cost the necessary books and paraphernalia to keep these accounts, the graft that arises through carelessness will be reduced to a minimum Knowing that he will be required to make a report the undergraduate will be on his guard. If undergraduate graft is to be eliminated or even become the unusual occurrence in college life, it will be through the development of public sentiment. We are all of us more than we think kept conventional and clean and honest through fear of what people will say; we might sometimes be tempted to swerve a little from the path of rectitude if it were not for the fact that we should be talked about or made unpopular or criticized or ostracized for our action. We all wish to be: approved and thought well of. When the undergraduate who works a graft is looked upon by his fellow students as is any other crook or dishonest man, when his lack of integrity instead of making him thought a hero or a clever fellow brings him disfavor and unpopularity, when the sentiment of the world at large and of the college world is against such dishonest dealings and all who work them whether they be undergraduates or business men, the undergraduate will in large part be separated from graft.