Now that the School year is coming to an end

–a   g   a   i   n–

and Graduations are taking place all over the land,

maybe some on your own personal real-estate;

the Question   h o v e r s

H  a  v  e           y  o  u  ?

You’d be in very,

very good company.      .      .

In fact, the old adage,

“EVERYBODY DOES IT”

most likely applies to this than maybe anything else. . .

E      V      E      R !

The Enron scandal started a lot of things, including a lot of schools beginning conversations about Ethics and Values; but it seems to not much value.  Duke University expelled 9 MBA students and gave out lesser punishments to some 37 others in one of the most recent cheating scandals in the Country.  The US Air Force Academy expelled 18 students for cheating.  Ohio University has reported ‘rampant and flagrant’ plagiarism by graduate students in Engineering.

. . .and Shocker. . .even Administrators have been caught cheating. The most prominent was the resignation of a Dean of Admissions at MIT whose resume contained fabrications–when she was first hired some 30 years ago.  A Rutgers study of 32 Universities showed 56% of MBA Students admitted Cheating; followed by 54% of grad students in Engineering and 45% in Law.  The Undergraduates at those schools were even worse, with 74% of Business Students and 68% of Students in other fields admitting to some form of cheating.

Here’ s the Scary Part:

Those statistics were complied May 19, 2007 via www.IvyJungle.org

Back in 1940, only 20% of College students admitted to cheating during the academic careers.  .  .

Today.       .       .TODAY   that number has increased to 75-98

.       .       .YES,   9 8%

Those figures were compiled just June 29.   .   .TWO-THOUSAND-ELEVEN

What.      .      .what are the actual percentages on  June 1, 2016

Do you think the percentage of people cheating has declined.      .      .and hey,

this is just those in SCHOOL.       .       .

we won’t get into Work environments or our personal relationships.       .       .       .

The worst thing about statistics and percentages is how we actually find ourselves there but not glaring back at us from some kind of

T     R     U     T     H             M     I     R     R     O     R

.      .      .something much more telling than that.      .      .

our Conscience.    .    .

or is that what we call our own inner self-awareness, our personal scruples now?

When I was at the fine institution of West Liberty State College–The Cow-path to Culture, I remember fulfilling one of my English Course requirements on William Faulkner.  Dr. Peter Makuck, who was my professor of that course and the Creative Writing Classes I took from him, once told a story about Faulkner giving a lecture to a group of students at a southern university and one of the students pointed out that a passage from one of his novels seemed very familiar to F.Scott Fitzgerald.  Faulkner reportedly said,

“That’s right, I stole from Fitzgerald and if you were a writer, I’d steal from you, too.”

I loved that story about Faulkner.    .    .

the same Faulkner who supposedly said,

“Immature artists copy, great artists steal.”

Well.      .      .

h a v e      y o u ?

Sometimes.       .       .

especially when we’re in the company of the masses,

it’s easier to massage our sense of right and wrong;

but make no mistake.   .   .

The    Cheating

are   the   ones   most   often

C      H      E      A      T      E      D