Lesson In Honesty Resounds Even Beyond The Classroom

My alma mater has an honor code that is respected throughout the university. Freshmen pledge to do their own academic work with integrity and to report those who do not to the student-run honor council.

Student signatures remain on display in the lobby of the Sarratt Student Center throughout their four years at the university. Alongside the signatures is a statement of the honor code as well as the words of the man for whom the building is named. Madison Sarratt, longtime dean of men at Vanderbilt University and a teacher in the mathematics department, died in 1978. He wrote, “Today I am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both, but if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry, for there are many good [people] in this world today who cannot pass an examination in trigonometry, but there are no good [people] in the world who cannot pass an examination in honesty.”

Sarratt’s former students still speak of the effect those words have had on their adult lives.

 — Gaynelle Doll, “The Nature of Virtue,” Vanderbilt Today (Summer – Fall 1999)