After a recent mass shooting, a professor at Brown University, a prestigious Ivy League school, decided to give his students a take-home exam. It was originally to have been given in class, but the professor knew his students might be traumatized by the shooting and wanted to make their lives as easy as possible.
This professor is no fool. He understands that the world is full of dishonest people. However, he did not think that was the case at Brown. The university accepts only the cream of the crop among incoming college students, boasting a seven percent acceptance rate. It can take its pick of those it wants, including those with high moral character. The professor thought that there would be no cheaters at Brown. The students in his class knew they were privileged to be there. They were there to learn. Furthermore, they would see his gesture as a kind one and would appreciate his concern for them. After the shooting, they would also realize that there were more important things than obtaining a grade on an exam through dishonest means.
He said that he was shocked to find that practically all the students cheated on the exam. They took advantage of a tragedy to improve their GPA. They mocked the professor’s kindness. He summarized his feelings when he said, “Humanity has chosen to become idiots.”
I’m sure that a professor at Brown University is more intelligent than I am. However, after reading this account, I felt he was a very naïve individual. It is hard to believe that a person could attain his position without realizing that people will cheat if it benefits them.
I don’t doubt that students in his past classes had also cheated. Maybe they were able to fool him. He discovered the dishonesty through AI, so perhaps the tools he used had not been available to him previously. If so, it probably dawned on him that his past students had also “chosen to be idiots.”
If someone had suggested to him that even within the halls of academia—even in an elite school like Brown—people do immoral things, he probably would have thought they were cynical. He would have thought that intelligent, hardworking, privileged young people would conduct themselves in a way that reflected their status.
If he had read the book of Romans, however, he would have discovered that what he thought was cynical is simply reality. In Rom 3:10-12, Paul writes about mankind, including the students who took that take-home exam:
There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one. (italics added)
Paul meant it when he wrote that none are righteous. All have turned aside. In the words of the professor, all have become idiots. But the professor was also a fool if he thought that entering Brown’s classrooms would turn young men and women into moral people who would do the right thing.
A mass shooting would not make such a change. Academia will not either. Neither will human intelligence. I am not being cynical when I say the professor was naïve.
As Paul says in Romans, the only thing that can help stem the tide of our inherent idiocy is the power of the Spirit (Rom 8:1-4). He indwells believers and gives us the power to do what is right, even when our flesh compels us to cheat. That is true for all of us, even those smart enough to be accepted into Ivy League schools.
